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What meal made your heart sink as a child

742 replies

lemisscared · 05/11/2014 17:29

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

OP posts:
BrendaBlackhead · 07/11/2014 08:42

I can remember every single dinner lady. Particularly the one who wore a headscarf and curlers and slipped on a carrot and broke her hip Shock She'd have sued for a billion pounds today but back in the 70s got a home-made card from the pupils.

Stupidhead · 07/11/2014 08:46

My mother had a Schwartz spice rack, which was bought with about 20 jars of herbs and spices to display. She was obsessed with taking labels off...I think so only she had control over the kitchen. 30 years on she still has the same spice rack with spices. All the same shade of brown. And hardened. Even a sniff doesn't give much of a clue to what they could possibly be.

LiviaDruscillaAugusta · 07/11/2014 08:48

My mum is an excellent cook but we used to have bacon, mash and swede once a week. I HATE swede! I used to have to put loads of brown sauce on it (which I didn't like either but lesser of two evils!) and try to swallow it without tasting!

BeeOrchid · 07/11/2014 08:49

Liver and onions, in a big frying pan, with its own thick gravy. How did I choke it down?

School meal, semolina pudding. Foul stuff. Once the school kitchen cooked too much and we had mandatory seconds. I was only 6 but the horror burns bright in my memory.

LiviaDruscillaAugusta · 07/11/2014 08:50

And the butterscotch pie they served at school. That was back in the day when they made you eat everything on your plate. I remember having to eat it and shortly afterwards throwing up in the classroom! They didn't make me eat it after that!

JamNan · 07/11/2014 09:02

More school dinner horrors:

< Tapioca pudding with a dollop of jam (we called it frog spawn)

Irish stew (boak)
Ox liver and bacon - the liver had holes and tubes (extra vom)

What meal made your heart sink as a child
CitronVert · 07/11/2014 09:08

i used to dread the nights when we'd have sausage, soup and chips.

Cheap sausages, home made chips cooked in the chip pan (admittedly these were nice) and a tin of vegetable soup poured over the lot as a kind of vomitty gravy. Everyone else in the family loved it Confused

Nocturne123 · 07/11/2014 09:08

Vegetable stirfry ... It started my hatred for peppers

ClawHandsIfYouBelieveInFreaks · 07/11/2014 09:09

Citron Oh! Oh! How awful to ruin good old sausage and chips like that!

CitronVert · 07/11/2014 09:09

Oh god that tapioca makes me heave just looking at it. Sago pudding too. Did anyone else have that at school?

MrsMarigold · 07/11/2014 09:29

steak and kidney pie - bleurgh!
Tripe - the smell lingered forever!
Liver - yuk!
Boiled butternut and pumpkin - all watery and revolting.

And I don't remember this but my DM tried to feed me brains (before CJD) and apparently I just spat them out in her face.

smiffy54 · 07/11/2014 09:32

A child of the 60's, brought up in a village that time forgot. Brains on toast. " they're just like beans", pigs heads boiling to make brawn and numerous other offally frights. Been vegetarian since 1979 when I left home. My DH is a real carnivore, and loves offal, but thankfully he does the cooking. .Oh and the school spam meal. I won't get the taste of it away all day now. And i vomited numerous times at school by being forced to eat milk puddings of any description.

famalam · 07/11/2014 09:34

Secondary school

famalam · 07/11/2014 09:36

......oh I missed the part that said what "meal" made your heart sink haha!!

I think I enjoyed nearly everything really, was quite a greedy guts

JamNan · 07/11/2014 09:39

smiffy54, sorry a bit off topic but I remember a neighbor boiling up a pig's head to feed their dog. The smell was horrible and the pig had a smile on its face.

Me too child of the 60s. It was quite scary as I was only about 6.

ZingOfSeven · 07/11/2014 09:42

oi, I'm eating crumpets!
no boiled grinning pig head talk at the table!

