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.

@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

We used to do this; then play Tinker Tailor etc to see who you would marry

I served bread and butter and milk to my kids alongside every meal for quite a few years as my middle DS is fussy and I wanted to ensure he would eat something if he didn’t want to eat much of the main dish. Entirely optional though!

My granny used to serve banana sandwiches with sugar on. Not that weird but according to my mum she used to send them in packed lunches too, by which time they would have gone brown and soggy and disgusting. She also frequently used to stir two teaspoons of sugar into our orange squash which was grim. She thought it wasn’t sweet enough.

My mum used to do “burgers, rice and sauce” for tea occasionally - beef burgers on top of a tomato and veg pasta sauce and rice. It was surprisingly nice.

@GlitterSquid. I used to have a hotel in the 70s and fruit juice was served as a choice of starter as was grilled grapefruit with brown sugar and a cherry!
I love white bread with soup and crisp butties are fab.
We traditionally served Yorkshire pudding separately at our wedding. It’s great because you get a nice big piece with gravy.
There is a pudding called Pear Belle Helene which I think had tinned pears cold rice pudding and some sort of chocolate sauce.
The meaty milk sausages remind me of “flobbery chops” . My ex used to cook pork chops in water in the oven and the fat was all soft and flobbery.

@doyouwantachuffedybadge

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

Buttered weetabix is was a favourite in our house growing up.

Bread and butter fingers to dip in strawberry yoghurt or a banana sandwich as after school snacks.

Tinned tomatoes warmed up and served with bread and butter for dipping in the juice was a regular lunch and I still love it now.

Yes, I've never forgotten the hosts clearing the table of our plates and then letting the dog lick them clean

@doyouwantachuffedybadge

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.

Minging indeed! When I was on my French exchange trip at 14 the girl’s mother always had a big bowl (not cup) of very milky tea for breakfast, into which she would dip her bread and butter. The melted globules of butter would float on top of the tea - the sight made me heave.
I was also very surprised that it was tea, having always understood that the French preferred coffee.

We were once invited to friends for Christmas Eve and she served ham and a fried egg as that’s what her mother always served. My favourite was other friends who placed a whole ox tongue on the table. I don’t know how I got through the meal.

I remember having dinner round a friends house as a young teen. They were making home made pizzas and one of the toppings was sliced cucumber! They put this on before it went in the over so the cucumber was warm....

Also, when I first came to England as an exchange student I remember my host family serving up pizza with chips and baked beans as sides. I remember thinkingn it was the WEIRDEST combination ever. I have since gotten used to carbs with a side of carbs

This is a common snack in Holland! Either chocolate sprinkles or flavoured, coloured ones 😂

In the US, went to friends house and they served cold mashed potato with a roast. I didn’t realise it was cold, and took a larger scoop than I would’ve done if I had known it was straight out of the fridge cold. They hadn’t forgotten to heat it up, they called it a potato salad. Definitely not for my Northern English tastes.

My family are from Yorkshire so I was used to them having a cup of tea with their evening meal but I was quite surprised when a cup of tea was served with the meal at my aunt's wedding (1970s).

My aunt used to microwave toasted sandwiches to melt the cheese instead of grilling them
A girl I grew up with her mother would dry fry mince and serve it with pasta or potatoes. No sauce 😕
My mother's friend fries her toasted sandwiches.. it is truly disgusting .
My first boyfriends mother used to boil carrots in sugary water 😨

@mdh2020

We were once invited to friends for Christmas Eve and she served ham and a fried egg as that’s what her mother always served. My favourite was other friends who placed a whole ox tongue on the table. I don’t know how I got through the meal.

Back in the very olden days, my Yorkshire student landlady served me some cold meat that looked rather like tongue (which I didn’t much like anyway) but paler. But having been brung up to eat what you were given, I ate it anyway.

‘D’you like that, love?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ I said politely. ‘What is it?’
‘Udder.’ 😱

She’d told me she’d been brought up very poor, so relatively cheap offal had often been all they could afford. I once came home to find her eating with evident relish something she called chitterlings - I’d never heard of them - and only found out much later that they were fried intestines!

She also served Yorkshire pudding with sultanas in, and gravy, as a first course. I found it very odd at first but certainly enjoyed it.

Yorkshire pudding and gravy as a starter is normal, but I've never had it with sultanas.

