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.

@Jaxhog DH was devastated when he ordered Poutine and it arrived and he found out what it is. Looked like someone had vomited on his chips. He normally doesn't like pizza type things but ended up eating most of my lamb flat bread instead.

@TuftyMarmoset

Sliced bread with soup is wrong because it doesn’t have enough structural integrity when dunked. For this reason it needs to be a roll or chunk of crusty bread. I can’t stand sliced white bread anyway but this also applies to sliced wholemeal bread

You just need the technique! Include some crust in each bit and it will hold together.

Nothing too weird, but when I was about 10 I stayed over at a friend's house and her mum put salt in our breakfast porridge (she was Scottish, I think it's a thing). I couldn't eat it.

As an adult, went to a friend's house and she served homemade vegetable soup with absolutely NO seasoning. Just water and vegetables. They didn't use salt in cooking and had none in the house. Healthy, sure, but sooo joyless. I forced it down.

Oh, and the bread and fruit thing made me think of a Spanish colleague telling me recently that her mum eats bread with EVERYTHING including fruit.

We always had buttered bread on a plate in the middle of our table growing up, it was used to mop up the gravy or juices off our plate. It was my favourite part of the meal!

@TuftyMarmoset

Sliced bread with soup is wrong because it doesn’t have enough structural integrity when dunked. For this reason it needs to be a roll or chunk of crusty bread. I can’t stand sliced white bread anyway but this also applies to sliced wholemeal bread

I find it works fine and is much less chewy than crusty bread!! Also works toasted 😋😋

Another one here who used to get given tongue sandwiches 🤮 hated them! Also poloni I think it was called. One sandwich I did like was sugar, basically white bread, butter and sugar. We also used to get given sugar balls if we had a sore throat. Butter and sugar creamed together, rolled into balls and kept in the fridge. Surprisingly my teeth are ok!

PIL make some interesting meals and they always cook barely anything (think one small roast chicken divided between 10 people). They are very well off though, so it isn’t a money thing!

One meal I can distinctly remember was when there were 6 of us over for lunch and MIL brought out a small bowl of “nachos” for us to share. It consisted of about 10 value tortilla chips, a scraping of tomato purée and a tiny sprinkling of cheddar cheese.

Oh God is buttered bread with soup weird? But you get that in restaurants don't you? A small roll and butter? Surely sliced bread just the cheaper/less posh version?

Spag bol where one of the condiments was Heinz Ketchup. The whole family happily squirted it over their meal before starting.

Sliced bread with soup is wrong because it doesn’t have enough structural integrity when dunked. For this reason it needs to be a roll or chunk of crusty bread. I can’t stand sliced white bread anyway but this also applies to sliced wholemeal bread

Fold it over so it’s double thickness. Never had any issues with its structural integrity when dipped into my bowl of Heinz cream of tomato soup

@romdowa

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 😨

My late MIL liked to sweeten everything, carrots, tomatoes, my favourite horror was cream. If she served cream she would 'sweeten' it with sugar and even beat an egg yolk into it! It was a hangover from the wartime shortages I think, she was born in 1910 and she genuinely thought she was making her family healthier by adding sugar. She was horrified when our daughter was given weetabix with no sugar, child cruelty almost.

@Franca123

A guy I was dating made me fillet of salmon WITH A SLICE OF BACON ON TOP. Blew my mind. I didn't know what to do with that all.

Cod wrapped in Parma ham is a normal dish. Maybe he adapted that.

We always had tea and bread and butter with our meals, but if we had chips we were not allowed to make butties, nor were we ever allowed to eat in the street, so putting the chips in the bread to go and play out when friends called was unthinkable.

My mother was raised by her Irish mother, so all of our meals were basic meat and potatoes type food which was always bland and boring.
She would serve boiled potatoes as a vegetable without butter or salt. We sometimes would have them mashed and nothing was added.
She knew how to cook but had no imagination at all. As time went on her cooking improved, but not much.
She had a very snobbish attitude regarding any vegetable from a tin but on Saturdays we always had salad and the main interest was either one tin of salmon between six of us or a tin of Ye Old Oak ham which my father would carve !

