Lots of people saying their mums are great cooks and wondering how, this being so, they managed to served up all this awful stuff - think the answer is the 80s/90s food revolution! Our mothers have come on a massive journey food wise, much more radical than the one we are on.
I was a little kid in the 70s. We had reconstituted frozen "turkey roll" for sunday lunch (why?why?why? Surely a normal roasting joint would have been nicer!), arctic roll for pudding, angel delight, a very yummy but bizarre supper called "ham pipes" (slippy ham rolled into a pipe with cottage cheese inside, served with new pots and 1970s salad; round lettuce, cucumber, tomato, boiled egg and salad cream!). Mum used to eat small tins of weight watchers soup for her lunch and if it was someone's birthday they bought, as a treat, a glass bottle of Del Monte concentrated orange juice.
My little sister was a kid in the 80s. By that time my mother had cottoned on to the food revolution. The days of reconstituted meat and arctic roll were OVER. We were now a wholefood and pulses eating family! Her wholemeal loaves were good for making walls out of. She made nut roasts, we ate wholewheat pasta (aargh!) and even fresh tagiatelle with a kind of gloopy tomato and lentil (lentil??! who puts lentils with pasta?) sauce. But her piece de resistance was gloopy green lentil curry with, you guessed it, a hard boiled egg sitting on top.
By the 90s though she had worked through this phase and she had settled down pretty much into the excellent "modern european cook with a sideline in ethnic tagines and curries" that she now is.
Bless you mother, all is forgiven. 