The PIL's had a very dubious selection of old tinned food in their cupboard. Baked beans and fish from the 70s and 80s etc. Every now and again dh would try and clear it out for them, but they'd refuse to let him throw these old tins out, claiming they were perfectly edible.

They'd also open jars of chutney, marmite, marmalade, sauce etc. and then keep them in the cupboard rather than the fridge. The contents would be ancient and full of crumbs and fluff and these would be placed on the table and only FIL used them, but we were encouraged to partake 🤢

The kitchen units were very old and smelled of mildew and were encrusted with old crumbs and fluff. The fridge was also from the 70s and was horrible and smelly. The wooden cooking utensils were black with age and cooked on oil.

@Dilbertian

My parents and my ILs are perplexed by the amount of water we all drink with our meals. At my parents' we eat in the kitchen, but at my ILs' we eat in the dining room, so it's a trek to keep refilling glasses, especially as FIL doesn't like the highballs used at the table. MIL eventually bought a jug specifically for our use at mealtimes. A 1 litre jug between 5 people We generally refill it it at least twice.

I never drink with a meal so I would find this weird. I drink 2 litres across the day but not with good. My grandma never drinks water at all I think older generations just typically don't

@GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER there used to be a stall in Doncaster Indoor market that sold nothing but tripe.
Never tried any though.

@36degrees

ILs turned up 2 hours early for lunch once and took the fact that lunch wasn't ready as an indicator that I didn't know how to cook. Cue much bustling about the kitchen, exasperated noises and a wholly unnecessary trip to the supermarket to buy pork pies and baked beans. I had everything in for homemade quiche and salad or some such. They then brought the same thing every time they came round and MIL insisted on cooking because "36 doesn't know how to, we all remember that time we had to rescue lunch".

That might be the most irritating thing a human being has ever done to another human being.

@Chicchicchicchiclana

You just reminded me - my friend went to her boyfriend's house when they were teens (so decades ago) and his Mum put cold baked beans on their salad. It's stuck with me since 1980 that one!

my friend's mum used to do this! I'd forgotten all about it until now

As a dc we had a snack of bread dipped in the meat juice every Sunday when the roast was cooking.
Dh and ds think it’s weird. Me and dd love it.

Gran gave us half an orange at breakfast, presumably cheaper than buying oj. And cereal was served on a dinner plate with sterilised milk!

Worst ever at a friends, stuffed lambs hearts!

A neighbour gave us bbq’d octopus. I thought how lovely they’re bbq’ing chicken and then they brought it to the table!

My parents have got it into their heads that I don't like turkey, so every Christmas they cook me a chicken breast. This is despite the fact that 11am turkey sandwiches are a household tradition and I have one every year, because I like turkey.

I always insist on having turkey as the main meat of my Christmas dinner, so the chicken is saved for the Boxing Day buffet. Yet every year they announce that they've cooked me chicken because I don't like turkey.

They're really fucking weird.

My lovely friend who was originally from South America, being invited to her home was always interesting, hot cross buns with cheese, currants in the salad & quince jelly, which is like a very thick sliceable block to be eaten with cheese. She was such a lovely, kind woman it’s a shame we lost touch.

My mum used to make (and I think still does make occasionally) cabbage with bacon. Boiled chopped white cabbage mixed with pieces of bacon and grated cheese, heated in the oven until the cheese melts. But the water from the cabbage leaks out and does something weird to the cheese so it's claggy and looks/tastes almost curdled.

It's weird because she can cook some things brilliantly (curries in particular, and she's quite a good baker) but often her concoctions are revolting.

I don't think I've ever had anything as weird as some of these!

The closest I ever got was going to my friend's as a teenager and her mum made us corned beef hash for dinner.

Can't for the life of me remember what was in it but I have the distinct memory of it being odd and it was topped with crushed up chipsticks. It was divine. I asked for it every time I went round

My exhusband had grown up with some very weird meals. He was amazed when we got together and food was edible.

My grandma was an excellent cook and baker. The first time he ate one of her homemade cakes, he told her it tasted shop bought. To him, that was the highest compliment because his.mum's cakes were inedible (apparently). My grandma has never been more offended

My DH and his family eat mashed potato doused in vinegar. My jaw dropped the first time I saw them do it.