Few years ago visiting my BIL and SIL and they were cooking veggie lasagna for dinner (I'm vegetarian). My eldest was about 3 and excited as one of her favourite meals. They served it up and it was literally vegetables baked in tomato sauce, no pasta. Slices courgettes instead of pasta sheets. SIL is gluten free (ish; when it suits her). No white sauce either so basically layered vegetables in tomato sauce with some cheese on top. No carb whatsoever. Obviously we just cracked on and politely ate it (bought some bread from the shop on our way back to the hotel and ate them as we were starving!) but my 3 yo kept asking "where's the lasagne?" 🙈 and we kept saying "there on your plate look" 😅

@Ihaventgottimeforthis

I love cold rice pudding. And beans in my cottage pie, or on the side. Sprinkles on bread is fairy bread - chocolate curlscarecdivine - hagelslag in Holland.

I was going to say the same - normal in the Netherlands. You put sprinkles on everything. I'd like to think they make an exception for herring, but probably not.

A dear friend of mine has a home that stinks to high heaven of plug ins / Scentsy stuff. Anything soft like bread or cakes that she serves tastes of whatever scent she's got on the go as it obviously absorbs the smell. It's gross.

My late aunt used to make salad for any buffet she ever made, which was some iceberg lettuce, sliced cucumber and tomato, sliced hard boiled egg and cubes of cheddar cheese. That was ‘a salad’ in her mind, no other combinations would be considered a salad. I loved her buffets!

@JudgeJ

But surley cream with sugar and egg is custard?

Sliced bread with soup is wrong because it doesn’t have enough structural integrity when dunked. For this reason it needs to be a roll or chunk of crusty bread. I can’t stand sliced white bread anyway but this also applies to sliced wholemeal bread

That’s kind of the point, when I was a child (and occasionally as an adult) I would have tomato soup for lunch with cheap white bread and butter, I would rip up the bread and mix it into the soup, making my soup turn from a liquid to a solid YUM

@CovidinPrimary

Sliced bread with soup is wrong because it doesn’t have enough structural integrity when dunked. For this reason it needs to be a roll or chunk of crusty bread. I can’t stand sliced white bread anyway but this also applies to sliced wholemeal bread

That’s kind of the point, when I was a child (and occasionally as an adult) I would have tomato soup for lunch with cheap white bread and butter, I would rip up the bread and mix it into the soup, making my soup turn from a liquid to a solid YUM

This is pappa al pomodoro in Italy, and is indeed delicious 😀

My Great Nana loved old broad beans. Tougher than Satan's horns, they had to have the black eye in them which shows up when they are old! Served with boiled potatoes the more floury the better! Boiled meat and gravy washed down with ginger beer. Happy days!

@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

Ah, this is a game I'm familiar with! We also used to play it at infants' school, with the tinned prunes and custard. (School in the 70s with Proper Hot Dinners and Dinner Ladies at lunchtime) And then we'd play Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor, Rich man, Poor man, Beggarman, Thief with the stones to see who we'd become or marry.

@Sparklingbrook

Yes always a cup of tea with dinner growing up. I abandoned it pretty quickly and my parents now in their 80s have wine with their dinner like normal people.

My friend's Mum used to clean their kitchen with diluted TCP and every meal tasted of it.

I grew up with that and after I left home aged 18 - right up until she died 4 years ago, when I was 59 - my mother routinely offered me tea with any meal she gave me and evinced shock when I said I'd have a glass of water instead.

My ex FIL had to have buttered, sliced white bread with EVERY meal - even roast dinners.

Bread def goes with soup. Ideally buttered You dunk it in. Yummy

My mum god rest her soul used to love hot tinned Tom’s on toast.

Blondes Heaves

Dh loves vinegar on all veg. ESP a roast dinner , def weirdo 😂

While at college so 30yrs ago , my 1st dh to be, made me super noodles sarnies. The juice soaked into the bread. Was yummy

Love corned beef hash. Had for first time in hospital after giving birth to dd now 4.5. Dh no 2 made fir me the other day. Was yummy

And friends think I’m weird for having fish finger sarnies, but with salad cream