Awful meals your parents made as a child - lighthearted

[Workinghardeveryday]

I remember my mum used to put half a tomato on any meal that didn’t have veg, I hated it, still do.

Bread and butter pudding made with skimmed powdered milk, absolutely disgusting!!

Tuna sandwiches in my packed lunch that had not been drained properly, so all the bread was wet and soggy - everyday!

Do you have any to share

@fairtrauchled oh god I loved my mum’s kidney soup. She was a fab cook though. Although I could never get the love for liver.

ive also remembered my mum still makes a kedgeree that features no curry powder of any description and is cooked entirely in the microwave. Vile.

Bacon and onion puddling, it was bacon with fat on and onions in a type of pastry that was boiled. Thinking of the texture makes my stomach churn.

Broad beans... marrowfat peas... tomato sandwiches made with soggy white bread. .. soggy cornflakes with hot milk... a thread of memories that I am glad we no longer have to endure.

My poor children have had years of restricted diets due to intolerances and allergies - I have made some shockers in my time.

I had an off grid upbringing in the countryside. Highlight ‘meals’ were pressure cooked rice, nettles and limpets (yes limpets).

Stringy boiled venison which after a few mouthfuls I was told by my mother she hadn’t hit it so it wasn’t illegal - roadkill then.

we were very very skint

My mum and dad were into eating locally, seasonally and growing your own fruit/veg, foraging and eating everything but the squeal of their home produced meat waaaay before it was fashionable. And my mum, bless her, wasn't the greatest cook and didn't have a lot of time. So stuffed hearts, boiled tongue, oxtail and on one memorable occasion tripe were horrors of my childhood and I would sit there at the table for hours looking at it.
But I also loathed marrow (boiled, later microwaved) and the marrow season seemed to go on forever, similarly kale.
The lighthearted one though was her yogurt which was made in gallon buckets in the airing cupboard and for whatever reason was never any thicker than what would now be drinking yogurt. Yogurt was pretty hippy anyway, but being sent to school with a tupperware of runny yogurt with raisins and brown sugar made me yearn for other peoples less healthy packed lunches.

Funnily enough DH actually preferred instant mash to what his mum made from scratch. When he grew up he discovered that his mum didn't put any milk, butter or salt into her mashed potatoes which is probably why. She just mashed boiled potatoes and that was it. When my mum was in hospital having me, my brother had to live off tinned meatballs & baked beans. My Dad's way of providing "variety" was that some days it would be served hot, other days he'd serve it cold from the tin! So grim... I don't think Dad was ever asked to "cook" after that lol

Your sister sounds lovely. Sorry about your mum .

Liver and bacon
Dumplings - just disgusting.
Faggots - not the fancy ones, cheap in a foil container cheap ones. We didn't have much money.

Saturday lunch. Smoked sausage from the kosher butcher, boiled potatoes sprinkled with dill and sauerkraut.

We also used to have chicken soup with the feet in and tiny bits of home made pasta that some ancient aunt in Hungary used to send over, or someone would bring back if they were visiting. The great aunt died in the 70s. My Mum died last year and when I was clearing out her cupboards I found a massive jar of these pasta bits, along with a massive jar of honey from some relative’s hive in Hungary, which I know dated from a visit there in the 1980s. The honey looks like treacle as it is completely black.

Bouncy pork or lamb chops with the bone in
2 boiled potatoes
Limp overcooked green veg
Splashy gravy made with one oxo cube.

It's put me off chops for life.

Steak and kidney pie. Loved the steak, gagged on the kidneys.

Dark green, stringy spinach boiled to death, served with salt in a little green pool of the water it was cooked in.

Mince with some packet of Knorr seasoning mix, served with mashed potatoes, and string beans that had been blanched and frozen many months before.

My mum was a good cook, but those weren't her finest moments.

Funnily enough DH actually preferred instant mash to what his mum made from scratch. When he grew up he discovered that his mum didn't put any milk, butter or salt into her mashed potatoes which is probably why.

Snap! It took a boyfriend to enlighten me to the joys of mashed potato made properly.

Not my parents, but my friends mum used to put peas and sweetcorn in every meal she made.

Spaghetti bolognese? Peas and sweetcorn

Shepherds pie? Peas and sweetcorn

Chicken Curry? Peas and sweetcorn

Not just on the side either, she mixed it in.

Liver with boiled potatoes , my mum was obsessed with us having liver once a week for iron

Chicken paste sandwiches

And salmon paste. Waitrose still sell that abomination.

Every meal - overcooked carrots.

As an adult I was 'I don't like carrots' until I had them cooked properly once and realised I do actually like them just not when my Mum boiled them for an hour 😂

Lambs heart casserole with lots of turnips and swedes. She told me is was steak casserole with potatoes. We often had it several days. The second worse things were whelks. I loved shrimps and cockles but the whelks were so chewy.

Cheese and potato pie. It was just mash with some grated cheese and slices of tomato on the top. Have always hated tomato’s. Sometimes it came with beans… I also hate beans

Ratatouille. Not that it's a bad meal - it's nutritious and my Mum can cook well. But the recipe is basically a list of every vegetable I didn't like so no picking out the good bits and leaving the rest. And no teaming a yucky item with something nice to hide it from yourself. Every mouthful horrid.

Thankfully my tastes have changed and I can now tolerate most of the ingredients but I still think ratatouille is a bit grim.

What she called "corned beef risotto" but was actually "tinned corned beef with Uncle Ben's boil in the bag rice and frozen veg"... 🤢

Same. I don't like courgette or aubergine. I will now add grated courgette to a bolognese but only grated. My dm was a vegetarian with no idea about vegetarian cooking. We lived on beige oven food, ratatouille, cauliflower cheese and soup.

Corned beef hash with a thick slice of undercooked pastry cooked separately on the side.
Beautiful fillets of plaice grilled to death and sprinkled with strangely chemical orange breadcrumbs from a tub.
Watery, lumpy mash
All meat incinerated to leather
We were far from poor but Mum was a terrible cook.

My mum used to make this dish called chicken 'paprika' (no paprika involved) which was microwaved chicken served with rice, covered in a sauce made from mushroom soup with curry powder stirred through. Accompanied by sliced tomatoes and bananas.

Of all the things I have read on Mumsnet that is up there amongst the most shocking!

I have given DC smoked haddock, mash, peas, with butter sauce or a mild curry sauce ( the flavours of a kedgeree without the rice) for the last 27 years.
Over the years it has morphed into fancy fish cakes, but they all (as adults) still like it! What did your Mum do to make it unappetising?

Fried Bananas!! 😳Mum used to do them with Chicken Maryland - yukk!!