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

Oh god. I serve hearts too. Stuffed for the normal members of the family; sliced up for the sensitive; but we all like the texture and flavour.

My mums shepherds pie
Get a kilo of beef mine! Add an onion and carrot and boiling water and boil for about an hour. Add oxo and bisto boil for a further half an hour. Add a load of salt

Pour over mashed potatoes.

Add more salt.

Mince with boiled potatoes, such a bland meal. Not new potatoes with skin on, but peeled white potatoes.

Sandwich spread sandwiched (aka vomit in bread) - shudder.

*sandwiches!!

The mushroom soup curry powder sauce thing featured in my childhood as well!

70s child here. My mother would cut up a bit of stale fruit cake, serve it with custard poured on top and that passed as a pudding.

Then there was the abomination that was potted meat or potted heid as we called it here. A tub of gelatinous gloop served with a tomato to make it more appealing. Still available in my local butcher's 🤮

Frozen spinach cooked as our veg. Now I know how a cow feels chewing on grass. It was revolting and impossible to swallow 🤢

My mum called lt spicy pork chops but it was in a watery sauce and was with pasta. it was and still is just awful

Oh god yes. Tinned salmon with iceberg lettuce and huge chunks of unripe toms and salad cream. Vinegar alone offered for the salad

Bless her she did her best with what was available at the time. Remember they themselves or their mothers had grown up with post war rationing.

And for vast majority of women, no wider exposure to or cultural knowledge of to how to cook well, let alone the myriad of ingredients we have to hand now.

My mum wasn't a great cook- she hated it; but she'd make 'Irish stew' because dad loved it. It was bony meat, sliced carrots and potatoes floating around in a thin, greyish gravy, served on lumpy mash. Followed by rice pudding with skin on top.

Disgusting.

"Old people potatoes"! We had those a lot as well and I actually look back on them sort of fondly I tried them out on my own children once and they were unimpressed 😂

@Rainbow1901 chicken Maryland with fried bananas (and pineapple) was my favourite meal growing up! So unhealthy but what’s not to like!

Tinned meatballs and gravy with boiled white rice!!!!

OMG! Just reminded me I don't like pineapple cooked on top of gammon ham with cheese on top!! Bizarre mixture!!
To each their own - if you like fried bananas lol!! 😀

Kidney soup is the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard. Just vile.

Kidneys also always tasted of wee.

Piss soup🤮

During an economy drive, we once were given tripe. A false economy I think, as it turned out.

I have never done it to my kids. 🤣 probably because I do not look back fondly.

If they’d just used waxy potatoes, they’d have been boring (and unseasoned) but less awful.

Sometimes the potatoes were mashed. You’d think that would improve things. But no. Unseasoned mash with no butter or milk or anything.

My gran used to to tripe too. Apparently I’d eat it as a toddler.

This has just taken me right back to my childhood summers. Describes the salads my mum made exactly. Plus salad cream and the odd boiled potato. Does anyone still eat salad cream?!

Mince and mash was the worst meal in our house. Not a shepherds pie even, just the miserable deconstructed version. My mum thankfully wouldn’t have ever served up liver or any other offal. She was actually a good cook but now I totally understand, as a mother myself, there is nothing worse than the drudgery if having to feed kids day in day out. It’s destroyed my love of cooking.

luckily my Italian grandparents made absolutely delicious food so my 80s childhood of frozen crap from Iceland and too many mince based meals were punctuated by some great food.

My mum was a good cook but she avoided cooking one vegetable.

I didn't realise why until I went around to an older friend's house as an adult and this friend cooked a mystery vegetable that was lovely and crunchy.

The mystery vegetable was cabbage.

Yep my mum avoid cooking cabbage because like me the only cabbage she tasted had been boiled to a pulp so she refused to cook it for herself and for anyone else.

Oh and I detest spam fritters. Though I only had them for school dinners.

The mention of curry has reminded me of DGM's one failure - curry. It wasn't curry, it was mince with curry powder not cooked long enough for the flavour to develop, and currants. Served with mash.

Stew and dumplings, still hate it now. My mum used to just put peeled onions in, so although they’d break apart etc, the pieces were huge. To this day I cannot abide large pieces of cooked onion and I dice mine to within an inch of their lives
Then there was the mince and potatoes on a Monday, the mince was boiled in hot water and put in the fridge overnight then cooked the next day. My mother did not season, no oxo, no black pepper etc etc.
That said, she made a great macaroni cheese.

Macaroni cheese. Overcooked pasta in cloudy water with bits of cheese floating in it. Still can't eat anything by that name

@littlelovely egg, cress and salad cream sandwich.

When I was a child I was a very fussy eater and I used to love these on there own with just some rice, my mum said she was disgusted making it for me as the whole bowl was just white mush. Hence the rest of my family eating a separate meal 😅