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.

@ImFree2doasiwant

We used to have oxtail soup with chips. A bowl of soup for everyone, then a big bowl of hone fried chips in the middle of the table (in the 80scwhen we had a chip pan)

When I was in my teens one of the varieties of packet soup was Lincolnshire Pea and I used to make it with less water so it was very thick and pour it over chips, bliss.

@Allthesefolks

I remember being 4 and staying with my aunt and uncle while my mum was in labour, we had chip shop ships with gravy, my tiny mind was blown by the concept of gravy with chips!

I never had chips with gravy until I was 17 and at college. Mind blown!

OMG!! I thought I was the only person to have to suffer ‘hot meaty milk’!
My absolute worst dinner as a child… flaccid pink sausages, the skins would make me heave, in thin,milk sauce flavoured with a sage leaf and black pepper, served with boiled potatoes and runner beans.., I can feel the vomit rising just typing it 🤮

I used to have to go and stay with my dads school friends family every summer because they had a daughter the same age as me. We didn’t have much in common so I never really liked going. On a Friday after their meal the big treat was a block of marzipan brought out, my friend and her brother would be allowed a bite of it, then it would get wrapped up again and put away until the next Friday. I always refused the offer of a bite 🤮

First Chinese I had with the outlaws, MIL produced a chipped ramekin with baked beans to accompany FIL's lemon chicken 🤢

@Oldtiredfedup

America - a stacks of pancakes along side the American version of a fry-up: they were aghast that I was aghast at the sheer size of breakfast.

Once when I was in Florida, I went to Danny's diner for breakfast. The waiter was aghast that I only wanted a bowl of rice crispies. She really couldn't get her head around the fact that that was all I wanted.

I love The US and can't want to go back one day.

@BikeRunSki

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

Bread with everything in my house growing up. Thought that was pretty standard.

A great aunt, who was a vicars house keeper was renowned to serve up "river soup" to visiting family, priest and bishops. It was so named by family members as it was murky, brown and you didn't know what was in it, like the local river.

My MIL likes very plain food. Her idea of a flavoursome meal is poached chicken, boiled carrots and potatoes from a tin with a white sauce made with margarine, flour and milk with no seasoning. It's so bland, yuck!

Whole boiled onions (as in a normal brown onion, peeled, and cooked in water) I’d only ever eaten them as a side dish, with some cloves studded in them if we had guests. My now DH grew up with “toast and a boiled onion” for dinner.

Cold tinned rice pudding is food of the gods. I put it in the fridge so it's lovely when opened.
Baked beans are fine in a cottage pie, and of course if you're hard up they make it go further.
Rice pudding made in the oven is supposed to have a skin on it - amazing eh? A lovely brown caramelised skin that's worth fighting over.

Soup goes lovely with bread and butter. Even if it's common sliced bread - which most families used when I was a kid because it's cheaper, it saves slicing it and it lasts longer than uncut bread.
It's perfectly OK to drink with meals - tea included.
Strange thread...

The slice of bread with soup isn't weird!

@MacMahon

Cracking an egg on a pizza before it goes in the oven.

That's not strange at all!

@NotMyCat

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

Delicious!!

I grew up eating the Mediterranean way (though not there). Every sleepover or visit to friends for meals was a revelation.

Often the parents would ‘cook Italian for me’ and wait expectantly for my gushing praise. Trouble was, it was irrecognisable to me. So many embarrassing moments as someone whispered that the pink slimy abomination on my plate was ‘pasta’, or the pieces of garlicy bark were eggplant. I’d have much preferred the rare treat of spongy white bread with sausage or their usual meat-with-boiled-veg-and-gravy.

Then there were the households that cooked interesting, healthy, gourmet food for the adults and spooned out cheap white mush for the kids. All the condiments kept up the adult end of the table. Never understood that. Still happens to my DD now, 40 years later. She makes no friends by asking regularly for some veggies or salad, or (famously, as a 3yo) ‘some dressing for my lettuce please, cos I am not a goat.’

