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.

@Mrsjayy

Google is saying that sausages boiled in milk is a definite thing Delia Smith has a recipe

Delia's sausage Boulangere isn't sausages boiled in milk, it's lovely browned sausages on top of potato Boulangere which is entirely different to chucking raw sausages in to a pan of milk to poach!

@Tractordiggerdump

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

This is 'fairy bread' - very standard kids' birthday party food in Australia! Got to be thin, cheap sliced white bread. Margarine and then dipped in sprinkles. Cut into triangles!

@Hoppinggreen

DHs family are from Forrin, although they are 2nd gen. First time I went to his Aunties for Sunday lunch she served a very nice normal Sunday roast but there was rice as well. DH had no idea that everyone didn’t have rice with a Sunday roast

I have grown up eating rice with my roast dinners. Rice and gravy is the best and I prefer rice than roast potatoes!

At home, my mother frequently made “hamburger glop”. It was sautéed ground beef with gravy mix, mashed potatoes, and corn served separately like a deconstructed shepherd’s pie. My father ate very few foods.

Malaysian student cooked me a Pilchard curry was surprisingly tasty way to eat tinned Pilchards in tomato sauce. They also made egg fried rice with finely shredded corned beef and ketchup.

Had beetroot trifle that was strange
Boiled egg and macedoine cubed veg in aspic jelly yack!

Quite like chocolate and avocado milkshake though!

I did go to my friends hubby birthday party and they decided they would serve canapes. Unfortunately all the guests got roped into making the canapes for the next shift of guests arriving it was like a factory production line tea exercise with strangers!

Possibly CF hosts!

Am also Partial to a thin omlette with melted butter and chocolate vermicelli (meejes= which is probably Dutch for mouse poo!)

Whenever a meat and two veg meal is served, my DH always makes a pancake to line the plate with before putting the food on top.

@Hoolihan

As a teen I was v surprised at friends houses when served: Cup of tea with dinner Sliced white bread with soup Ready meal served in the plastic tub

When I went on French exchange aged 16 it really massively opened my eyes, every ordinary family meal there was served with a fresh salad and homemade vinaigrette, table laid with linen and napkins, huge variety of different foods, fresh fish etc. Seemed so exotic compared to Marmite sarnies and shepherds pie.

Not sure what the problem is having sliced white bread with soup imo

Something I do is beans on toast with mayonnaise 🙈. I only ever serve it to myself but people think I’m weird for that one.

Back in the 80's and at party's, we would get coins wrapped in grease proof paper and put inside of scones.. I remember getting very excited to find the coin inside but now the very thought makes my stomach curdle.

@Flufferty

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

I thought I was the only person who ate this, I shall tell the rest of the family that I'm not as weird as they think!

We did the “tinker tailor” rhyme to count the prune stones when we had prunes for pudding! Once I had mislaid one and mum would come to inspect my toilet doings to make sure it passed😂 Mil serves bizarre combinations knowing fine well grandkids are fussy so usually pulls out a pizza as well at some point, wish she just offered it first instead of stir Fry veg mix cooked till soggy alongside shop bought fish pie (yes I’m a snob) or peanut butter and cream cheese mixed together, other fond memories are the whole cinnamon stick in a moussaka with hard undercooked potato’s, sorry this is just bad cooking! Finely chopped tomato cucumber sweet corn mixed in mayo is a salad, actually edible but not when apple is added, hate fruit in savoury food! Cafes and restaurants serve bread or rolls with soup so surely that’s normal, never seen a cottage pie on a menu with baked beans in though so I’m not sure I’d class that as normal!

@DartmoorChef

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

Who on earth doesn't have bread & butter or croutons with their soup?! (coeliacs aside) 🍲

@BikeRunSki

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

Awww mine was similar. Every meal as a child served with sliced white bread and a pot of tea complete with milk jug and sugar bowl and dad had his bread at the end soaked in the remaining gravy with salt on it.

I think it’s probably goes back to the poverty he experienced growing up in the 30s and during the war.

My IL buy several types of cereal (shredded wheat, granola, muesli, flakes of some kind) and then mix them all in a plastic dispenser, so if you want cereal you don't get a choice you just get a mixture of several types.

@ChristmasPlanning

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

I used to do this too as my DM always did. Stopped when I read that it literally just spreads bacteria all over your sink...

My DP the other day had a pizza sandwich

A couple friends of mine talked about giving their children once a week veg night - I had visions of just a huge plate of veg on one night a week with normal daily portion of veg every other day. no it was the one night a week they had a spoon of veg with their nuggets and chips.

@Flufferty

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

I always eat green veg with vinegar, it's amazing.

@SpeakingFranglais I think it’s probably goes back to the poverty he experienced growing up in the 30s and during the war.. I totally agree. My dad was the same age, grew up in a slum area of the NE.

Just got to page 3 and am genuinely perplexed that sliced buttered bread with soup is seen as weird. Surely that's a perfectly normal thing to have, although my bread is usually in toast or bread roll form these days. Why is it odd!?

Sliced white bread and a cup of tea with the meal was a staple northern working class thing. Everyone I knew in my hometown did this in the 80s and 90s. And baked beans in cottage pie is a way of bulking out the meal and using less meat. Again, quite normal in some places.

Ah, just seen that I'm not the only one confused by the horror at bread with soup.

@NapoleonOzmolysis did you come to my house for tea?! I've just had a flashback of picking out the stones! I don't think my mum ever stoned plums, I'm sure she had a reason for it though. Maybe they weren't very ripe.

A dinner party where Apricot soup was served one of the few offerings I have genuinely had difficulty eating.

I could go on and on re MIL.

Counting food and noting how many potatoes everyone has taken.

FILs (RIP) bloody breakfast: a small glass of orange juice, muesli with sunpat raisins added (no other brand) and top of the silver top milk (opening a new one before an old was was finished), a cup of tea, milk in first, a slice of wholemeal toast with salted butter and golden shred lime marmalade, then a braeburn apple followed by a another cup of tea. If something was wrong, ie, Granny Smith apple instead of Braeburn he would go on and on all day. It was almost lunchtime when he finished. Lunch was a cheese sandwich with one side buttered, the cheese in vertically, not horizontally as I once made it, with either a large pickled onion halved or two small ones.

Apart from the above he wasn't fussy. He just didn't eat: garlic, mushrooms, pasta, chicken or cruciferous vegetables. And MIL doesn't and didn't cook. Her DC grew up on Fray Bentos pies, Vesta Curry, tins and packet gravy.

The saddest thing is/was the counting food and stretching something for four around five. All the children remember being hungry and DH was in particular irked when FIL died and there was a cool million in his half of the estate, excluding the house and his parents had spent nearly 50 years being unspeakably mean with food. MILs parents didn't behave like it despite being much poorer and she worked full time in a very good job so it had nothing to do with FIL not handing over the housekeeping.