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

Roast dinner- veg boiled til grey and soggy, dry meat cooked an hour too long and bisto. No seasoning, even salt and pepper because she didn’t like her food “to taste of things “
shepherds pie- overcooked mince, bisto, mash. Not grilled, served with soggy grey veg. No onion/ flavour in the actual thing.
Liver and mash. Overcooked, tough and flavourless.
frey bentos pies.

Ground up liver 🤢

My mum still loves a dismal salad of the kind described with salad cream as the dressing. Always including chunks of beetroot in the salad so that the whole thing can be a horrible pink colour.

I think the problem with my mum is both that she’s a terrible cook and that she has really bad taste too. She declares her abominable food ‘to die for’. It really isn’t.

On the other side, she’s really fussy and never likes a lot of food. She will refuse to order pasta in an Italian restaurant because of some nonsense about how you can just make that at home etc. But any pasta she does make at home is really dismal (she can achieve the texture of tinned spaghetti hoops just by boiling any pasta shape). She imagines herself incredibly imaginative and adventurous in al things, but in reality she likes a very limited range of very bland and weirdly mid-20th century style British foods. And just doesn’t try new things.

I've had to google what some of these foods are! I was so so lucky: Mum was an amazing cook and we always had a table full of delicious Middle Eastern food (that's where we're from) cooked from scratch. She made breads, cakes, confectionary, chutneys, jams, yogurt, churned butter etc... But....

once she bought skate wings....they were vile!! Never again.

Mum had a terrible time when she first got to the UK: very difficult to source what would be quite normal ingredients now, but we used an awesome Marguerite Patten book to figure our way through English cooking (I still have a copy of this book now!) :D

I remember the Heinz Sandwich Spread. We were never allowed to have it. I used to be jealous of friends whose parents gave them crisps, fruit flavoured pots of yogurts, microwave chips and pizza etc. As a child, I didn't realise you could buy stuff ready made from the store, and I thought that was v swish!! Now I realise just how bloody lucky I was (and what a total pain in the butt it can be to have the mental load of menu planning, meal prep etc etc)!!!

Mince that had been boiled for hours with gravy and mash. I can still recall the smell of boiling mince 🤮

Spinach Florentine. My mum grew spinach and didn't pay enough attention when she washed it. I found a snail in my portion 🤑

Couldn't delete that emoticom

This may not sound awful but I despised it, cheese and onion quiche, new potatoes, salad (lettuce, cucumber, tomato, whole spring onion) dressed with salad cream and a dollop of branston pickle. I just hated it. But my mum was a fairly decent cook.
School dinners were pretty bad. The worse being chicken supreme, which was chunks of weirdly powdery chicken, in a grey, watery mushroom sauce. Served with un seasoned rice and sweetcorn. Grim.

I used to love crumpet pizzas!! I didn't know anyone else had them. That and English muffin pizzas.

Pancakes topped with beef stew

Fish paste sandwiches 🤢

Also tinned ham - my mum would warm it in the microwave and serve it like mush on a plate with chips! Rancid.

It wasn't what my mum cooked, but the way she cooked it. Everything overdone, burnt, flaccid, tasteless and bland. Now I love having a fully stocked spice cupboard, grow loads of my own herbs and use wine, vinegars and rich stock to make meals varied and tasty. I'm quietly smug that my DC are such brilliant eaters - particularly at meals with Granny!

Sliced marrow (does anyone even eat this anymore?!? like a very very large courgette) with mince 😬

Mum was a great cook but she used to make a sort of fennel bake topped with breadcrumbs & hard boiled eggs in a sauce - I love eggs but can’t bear them in anything whole like that. I heave thinking about it!

I loved fish paste sandwiches, too. I clearly have an unrefined palate.

I also love salad cream. One of my favourite sandwiches is white sliced bread, Cheddar, tomatoes to make it all go soggy, and salad cream. Mmmmm.

I'm going to Waitrose.

Someone also mentioned potted meat.

My mum was a crap cook (so am I), but several things mentioned here are the foods of the gods.

Tinned pilchards with sliced tomatoes. Horrid.

Liver and tomatoes with sausages. I didn't like the liver so would be given the sausages (which were limp as they were cooked in the slow cooker without being browned first). If I complained the sausages tasted of the liver I was told not to be silly and that they didn't

Fried sliced Spam - often served up for tea. I seem to recall that I didn't mind it too much at the time, but I couldn't face it now!

Fish in cheese sauce served with boiled cauliflower and boiled spuds.

Thursday nights were fish nights, and I used to dread it all day, as it means I sat at the table alone until bedtime watching whatever fishy horror congeal in front of me. I was about 15 before she gave in trying to force me and let me have a fucking fried egg (fish prices went up, I know that was the only reason).

I still can't bring myself to try fish.

I also dreaded rice pudding, tapioca, semolina - all those milky puds they gave us 70s kids. Hot milk makes me heave.

God the vile boil in the bag fish with parsley sauce 🤢🤢🤢

Also the boiled potatoes...lumpy mash...

Liver and onions. No child should ever have to endure that

Worst was a vile Frey Bentos pie in a tin, with lumpy mash and tinned peas.
pastry on pie was slimy and very little meat.
Every meal was eaten with a large amount of sliced white bread and stork. Mum was a dreadful cook, my Irish family were country women and all good cooks.

Braised hearts. Absolutely disgusting