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.

As a kid my best friends family would always serve a bowl of toffee popcorn on the table with every lunch and dinner. My mum told me that it was probably only when they had guests. But no it was all the time. I stayed for an entire week once and it was there every meal, even a roast. Still have no idea why. In my house popcorn was only ever eaten in the cinema.

My best friend’s Mum always served any leftovers from previous meals with the next meal. Remember seeing them eat a Sunday Roast with a spoonful of Spaghetti Hoops dolloped on the side.

@MadMadMadamMim

Some of these are regional, I think. Cup of tea and bread and butter with every meal is normal here.

DH thinks it weird that we eat a slice of plum bread (fruit cake) with cheese on it. Red Leicester or Cheddar generally. But that's not just my weird family it's a Northern thing I think.

I found it very odd when we had Christmas Dinner at my ex MIL and she did chips with it. Turkey, veg, all the trimmings - but chips. It felt a peculiar thing to add to your traditional Christmas Day.

I'm from the South and love malt loaf/Irish Barmbrack (I think thats how you spell it), sliced with proper butter and a lump of cheese slapped on the top. Bloody heavenly !

I went for a meal where the host made all the food pink. Every single thing. I love pink, but no.

@TatianaBis

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

Destroying two cuisines in one there!

I went to boarding school in the 60s and the food was mostly dire.
A regular evening meal was tinned tomatoes on toast, nothing else.But we were hungry teenage girls and wolfed it down. I quite like it these days
As for the sausages cooked in milk mentioned upthread, we used to be given something similar, -- a stew of smallish, skinless 'value' type sausages cooked in a greige liquid made of milk thickened with potatoes.. We used to call it boiled babies' arms.

Destroying two cuisines in one there!

IKR.

Bollywood Bolognaise they called it.

I pretended to be coeliac to get out of the spaghetti element.

@HotSauceCommittee

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

Whereas my mil has rules about when a cuppa (tea or coffee) can be drunk. She doesn't drink either of them at all but likes tobtell people they can't have one because its the wrong time. I'm not quite sure what the right time is.

I love a few lumps of corned beef in piping hot tomato soup-goes all squishy

Trust me on this one

My DGM (paternal side) would not let you put butter on your bread to have with soup (probably a rationing thing). DM and DF seemed to support this, again probably due to rationing. Dm came to visit and we just decided to have tomato soup and bread for lunch, she slathered the cheap bread with butter, I went to clear her bowl and was told to stop as she hadn't mopped it out properly yet.

Mil once served sweet & sour sauce out of a jar on a roast.

Also had a seafood salad at a restaurant in Spain that was bulked out with tinned fruit salad.

This is not quite the same thing but when DS2 about 7 he proudly made Marmite Crumble from his 3 favourite things: marmite, roast potatoes and crumble topping.

It was so bad the visiting dog wouldn’t eat it.

So many on here that seem normal to me:
cold rice pudding
sliced white bread with soup (esp. Heinz tomato!)
fairy bread
cheese with fruit cake

My own weird one - I bloody love it but don't ever serve it to guests is home made egg fried rice with loads of soy sauce and really mature cheddar cheese grated on top. i think it must be a umami thing.

Just typing about it has made me hungry!

@MrsTerryPratchett

My late MIL.

Roasts a chicken for too long, then slices it, removes the skin, leaves it in a plate in the oven. Driest meat I've every tasted. Like a meaty Ryvita.

This made me laugh!

@TatianaBis see I'd try that Crumble as they're also 3 of my favourite things!

or (famously, as a 3yo) ‘some dressing for my lettuce please, cos I am not a goat.’
This would have me laughing my head of - your dd is great!

I'm hugely craving rice pudding after reading this thread!

Would like to know though what people do with corned beef if they don't eat it cold??

An ex boyfriend of mines mum used to peel and slice up cucumber and put it on a napkin with every meal they had.

Went to a bbq and it was sausages and salad. No buns, no condiments, no salad dressing.
Plus it rained so the bbq wouldnt light so the sausages had to be cooked on the hob 😂

@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

My Grandmother used to dish up stewed prunes with custard and they had the stones in, we would line up the stones round the edge of the dish and then she would make us recite the Tinker Tailor rhyme to see who had the most stones. I hadn't thought of it for years but you've made all warm fuzzy remembering that, so thank you.

Many years ago I visited my friends grandmother. She made me a fried cheese sandwich that had been dipped in a lardy frying pan. I nearly threw up. I took one bite and felt the fat spread all over the inside of my mouth. I put it in my pocket until I got the chance to throw it away. Yuk.

@Pinklittle

Went to a friends house when I was younger and for pudding we had iced buns (iced fingers) that the mum had cut in half and buttered! Wtf!!!!

Sounds normal to me.

Weirdest thing served to me was pasta and tinned peaches for PUDDING! So odd.

I love to have pasta with drained tinned chickpeas, soy sauce, (vegan) cheese and thinly sliced red onion for dinner, mainly when DP is out. Don’t recall how I invented this, a student special perhaps. Nice though!

At a friend's once, massive amount of plain pasta (from a packet of dried & already plated so no choice as to the amount) which wasn't even rinsed after cooking. Hot, starchy, sticky, plain pasta with no sauce, no salad, no meat, no cheese, no salt, no pepper. And plenty of it.

@Mistymountain

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.

Absolutely

Decides to make something, say lasagne, then just adds the contents of the fridge. Blue cheese, Olives, anything going.

^

And 'like a meaty ryvita'

My mum always did a plate of bread & butter with our tea when we were kids. My dad was always starving when he came home from work, my brother ate like a horse as well, I can even remember him making mashed potato sandwiches. On a Saturday afternoon we used to either go to my Godparents for tea or they came to ours, it was always the same meal whichever house, tinned salmon, prawns, salad & chips with a massive plate of bread & butter in the middle of the table & sherry trifle for afters, then around 9.00pm there was always sandwiches, crisps, sausage rolls & cakes. There was always two sittings at teatime, children first & then adults, until you were 17 you had to eat at the child's sitting except
for my brother as he was the last child in the families.