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.

Bread and cup of tea with dinner doesn't seem that odd to me.
I often have a cuppa with my pudding and as a kid bread and butter with dinner was just a way of bulking out the meal cheaply.
I don't think I've ever been to someone's house and found what they served really weird. Table manners vary though. The middle class habit of conversation with dinner phased me a bit when I was a teenager, also asking to leave the table seemed like a very odd concept. At home we all used to wolf our dinner down really quickly, say thank you and how nice it was and then stick our plates in the sink.

My brother and sil serve the smallest portions of food. I once went for lunch at theirs and got served a tuna sandwich. One slice of thin bread with a smearing of tuna on top. No mayo. Its not a price issue as they're fairly well off and generous in all other areas but when it comes to food we know to either eat before we get there or plan a mcdonalds on the way home

@Ididanamechange are they super skinny or do they just not want you staying long lol

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!!!!

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".

[quote Mymapuddlington]@Ididanamechange are they super skinny or do they just not want you staying long lol[/quote]
Ha I hadn't thought of it that way 🤣

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.

We were invited round to a friend of a friends once - strange situation, but we were all at the pub and his chap raved about his wife’s roast dinner.

So, we went round one Sunday to be served up an aunt bessies special. Everything was cooked from frozen.

When the chap asked my husband if it was the best roast dinner he had ever tasted it was very awkward…

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

@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!!!!

Perfectly standard when I was growing up. Still eat then like that now.

This could be outing but my DP's mother has odd ideas about food. The weirdest one is her idea of "gravy" for chicken. It consists of the cooking juices and some milk being poured into a jug. It is thin, milky and fatty and tasteless and honestly gives me the heaves

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

What's weird about sliced white bread with soup?

My Grandmother used to take a flask with her on long journeys. Coffee made with evaporated milk. Yuk.

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!

@cantgetmyheadroundit

What's weird about sliced white bread with soup?

I want to know that too. The only reason I ever eat soup is to eat half a loaf of Jackson's white with loads of butter with it.

At uni I shared with a couple and they had a cup of tea and two slices of white buttered bread with every meal. Was interesting to me as they cooked ‘properly’ so had a fresh meal. Unlike me, raised on M and S ready meals by my mum.

Stayed with a boyfriend and his family (in my teens)

They made a veggie 'curry' with sultanas.

That seemed odd enough but then my boyfriend was served up a completely separate meal of tinned spaghetti shapes.

Sausages cooked in milk. As in boiled . Or poached I suppose. With mashed potato and the hot meaty milk as gravy.

Oh my mil. So many.

Everything has to be in a ramekin. So just the two of us, exhausted from being in the lambing shed, I fancy a little salad cream on my roll, she decants it into a ramekin before I can touch it.

Soup. Absolutely on pain of death no dunkies or floaties. It must be eaten with a spoon, no bread anywhere other than side plate.

No cartons of anything ever near the table. Butter, anything, see ramekin point.

Plates must be burning hot, always.

Doesn't like cucumbers but knows we do so uses cold courgette in salad to trick us.....

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

Nothing wasted ever. This woman can put a bit out once a year, impressive.

We often had tea with meals growing up and beans in cottage pie which is revolting

@Sparklingbrook I despise soup 🤮 the only one I can stomach is Heinz Cream of Tomato, if I'm desperate. But if that's the case, I'll be having half a sliced loaf and a pound of butter with it!

Bread and butter with dinner, especially with soup, was totally normal when I was growing up. As was the tea. I'd still have it with soup, especially if I had a nice, fresh tiger loaf or similar, but not otherwise. And I'd swap the tea for water or wine, depending on the hour.

@pinkettle iced fingers with butter are divine no wtf about it 😄

In the 70s I had a best friend called Suzanne. I was out their house once when they were having tea (not sure why they didn’t give me any…) but they were having sausage sandwiches 😮😮😮😮 I had just never seen a family have a tea that was so - well- in-family-tea like!!! Now of course I love a sausage sandwich! I’d think nothing of having it for tea!! How I’ve changed!!