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.

My dad used make us tea on a Saturday night which quite often consisted of turkey burgers, baked beans and crisps that were warmed up in the oven instead of chips.
We always had a pile of bread & butter, tea with cold food, thickly buttered iced buns and cold baked beans with salad (70s/80s)
I remember going to play at a friend’s house where there was a cupboard full of Quosh ( squash) in every flavour but we weren’t allowed to drink it and had to go back to our house if we were thirsty

My ex made me sweet and sour chicken by cooking the chicken in the oven, putting Uncle Ben’s sauce on top, cold, then microwaving the lot. This was served with very starchy overboiled rice.

I also had a boyfriend who offered to make us a Sunday roast. Ooh lovely I thought. He went to Iceland and bought a frozen chicken, frozen roast potatoes, frozen Yorkshire puddings… you get the idea. He then stuck everything in at the same time at the same temperature, but luckily I did smell the burning and get the Yorkies out before they were completely incinerated. Eventually it all got served up, half of it cold and sloppy. Luckily I’d had a lot of red wine by that point. Apparently he just assumed that all frozen food took the same amount of time to cook. He lived alone. I have no idea how he’d survived up to that point.

I was once served a bowl of plain, cold beef stock that had been set with gelatin. So basically beef jelly. I never liked jelly, not even jelly-textured sweets like haribo, so the sight of this large serving of brown wobbly blob was horrendous. I can still recall my panic that I was going to have to eat it lest I offend the host. I ended up swapping plates with my BF when he was finished with his.

The strangest i've ever experienced was someone who made very plain and simple food 99% of the time. Invited DH and I over for dinner. Double checked my allergies (shellfish and oranges - nothing too difficult to avoid). Was expecting soup, chicken kievs/pizza type meal. Got a starter of prawn cocktail, duck in orange sauce and trifle that had manderins in.
I can only assume I'd somehow gravely offended them somehow without realising.

When I was a kid my Nana's best friend used to babysit me once a week (I lived with my GP's) and because macaroni cheese was my favourite meal that's what she'd make. She just made plain pasta with grated cheese on top rather than sauce. It wasn't hideous, but it was very odd.

I was visiting a cousin in rural Canada as a child and was offered for lunch a bowl of maple syrup with a plate of bread to dip into it.

As a child we had:
sugar butties
ketchup butties
brown sauce butties
crisp sandwiches

a pot of tea with meals is of course the norm - tea all day long is the norm surely?
as is buttered bread with soup
tinned tomatoes on toast
cold rice pudding - who the hell has it hot?!

I'll tell you what is weird, and I've seen it a few times - someone dipping bread and butter into a cup of tea. That is beyond minging.

Baked beans and mince 🤢 sounds ram but it's actually really nice. We used to have when I was a kid mince with baked beans, tomatoes, mushrooms and onions all fried up. Then served with pasta or rice. Although one didn't like beans at the time (me) and one didn't like tomato's at the time (DSis) so we had 3 different pans on the go. Actually I quite fancy it again.

Just remembered another boss meal - pot noodle on mash or smash if you dont have the real thing. That is just the tastiest thing ever but some people think its weird.

@SchadenfreudePersonified

The sliced and buttered iced bun is a real treat, more so if that iced bun has sultanas in it.

You can get iced buns with sultanas in?

Pretty sure M&S do them 😋

@HarrietSchulenberg

I didn't know we weren't supposed to eat bread with soup. That's the best part!

The sliced and buttered iced bun is a real treat, more so if that iced bun has sultanas in it. It was my favourite breakfast in my first year at university, bought for 20p from the Geology Dept tea bar on my way to lectures (I was just passing, I didn't do Geology).

Did they sell rock cakes?

@TaraR2020
Stovies and corned beef hash are popular corned beef hot meals around here.

Wth is wrong with buttered bread with soup? Surely that's what you have with soup isn't it?

Farleys rusks with butter on
rich tea biscuits with butter on
and the best for last ... weetabix with butter on
all are amazing

@Tractordiggerdump

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

Fairy bread. Yum!

