Whats the first thing that comes to mind when you think about your mum and dads cooking?

[PunnyBeaker]

Ready meals

What’s that?

Dad-Christmas Dinner

Mum- great home cooking from scratch

Dad was a SAHD and used to ask all 3 of us what we wanted for our tea (they ate dinner later when mum got home) and make it often 3 different meals. According to everyone I've ever met since leaving home this is extremely unusual....

Still, we ate it all, as we got what we wanted.

No foreign muck.
A PP mentioned fairy cakes and I wondered when did they start being called cupcakes?

Mam - bolognase and bacon bones soup
Dad - cheese & onion or tomatoes on toast

Dad (born 1943) never lifted a finger in the house (still doesn't). But he watched my gran literally wait on my grandad - stirred his tea etc.
I don't think my mam (born 1946) actually enjoys cooking, so just does it. When we were growing up in the 70s and 80s, most meals were meat or fish (both over cooked) and lumpy mash and soft veg. A treat in the summer months was tinned salmon (between 4 of us) salad which was iceberg lettuce, sliced tomato, sliced cucumber, sliced pickled beetroot, sliced double Gloucester cheese and salad cream. My mam wouldn't (and still doesn't) cook anything she doesn't like and she doesn't like anything "too seasoned" so no black pepper or any kind of spice. There was only my dad working so we didn't go out for meals and a take away was fish and chips. So we didn't know any different. I didn't know that lamb wasn't supposed to be grey until I started work and went out for meals with work.
Baking was via a Greens cake mix.
No actual specialities then or now.

My dad didn't cook.

My mum was Cordon Bleu qualified and we ate extremely well. She was born and grew up in Germany and we lived in South London with access to a continental delicatessen in the 1960s, so we ate foods like fresh ravioli, sauerkraut and Polish sausage, chicken provencale, home made pizza, curries, spaghetti bolognese etc.

She also cooked traditional roasts, fish and chips, sausage and mash and other traditionally English food. She also made wonderful German yeast based cakes covered with streusel and home made bread.

Ready meals and microwaves weren't really a thing in the 1960s and 1970s.

Shit.

My mother-in-law: 'I don't know why people have pasta. It's got no taste.' Me: 'You'd say the same about potatoes if you boiled them and put them in a plate and that was the whole meal.

Meat n 2 veg, leftovers on Monday, various home grown fruit and veg.
Rhubarb and gooseberry that I didn't like. Many apply crumbles, plums, spinach that I did like.

Later in the 80s this veered towards convenience food. Eg v a small round microwaveable pizza . Mum was never an enthusiastic cook so gave it up when could.

Steak - my father was a carnivore and steak was his party piece. I'll never forget an attempt to cooked canned beans and sausages on the frying pan though. That was a lowlight.

My mum's Christmas cake. You could smell the booze when the cupboard door was opened.

Mom - sausage and Mash, cottage pie, stew, chilli and rice, curry and rice, Cauliflower cheese, this was the 90s

Now she cooks all sorts - has the time and energy now she is retired.

Dad - BBQs and the most incredible cheese on toast. No one makes cheese on toast as good as my dad

My dad’s cooking is shit, he just adds pepper and chilli to everything unnecessarily. Everything is spicy even omelettes/toast. Plus it’s like crunch, like coarse pepper you bite into and get a burst of grossness

You made me laugh with that story. For my mum potatoes was her favourite and I think she just didn't like a meal without them. The boiled potatoes with curry wasnt great though. I have issues with my num and my childhood but she cooked well and often. I wss never hungry.

My mums cooking was basically non existent

she would make the same rotational things for birthdays like a certain trifle etc but there isn’t single thing of hers that I miss!

How much I miss them.

Same in my family. I still can't cook as well as my mother did.

Dad - Beans or egg on toast.

Mum - The best roast potatoes I’ve ever tasted.

Dad - great roast dinners. Gravy with everything!

Mum - great cook. She taught me all the basic techniques (which she learned from her mum!). Cooked from scratch 95% of the time, made her own sauces for lasagne etc. Great sweet bakes - cake and desserts etc. Pretty limited to British/European food (and stir fry for something exotic!).

A proud full circle moment for us both when I came home from uni one summer having learned to make Thai green curry, with her helping/hovering behind me learning how to make it… Miss her.

Findus crispy pancakes and shop bought pizza.

Was born in 1950 everything home made, caught or shot, home grown veg
Fabulous Yorkshire puddings. Late f born 1928 , never so much had made a cup of tea. Sunday roast, Monday cold cuts, Tuesday the mincer and cottage pie.

Mum - boring and regimented. Same meals on the same day every week,

dad - never cooked

Mum used to make bread every weekend, we were banned from the kitchen during the kneading process as apparently it was therapy for having misogynistic bosses and ungrateful children and therefore violent and sweary. We could form our own mini buns though, which were so good straight from the oven.

Mum - great cook, didn't always appreciate her at the time, being a picky eater. Her casseroles and steamed suet puddings were epic, though. A fine baker, too, won prizes for her cakes at the local Townswomen's Guild.

Dad - wasn't called upon to cook all that often, but could certainly do it. His Yorkshire puddings were better than my mum's!

My late dad would offer to cook and always say it’s a “surprise”.

It was always shepherds pie, every single time. I miss him and his surprise shepherds pies. They were pretty basic but he was always super chuffed.

He was an old school working bloke who was out at work 7am - 7pm 6 days a week but he loved to cook a nice shepherds pie.