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.

@hedgehogger1

I remember on the French exchange, back in the day when you just stayed at someone's house. The getting in from school snack was a hunk of baguette with a plain chocolate bar in it. That's my kind of snack

That is the original "pain au chocolat". My memory ( brought back by all the references to tongue!) is as an au pair in France out shopping I saw "museau de boeuf" and I laughingly said oh, look that means muzzle, like nose, in English ha-ha! Yes, said my host/boss that's what it is, finely sliced, served with vinaigrette, we can get some for this evening if you like.

My DH had an aunt who served lettuce and sugar sandwiches.

At my PILs house you must never serve yourself a drink during dinner. MIL has tasked my FIL to be the drinks host. She will disapprove of anyone serving themself a drink no matter how thirsty they are. Even asking for a drink is met with a tut. FIL must somehow divine from the atmosphere when it's time to top up someone's glass. He's not the most observant person so we're trying to throw subtle hints at him that he then completely misses.

@burritofan

Sausages cooked in milk. As in boiled . Or poached I suppose. With mashed potato and the hot meaty milk as gravy. Hi, I’m going to need to burn the entire internet to the ground to expunge the words “hot meaty milk”.

An ex-boyfriend’s family have Christmas mashed potatoes with chicken livers sort of blended and liquified and stirred in; they spoke of nothing else for WEEKS before we went round and this putrid thing took pride of fucking place in the middle of a fairly crap and meagre buffet, with them all circling round me smiling and nodding like a cult, encouraging me towards the livery mashed potato. Grim.

🤣😂

I once briefly went out with a woman who never ate at home. She skipped breakfast and lunch, then for dinner she had a glass of wine at a Turkish bar where they served a basket of pittas and hummus dip with every drink. That was her dinner.

Oh cow nose think that beats milky sausages

Another one for baked beans in cottage pie being normal. My mother puts a layer of beans just underneath the mash and we call it "mansion pie". It is lovely (although, strangely, I cannot stand baked beans in any other context).

As a child I used to go to my grandmother once a week after school and for lunch she served bread with condensed milk and bananas on it done under the grill. I believe I loved it at the time, but I don't think I could stomach something so sweet now...

Fresh cheap supermarket white bread with plastered butter with Campbells condensed tomato soup (diluted with milk not water) is the stuff of dreams.

A friend who is a good cook, has food and hygiene certificates and has run the kitchen of a busy coffee shop/lunchtime eatery single handed. I’ve stayed with them several times over the years, our children are about the same age and NOBODY EATS AT THE TABLE at home.

Everything is left on the stove/in the oven keeping warm. People roll up, take a plateful of whatever they want and move off to the sofa, their bedroom etc. and eat it off their knee or at an individual fold-up “TV Dinner” table. Even breakfast is eaten on the hoof…

I put it down to them growing up on a farm with workers arriving at different times.

I once went to Birmingham and was offered spaghetti curry. I mention the location in case it’s a signature dish.

All you fans of tomato soup : try grating a little parmesan over. Heaven!

I cook and enjoy mushy peas, ready made in a tin, frozen, made properly from dried soaked peas.

I am from the land of "faggots n peas" a.k.a The Black Country

I am no food snob.

From fresh, frozen, tinned...is all food to me, whatever keeps you alive, it's all good...even if it doesn't taste fantastic. It's only one meal to tolerate before the next, possibly nicer one.

But...the two words "pea wet" make me shudder and want to vomit.

I don't know why but I have seen it mentioned on here many times.
I cannot deal with the description.
Don't get me wrong, I could eat it but not if someone referred to it as "pea wet" first.

At a birthday party, white bread & butter with sprinkles..🤮

@NautaOcts

A beautiful, expensive joint of meat and delicious roast. And then no gravy. Not a jot. No sauce whatsoever. I’m sorry but I can never forgive that

When did my mum cook for you??!

Mum is a strictly NO gravy person. She disliked it intensely, so we never had it, growing up. I don’t know if dad wanted gravy with things, and dsis and I never got the chance to find out if we liked it, because she refused point blank to make or serve it.

We were allowed bread sauce with chicken, apple sauce with pork, mustard or horseradish with beef, and parsley sauce with gammon - but small amounts of them - basically I grew up thinking roast dinners had to be dry. I don’t usually have gravy now - though I make my own stock and do a really good gravy at Christmas, and I have some of that - but if dh and the dses want gravy on a roast, they can have it.