Wink
HorseyGirl1 · 07/11/2014 09:58

School shepherd's pie. Even the smell made me gag and I had to wait outside until it was done. Even now the smell takes me back. Strangely I like mince and I like potato but the two cooked together....:-(

MrsMarigold · 07/11/2014 10:06

at least we didn't do processed meat in our house.

My mother had this great cookbook called Feed Me I'm Yours by Vicki Lansky - it was American and advocated baby led weaning, it had a picture of a baby looking miserable on the front and a content baby smeared in food on the back. Just spotted it online - I might buy it.

My DM and DMIL were also fans of that Adelle Davis: Let's Cook it Right, but DH is sure that this book is responsible for him developing food intolerances so it is now banned in our house.

CariadsDarling · 07/11/2014 10:11

WE didn't have bacon, mash and swede but we did have tatties, cabbage 'n' ham on a Wednesday from my nana. It was gorgeous. All cooked separately then finished off together in the pan with the bacon so it got the flavour of the bacon through it.

Chilli- we had it one day and within hours the kids all went down with noro-virus within minutes of each other. I will never forget DD1 making it to the downstair loo and pebble dashing it with the chilli, only for DS1 to run in behind in his bare feet and slip in it. He then fell in it again when he was hopping around on one leg trying to pick her kidney beans out from between his toes - all the whilst being sick himself. She was then sick again because his antics made her. Jeez, it was a nightmare but something they all laugh about 20 years later.

And one other thing I detested was Cod Liver Oil and Malt extract. Im 56 now and it seemed that in the 60's we all had to have it for some reason. I hated it and thankfully my sister would have it for me. My father forcing me to have it when he was around was cruelty it. It really was.

DownstairsMixUp · 07/11/2014 10:19

This reply has been withdrawn

This has been withdrawn by MNHQ at the poster's request.

FickleByNurture · 07/11/2014 11:31

In Germany, home made Spätzle with Bohnen. For the uninitiated, these were home made eggy floury short noodles with kidney beans in a salty vinegary water.

The noodles would disintegrate in the water and you'd end up with kidney beans floating in eggy, floury, salty vinegar.

SDTGisASpookyWoooolefGenius · 07/11/2014 11:34

My mum's go-to sandwich filling was egg mayonnaise - but made with salad cream not mayo, because she hated mayo. It sounds grim, but actually it was gorgeous - I still make it occasionally, as a nostalgic treat.

Then one day, she decided that boiling the eggs, de-shelling them and mashing them was Too Much Like Hard Work - so she decided to substitute scrambled egg instead. Cold, scrambled egg sandwiches - and not even a dod of salad cream to help it go down. It was beyond grim.

And when I finally managed to persuade her that school dinners were a total waste of money, because I so rarely found a single, edible mouthful in any of them, and she let me start taking sandwiches, she used to make my sandwiches with Stork Margarine. God alone knows why - it was the only time it was ever used on bread/toast/crackers/crispbreads etc - for all other occasions, when a dairy spread was required on any of the carbs aforementioned, it was Lurpak. And as I ate my greasy, Stork and cheddar sandwich, I knew that my mum was at home eating a sandwich made with lashings of butter - ohhh god, how I resented her for that.

She used to use Stork in cakes too - and in the butter cream, which was fairly yucky. And she had a Thing about gravy - she hated it - so we never, ever had it. You got bread sauce with chicken or turkey, apple sauce with pork, mustard with beef, lamb with redcurrant jelly, and parsley sauce with gammon - but I got very used to eating meat dry - chops, for example, never got any sauce to dampen them. To this day, I often eat my meals fairly dry - but I do cook the meat properly, so it is still juicy and tender.

spooktrain · 07/11/2014 11:55

Boiled marrow in white sauce. Need I say more?

FickleByNurture · 07/11/2014 12:12

I'm probably being a bit obtuse here, but what is this boiled marrow you lot keep mentioning? Is it a vegetable or is it something offal related, like bone marrow?

CMOTDibbler · 07/11/2014 12:24

A vegetable - like a giant courgette/ zucchini.

They can be nice, but boiled is watery yuck, but def something that anyone whose parents grew their own veg will have endured