Strange catering habits you have experienced when eating at friends/family houses?

[Chicchicchicchiclana]

The grazing table thread inspired me! I know one should always be grateful when people invite you to eat with them (and I am!!) but I find it interesting the great variety of ways people do the hosting. Have any memorable dining experiences in other people's houses really stuck with you? Without being mean of course.

Staying at a friends as a teen the parents served breaded chicken and chips, and the ‘veg’ was tinned plum tomatoes. No seasoning, just heated through.
It’s not the weirdest thing it’s just something would never occur to me to do.

Baked beans in the cottage pie.
Luckily they were family & just laughed as I picked them out. Beans and grave though, makes me feel all funny just thinking about it!

I’ve since become vegetarian and did have to tell a 40 something friend that picking the cut up spicey sausages out of the pasta dish she was making us didn’t suddenly make it vegetarian.

Gravy fgs not Grave

You just reminded me - my friend went to her boyfriend's house when they were teens (so decades ago) and his Mum put cold baked beans on their salad. It's stuck with me since 1980 that one!

A friend of mine, dear dear friend - serves absolutely everything with a handful of dried crispy salad leaves. The sort that are half dead and crap in the bag before they even leave the shop. At the end of every meal they get scraped back into a bowl and put back in the fridge so as to not waste them as no one eats them.

PIL often want a cup of tea with their meal. I have enough to do without making tea while I am dishing up.

I have colitis so my diet is strict to say the least.

I can however eat all meats, fish, potatoes, white bread, rice, pasta, root veg and iceberg lettuce.

Every year when I go to in laws for Boxing Day the only thing I can eat and they know this and also made especially for my meal is a bowl of iceberg lettuce!!!! Yum....

@sleepyshiftworker

A friend of mine, dear dear friend - serves absolutely everything with a handful of dried crispy salad leaves. The sort that are half dead and crap in the bag before they even leave the shop. At the end of every meal they get scraped back into a bowl and put back in the fridge so as to not waste them as no one eats them.

🤢😱

As a teen I was v surprised at friends houses when served:
Cup of tea with dinner
Sliced white bread with soup
Ready meal served in the plastic tub

When I went on French exchange aged 16 it really massively opened my eyes, every ordinary family meal there was served with a fresh salad and homemade vinaigrette, table laid with linen and napkins, huge variety of different foods, fresh fish etc. Seemed so exotic compared to Marmite sarnies and shepherds pie.

We once went to tea with some potential nee “friends”. We had jacket potatoes served with a steak knife to cut them, and they really did need a steak knife, they were barely warm. Followed by jelly that had had custard powder mixed through before it set, so it was all cloudy. It was an entirely inedible meal.

My dad had a slice of bread under his food, whatever we were having, and a cup of tea with every meal.

Cold sliced corned beef, boiled cabbage and Oxo for gravy, at a friend's house. I was repulsed, but managed to eat it. Her mum and dad were very, very old-fashioned parents (though not very old) - the kids had their mouths washed out with soap if they were cheeky, they weren't allowed to go to youth club, weird house rules like no sitting on the bed in the daytime. I think the dad was a bit of a brute, looking back with adult eyes, and I imagine the mum had very little money put her way.

Fruit crumble at childhood friend's house - we were told it was "a game" to see who found the most plum stones in our crumble, most around the edge of the bowl at the end of the meal won. Looking back, I think whoever made the crumble just didn't bother stoning the fruit before they froze it

@HotSauceCommittee

PIL often want a cup of tea with their meal. I have enough to do without making tea while I am dishing up.

Yes, a big mug of tea was the normal drink with a meal throughout my childhood. Maybe kiddies were offered 'pop' (but never a glass of milk like you see in American TV and films 😶 )

We've eaten meals at a friend's house several times, and not once have I ever seen so much as a scrap of anything resembling veg, salad or fruit in their house. It is such a standing joke between me and DH that we have real trouble keeping a straight face while we're there.

Tell a lie: fried onion & ketchup with the hot dogs. Otherwise nothing. Nil.

@Chicchicchicchiclana

You just reminded me - my friend went to her boyfriend's house when they were teens (so decades ago) and his Mum put cold baked beans on their salad. It's stuck with me since 1980 that one!

This reminded me of my grandad serving me cold baked beans with Salad.. it was weird .. but I didn't question it !

Schoolfriend’s family had a toaster in pretty much every room. Lounge — toaster. Dining room — toaster. Bedrooms — toaster.

Yes always a cup of tea with dinner growing up. I abandoned it pretty quickly and my parents now in their 80s have wine with their dinner like normal people.

My friend's Mum used to clean their kitchen with diluted TCP and every meal tasted of it.

I remember we had a friend as kids and she had one single tea party in her entire childhood. Her birthday consisted of us being ushered in quietly. Standing around a table and we each had a paper plate with a tiny sausage roll, a single crust free cheese spread triangle sandwich, a tiny hot dog and a ready salted crisp. We were given 3 minutes to eat before we were served a dessert of a spoon of cold rice pudding on a triangle of toast , in a plastic cup. Nobody apart from the birthday girl ate it and we were scolded for leaving it. We played one round of pass the parcel where my friend won the only and only prize after 20 seconds . The whole thing lasted 5 minutes before we were ushered out again. Very very strange and this was in 1990 and her parents drove new cars etc. They had all attended many other kids birthday parties including mine /my sisters and my mum always went OTT. It was like her mum and gone waaaaay the other way 🤷🏼‍♀️😂

My parents eat cold corned beef and cold baked beans, can’t remember ever being forced to eat them but I find it strange, oh and cold rice pudding out the tin

I went round a friends house for dinner when I was a teenager. Dinner was ‘salad’ which turned out to be apple and lettuce drowning in lemon juice.

@NapoleonOzmolysis

Fruit crumble at childhood friend's house - we were told it was "a game" to see who found the most plum stones in our crumble, most around the edge of the bowl at the end of the meal won. Looking back, I think whoever made the crumble just didn't bother stoning the fruit before they froze it

Getting everybody to search for them was the cook's way of making sure nobody swallowed a stone and choked on it!

A few of those I didn't really know were weird as I grew up with them and I'm not old... I was given a cup of tea with dinner, buttered bread with soup and plum crumble with stones in and counting them around the edge of the bowl.

We also had pot noodle with bread soldiers ( like you'd have with a boiled egg) I already knew that was a bit weird though.

Mother in law has half a block of butter in her baked beans.

Grandmother served cold tinned rice pudding with tinned fruit. If she had bothered to ask we would have chosen just the fruit. She was most annoyed that we refused to eat it.

I think we were the wierd ones when I was a child! I was always amazed when eating at friends houses that they were allowed to drink fizzy drinks, fruit juice and ribena. We were only ever allowed water or very weak sugar free squash, or tea with no sugar. I can see my mums thinking now, as I don't have a single filling, but at the time I was mind blown and jealous of the sugary array of delights other peoples mums served up!