If you dared to have a sauce that mum disapproved of - like ketchup - she always grumbled about all the effort that had gone into the meal, and now all we would taste was the ketchup.

As kids, dsis and I used to stay with a family friend, who collected the leftovers from each meal, and on Friday she made scraps dinner and scraps pudding - a bit of all the savoury leftovers on one plate, and some of all the puddings on another. It made for some bizarre combinations!

I have to go to bed soon so will catch up with the thread later.
Mine is a friend who served sliced tinned ham (warmed in the microwave) with parsley sauce. I'm still not sure why and I've never eaten it since.

And another was a mother fed her small child, smash potato's ( for mash get smash stuff) with a spoonful of beans from a tin, quite often. I mean yeah cheap and all that and none of us had any money back then, but almost every day the same meal. Odd.

I had a friend who was very odd, and her parents were lovely but odder. They only ate one meal on a Sunday that was supposed to be a roast but also contained a jacket potato with a watery tomato and mushroom sauce thing on top. They were very well off so it wasn't a case of cobbling together what they had, and they all complained how hungry they were because they didn't have breakfast or dinner/tea on a Sunday.

My friend's husband raved on about her cooking but she serves every meal with a stack of toast and uses Primula as a seasoning for chicken. She even made a curry using just Primula and chicken. She invited DH and I for dinner and served us orange squash with our meal and blackcurrant as an after dinner drink. Our dessert was some left over toast from their lunch.

I had a batty old aunt who served everything in sundae bowls with a spoon. We had everything from pasta to sausages in them. I think it stemmed from an old dieting trick to make you eat slower or less.

Great thread.

Want a iced finger now with butter. That's a great pudding.

And soup with white bread is standard delicious.

PIL odd table manners. Use hands to serve food, shovel it down and leave. Would arrive at ours and start eating before we had sat even sat down or finished cooking. Bizarre.

About 8 years old in 1987 and was served some tinned spaghetti at school friend house but out of plastic container - I didn't have any as I didn't realise it had been in a microwave! I'd never seen one.

Colleagues house when we went for dinner was served up chicken tonight, potato croquettes and frozen mixed veg. Was weird as it was quite a posh affair- but realise I'm being a snob!

Relative house served up a 'homemade' fish pie in a reused ready meal tray was there's no washing up. It was utterly stomach churning

Somwone when making burger used a open container of bread crumbs that resided in the kitchen work top open. It was a big container so had been there a long time (so basically open to everything In The kitchen: dust flies etc ) . Also stomach churning .

Later found out that someone used the water from the dehumidifier for the drinks. I passed out at that one.

I spent a bit of time dining in a hospital cafeteria in a very rural part of the United States in the 1980s. The "salad" was full of jelly and mashmallows. Everyone else thought it was great. I guess it is an acquired taste. I don't know if they still do that there.

I know someone who can't cook but that also extends to can't put together anything either so when you go there for lunch the component parts of a sandwich are just dumped on the table and you have to put it together yourself so even the bread is in a bread bag it is not on a chopping board. The cheese is in the wrapper to be cut etc.

@Claudia84

I put baked beans in cottage pie. I thought that was fairly standard?!

So did I… 😬

When I was a child I used to eat mashed potato in a bread roll. Sometimes with ketchup. I never served that to anyone but I do remember asking my friend for a bread roll to have with my mash when I went to hers for tea. She must’ve thought I was an animal.

My new friend at 16 didn’t like cooked vegetables so her mum put chopped veg and green beans in a glass next to her plate.

I tried making cottage pie with baked beans once. Never again, not for me.

An ex of mine used to eat baked beans cold straight out of the tin. It's one if the reasons he's an ex. I don't know which was worse, cold or out of the tin. Urgh, just the thought makes me feel ill.

Beans on toast (hot of course!) are delicious though.

Another one who wants to know what's weird about sliced white bread with soup....

We often had a cup of tea with meals when I was a child and I still do now, possibly a northern thing ?

I had never heard of "pea wet" and had to Google it, for some reason it has made me laugh uncontrollably...

She is also well known for serving rice pudding with "skin" which horrifies my very middle class DH, he is so polite he never says anything even when asked if he wants extra skin.

The skin is the best bit of a rice pudding - and of custard, too.

We used to fight over it.

@DeJaDont

That sort of of control and weirdness concerns me... What the hell else was going on behind closed doors.