What meal made your heart sink as a child

[lemisscared]

For me i think it was mince and potatoes. The mince was from a tin ffs!! With tinned peas and carrots.

My mum used to make me eat this and i would gag and cry! Oh and fucking ready brek as i would get pneumonia if i didn't eat it - boak

I made a spam fritter a few months ago, I had a dribble of batter left after something else and there was a wedge of Spam in the fridge. It was greasy and disgusting.....and absolutely delish! I would never serve them to the kids but honestly, it was gorgeous!

Oh and we had spam because the kids tried it on WWII day and loved it, "one man's meat is another man's poison" :o

At school - the "choppy" - don't know why it was called that, I think it was similar to a spam fritter, coated in bright orange bread crumbs, and triangle shaped. Served with an ice cream scoop of school mashed potato, and mixed veg cut into cubes

At home, corned beef hash.

For me it was shepherd's pie (with baked beans in it... why?) or fish pie (which I love now... but this version had yellow smoked haddock, hard boiled eggs and, inexplicably, a tin of plum tomatoes in it).

I also hated casseroles and most gravy-based dishes - meat loaf, pie, roast, etc. I still don't love them but they can be good if done properly.

I did however LOVE (and still do) cod in parsley sauce, Birds instant semolina (bought some the other day for the first time in years and it's still amazing) and sardines on toast.

We were quite lucky that my parents were reasonably adventurous with food and we were (eventually) had Thai curries, fajitas, pesto pasta, hummus etc a good decade before they became mainstream dishes.

A celebration Sunday or party dish...Warm salt tongue with raisin sauce!!!

Gammon Steak! Salty, rubbery pigs arse!

Baked marrow, stuffed with pale looking mince & tied back together with string to bake in the oven. No other ingredients apart from marrow and mince. Bland, smelly, awful, but a cheap meal when skint(marrow out of the garden). Dreaded it!

Anything with courgettes! Dad grew them in the garden, so they were cooked in any number of ways and served with every meal when in season, and I hated them.

On one occasion, he missed one for a few days, so when he eventually picked it, it was massive. When I saw it cooked and on the table, I suspiciously asked "Is that courgette?"

My mum smugly answered "No! It's marrow!"

I decided I hated marrow as well.

No idea if I actually do hate marrow as I haven't been able to bring myself to try one.

Greasy mince and watery carrots.
Boiled bacon with bisto gravy and parsley sauce.
The only 2 school dinners that stick in my mind. There'd be a roomful of children quietly sobbing over their plates.

42and counting -- we had the dreaded stuffed marrow too! It was so watery and had the worst texture.

I feel a bit mean talking about my mum's cooking, as she was on a tight budget, but she used to make the most godawful mushroom and pearl barley soup thing. It was very grey and sad looking, and the texture of pearl barley put my teeth on edge. It has taken many years to get over my mushroom phobia thanks to that dish.

Cheese on toast was particularly grim at home too. Now, I know you're all thinking: how?

My mum would put a slice of cheese (sometimes a Kraft cheese slice) on top of a slice of cheap, plastic, white bread and put it in the microwave. There was no toasting involved. You'd be presented with greasy, melted cheese the temperature of the centre of the earth on top of the world's chewiest bread on a plastic plate that was too hot to touch. I was at university before I realised that other people had toast in cheese on toast.

Salad was also grim. A mix of lettuce, cucumber, tomato and picked beetroot with salad cream stirred through. The colour alone was alarming enough. My mother professes to love this and eats it a lot. The sight of it makes me feel ill.

My mother was not (and is not) a good cook. Neither of my grandmothers were either. They also have/had dreadful ideas about what tastes nice, which made everything much worse.

Not me but my mum - she grew up in a farming community and when it came to pig-killing season they would have full pigs'-liver fry-ups for breakfast. As a teenager (not) waking up on a cold Irish winter's morning, she used to retch at the smell.

MEATLOAF.

TheLovelyBoots Thu 06-Nov-14 12:40:36

MEATLOAF.

Would that be the food or the singer? 'cos he's pretty depressing as well. sorry about that

On another note, did anyone see the perfectly horrible desserts on Masterchef Professionals last night? Now those were heartsink on a plate if ever I saw it. I don't often feel sorry for the judges on those shows but I did pity them there. Coconut jelly, WTF was he thinking...?

Poor quality meat generally but my grandma used to make my dads favourite dish -boiled liver and bacon with onions wrapped in boiled pastry and watery gravy. Actually he hated it too but didn't have to heart to tell her so we all had to suffer it

Mince and tatties - Scotland's other national dish. Every single Thursday throughout my childhood. Disgusting.

Salmon en croute. From a shop. I'm sure it's lovely but when it's served every time you go home then it's really not.

Fray Bentos pie from a tin. Simultaneously burnt and raw.

Everything. My mother's cooking was so bland and disgusting that I once thought walker's cheese and onion crisps were too 'spicy'.

Stuffed marrow, broad beans and DM's idea of curry and chilli. (Mince plus appropriate packet mix with slushy over cooked rice.)

calamity

I don't know if I should laugh or cry at your microwave toast story.
I'm so sorry
PMSL

Boiled tripe.

It was actual torture.

Step monster loved pork!

It would either be belly pork but not slow cooked with crackling, it would still be swimming in fat with big white streaks through it and rind like shoe leather or her speciality was lemon, cream pork. Yep, you read that right. It was pork chops with extra thick double cream smeared on them and lemon squeezed on top.

I now do not eat pork, the very smell of it makes me wretch.

LadyBaelish we were actually taught how to make that in home economics class in the very early 90's!

I made my own version still with pork sausage meat, chopped apple's & stilton...it's much better .

chicken chasseur out of a jar,hate that smell even now.

Also my mum used to do mashed potato and mix raw onions into it and grill cheese on top,and then call it cheese and potato pie,how is that a pie?! always served with burnt sausages.yuck.

I feel sick. Many of these are vile but Madamecastafiore's pork horrors must win.