I have picked up some food fetishes from those years- my whole forrin family now begs me to bring smoked oysters, red jelly crystals, tubes of condensed milk and tinned asparagus over to them. Such exotic delicacies!

My ex-friend washes chicken to "clean it". Does not do this with any other meat though!

What's wrong with buttered bread with soup! If you spread cold butter thickly enough it starts to melt when you dip it in the hot soup - it's delicious.

Another one.... my IL think salad cream on toast is an acceptable breakfast. I don't mind salad cream but not on hot toast.

Years ago before we lived together dp asked me to his as he wanted to cook for me.

It was one of those chargrilled Birdseye chicken breasts and oven chips. I watched him put it in the oven and there wasn’t enough chips for a toddler never mind 2 adults, tried to suggest I was starving and put more in but was a no no.

After 10 MINUTES he went to dish up!!! I then said I like mine very well done... He looked at me like I was crazy as it has been in ages!!!!

🤮

My aunt married a millionaire yet she had this attitude that children should only eat crappy cheap unhealthy food. We’d go round and the adults would be sitting down to beautiful hone cooked meals while us kids would have a cheapo Tesco blue-stripe cheese and tomato pizza (not even a decent supermarket pizza, like Chicago Town or something, always the crappiest one!) or a burger in a bun with nothing else - no chips, no cheese, onions, salad, nothing. I stayed there a whole week once and didn’t see a single vegetable.

Oh and we were classed as “children” until we turned 18 - so picture 3 gangly 16 and 17 year olds who were all taller than our parents, with the appetites of racehorses, crouched on little child-size chairs with a bunch of toddlers and primary age kids.

And here was me expecting some sort of fancy meal as he had told me what a great cook he was...

Re the stones or pips in plum or damson crumble or pie, do any of you remember the rhyme that accompanied the counting?

Tinker, Tailor
Soldier, Sailor
Rich man, Poor Man
Beggar man, Thief.

You chanted this as you counted your stones and found your fortune. As Jim Crace points out in this article sexist indeed.
Boys foretold their role in life, girls discovered what their husband would be.

Sorry if this has been highlighted before, haven’t RTFT but I am enjoying it.

Oh and bread was used to bulk out the meals being relatively cheaper than meat, cheese etc.

I always hated the bread and butter alongside tinned fruit but luckily we had plenty of bread free fruit pies and crumbles!

I always have white bread with soup but not buttered. DH has bread and butter with every meal. Iced fingers should always be buttered, as should Madeira cake and gingerbread. I used to butter gingerbread then sprinkle sugar on top. We used to get sugar sandwiches at my Grans. We have a cup of tea with everything too.
I still like cold corn beef with new potatoes and a lot of butter.
DD has friends in England who are scandalised at me eating digestives sandwiched together with butter, same for rich tea.
Same friends don't know what a cheesy beano is (chips, beans and cheese).
I like ordinary curry, eg Marks and Spencer tinned curry and I always put salted peanuts in it.
DH had dinner last week and I asked what he had, chips and scotch egg he said. I asked if he had any veg, he said yes. It was Supernoodles .

@Cocolapew

I always have white bread with soup but not buttered. DH has bread and butter with every meal. Iced fingers should always be buttered, as should Madeira cake and gingerbread. I used to butter gingerbread then sprinkle sugar on top. We used to get sugar sandwiches at my Grans. We have a cup of tea with everything too. I still like cold corn beef with new potatoes and a lot of butter. DD has friends in England who are scandalised at me eating digestives sandwiched together with butter, same for rich tea. Same friends don't know what a cheesy beano is (chips, beans and cheese). I like ordinary curry, eg Marks and Spencer tinned curry and I always put salted peanuts in it. DH had dinner last week and I asked what he had, chips and scotch egg he said. I asked if he had any veg, he said yes. It was Supernoodles .

I'm absolutely howling at this 🤣 supernoodles as veg hahaha

@Claudia84

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

Absolutely not.