My dad used to make an almost normal fry up but then add some vesta crispy noodles on top. I definitely remember this but it still puzzles me because he must have taken them out of a vesta chow mien meal box because we certainly didn’t buy them on their own. He also once topped the chip pan up with lime cordial but that was by mistake. The chips that came out (basically boiled in lime cordial) were never to be forgotten. He steadfastly ate them saying there was nothing wrong with them and only found out and admitted his mistake days after.

I'm crying at some of these. Particularly'I pretended to be coeliac' and, '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.'

to those whose families were so weird about food it's affected them?

F

@SchadenfreudePersonified

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.

You are mistaken. The skin of a rice pudding is horrible, burnt, and quite likely poisonous.

For this reason, it must be scrupulously removed to protect children from it, and the man of the house is obliged to eat it all so that no harmful traces remain.

@CoffeeBeansGalore

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 have a tin of rice pudding beside me now; t e stockwell & co, since 1924, for quality and value. i live high on the hog, as you see. it states on the front, enjoy hot or cold. on the back, can be served hot or cold. so there you are. generous granny, giving you two puds in one. ungrateful little herberts.

@DartmoorChef

I'm from Lancashire. Tea with your meal, white bread and butter with soup.. perfectly normal.

same in middlesex. presumably it's a class rather than regional thing. some of these descriptions are hilarious. one i have is not for the sqeamish. having been trapped into staying overnight with girl from school and her rather odd home set-up, an estranged father who never emerged from his single room if anyone was around; in the morning i felt as if i had a hangover, didn't of course, and staggered to the bathroom, at far end of flat. half way along her mother came out of the kitchen, saying something. i barrelled along the corridor to the loo, and combined bathroom. as i backed towards the loo i let out a scream. glimpsed in the bath tub, bobbing about, were various internal organs. her mother came rushing in, saying, i knew you wouldn't like it. no, funny that. apparently everyone soaked offal in the bath, prior to cooking it.

@Mrsjayy

She didn’t really approve of liquids with meals, so I was considered very strange for drinking water.

My late mil was the same,thought it spoiled the appetite

well there is a school of thought that it's best not to drink much with the meal, as it dilutes the digestive juices, and so may cause indigestion. on that view, water is to be taken between meals. or only a little for sips with a meal, in case something is too hot etc.

@toothpicklover

I think it’s more that it’s sliced white bread and not a roll with the soup that’s an issue. It’s snobbery 🤷‍♀️

I'm glad you worked it out. I was entirely nonplussed.

Nowt wrong wiv sliced bread.

I remember in the early 90s and going to a friend's house for tea. I was a faddy eater but my mum had already discussed it with my friend's mum and we were going to have tuna pasta bake, which I loved. Clearly the other mum had never heard of it as we had plain pasta with plain tuna mixed in, not in sauce, not even with any cheese. I weirdly enjoyed it and still have it every so often if I want something plain.

Once we went to a friend's house after she offered to cook for us, she said she would do vegetarian lasagne as she was trying to cut down on meat. Assumed she would use Quorn or maybe mushrooms but it was actually vegetable lasagne - and clearly just whatever was in the fridge, think thick slices of carrot, parsnip, broccoli, baby sweetcorn etc all almost raw, and in watery red and white sauce with brittle pasta. Not her finest hour.

My go-to meal when broke at uni was tinned chicken curry with pasta. Pretty good but not something I've repeated since. See also supernoodle sandwiches.

Anyway it's 3am, I can't sleep, and thanks to this thread I can't stop thinking about the massive white bloomer in the bread bin crying out for butter. Incidentally I will only eat soup with bread - the spoon is entirely redundant until the bread cannot scoop up anymore.

I remember being absolutely aghast as a child (and still am) that my Grandparents -on posh occasions- would have a glass of fresh orange juice as a STARTER. It was to be savoured too, as a very rare and exotic thing.

Crushed up crisps on a pasta bake.

An unnecessary egg. (Basically plonking a poached egg on every dish)

Bean juice! I cook baked beans in their juice but then have to sieve it off. And god forbid I find a 'bean shell'

There'll be more!

@Pebbledashery

Also have a friend who puts spaghetti Bolognese or left over lasagne in a toaster bag type toastie.

This is a genius idea