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.

@itsharderthanithought89

My grandma puts grapes and slices of tangerine into a salad, which she calls a SALID.

She also serves "POMPADOMS" with a stir fry.

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.

She also has form for having condiments on the table that are WAY out of date, forgot to tell dear old DH and he had some horseradish from the 90s with his roast - let's say he's learnt his lesson!

Even when she asks if he wants extra skin 🤣🤣🤣

@Moonwatcher1234

Perhaps you misunderstood. DH and I don't sit there, at our friends' table, stuffing our fists in our mouths to stop ourselves from guffawing out loud at the lack of greenery. We just avoid eye contact and have a chuckle in the car on the way home.

No need to feel sorry for our friends, although you might like to spare a thought for their 3 children, who don't seem to be given a balanced diet.

My friend did slimming world a few years ago and I called round for tea, she'd made this bizarre looking bright green curry out of mushy peas, I didn't eat much of it

@martingrowler

I don't understand what's weird about buttered bread with soup... I thought that was totally normal

Me neither

I love buttered toast with my soup

I love a bowl of hot Brussels sprouts with vinegar. My DH is horrified

@Flufferty

I love a bowl of hot Brussels sprouts with vinegar. My DH is horrified

Oh my days... 🤮 🤮

@HotSauceCommittee

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

Apologies, I haven’t RTFT but I understand that drinking tea during a meal prevents iron absorption. Sorry if someone already said

My sides are agony from laughing at hot meaty milk and meaty ryvita.

I thought my cooking was crap but reading this absolutely bizarre in everyway thread I think I am a proper 5 star cordon bleu chef in comparison.Are these people aliens?

There is no revolting white bread in my house ever, I like my bread wholesome and packed with seeds and fibre. White bread is basically cardboard.

My ex husband who is a proper weirdo and wasn't allowed to see our DS until he was 18 - court ordered - decided to celebrate the occasion of their meeting by inviting him to Christmas lunch.

DS duly went off for Christmas - I did warn him it may not be conventional but what the heck - there was no tree, presents or any decoration, christmas lunch were oven baked spring rolls and a cold salad. That was it, nothing else.

My DS came back two hours later and said thank God you got that court order or I'd probably be in a psychiatric hospital by now.

@Larryyourwaiter my favourite meal used ti be fishfingers , mash and tinned tomatoes just heated through as a teenager , no idea why

@ImFree2doasiwant

Sausages cooked in milk. As in boiled . Or poached I suppose. With mashed potato and the hot meaty milk as gravy.

You win.

[quote Allthesefolks]@Tiramiwho nope we were all in the midlands, it just wasn’t something we’d ever had at home!

Drunken me loves a chip shop steak and kidney pudding (not pie) and chips now! Any kind of mushy pea or pea wet 🤢 can get TF though[/quote]
Love babby's yed, baby's head to those out of the NW, it was a steak and kidney pudding and we would have one with chips and mushy peas, make a hole in the pudding and add thick gravy! I converted my Yorkshire husband to them too, I'm currently trawling Icelands to find some.

was not were.

Had lunch with a friend who lived on a boat. At the end of the meal she gave the plates to her dog to lick clean 🤢

@NeverDropYourMooncup

@MacNTosh

Late FIL asked me where the pickles were when I served shepherds pie and was most indignant when I didn’t have any.

I like to have red cabbage with shepherd's pie if I'm not doing gravy, makes a pleasant change. A single man I worked with invited some people round for a meal, they were a bit sceptical, they weren't wrong! He made garlic bread by squashing whole cloves of garlic between slices of mother's pride bread.

Bread and butter is served with soup
Even in restaurants ( ok it may be fresh and not sliced )

@ShirleyPhallus

This thread is so odd! So much of this is normal!

Much seems to depend on where you live and how much money you have.

I had corned beef hash tonight. With bread and butter (and pickled red cabbage). And a cup of tea

The Danes make a heavenly cold rice dessert for Christmas Day - ris à l'amande

Which leads me on to a dear departed friend who used to host Christmas dinner every other year. Everything was wonderful - except for the vegetables, which she used to boil to death. Sloppy carrots, flaking boiled potatoes, but most of all liquid sprouts. I think she must have started boiling them some time in November - we used to joke that in her house, if you could count the sprouts on your plate, they clearly weren't cooked enough.

I always used to eat cottage pie with baked beans on the side , but I can't stand them cooked in the shepherds pie ? My dh when j met him lodged with a couple and they served beans and chips with every meal, lasagne , bolognaise etc

@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.

Not envy!

Did it not occur to them how unhygienic that was?

@theDudesmummy

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

Can't beat it! Chip barm with pea wet and scraps It's bonkers when you think about it really. When I go to my "home" town I go to the bakery that does the nicest pasties and have one in a buttered barm with brown sauce and eat it in the car

@happylittletree

American here. We ALWAYS had a big glass of milk and bread and butter with every meal.

I recall going in somewhere for a meal in the US and we were brought a huge pile of bread and butter which we didn't touch. Our waitress was concerned that we didn't eat the bread and there was something wrong with it, we assured her there wasn't we just could eat bread as well as the big meal and she told us that many customers not only ate it all but demanded more!

@ScreamingMeMesaur

What is "pea wet"? I don't like the sound of it...

The juice off mushy peas from the chippy

A guy I was dating made me fillet of salmon WITH A SLICE OF BACON ON TOP. Blew my mind. I didn't know what to do with that all.