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.

I love baked beans in cottage pie. Family tradition growing up, but DH is not keen.
Not cold on salad though!

I remember having some chicken and butter beans at my BFFs in the 80s. Literally hadn't got a clue what butter beans were.. but cold out a tin with nothing on them and some chicken was v strange to me.

I remember when passion fruit first came to the Uk. Someone brought it into school - I remember the teacher saying the mum had got it for the fruit salad but 'didn't fancy putting it in after the had opened it'. So we sat around looking at the contents of a passion fruit which had been scooped out into a paper towel from the loos. Shame, I rather like it now!

@lifeinlimbo2020 I know!! I totally agree. It is incredibly rude. I wouldn’t care but whenever they have come to us to eat I have put a huge spread on and have given consideration to what they would enjoy on it and lots of it and choice. Never even a thank you on the way out!!

Pre Covid we used to often visit on a Sunday afternoon, I took my own soya milk or I couldn’t have a cup of tea (fair enough really). When we were sitting with our cup of tea she would get herself a chocolate biscuit and not offer anyone else!

If we were there over teatime I would take something quick like beans on toast for the kids or they wouldn’t eat.

Very strange family manners wise.....

I put an end to putting the spreads on here just before Covid. Was one of the kids birthdays, they all came around, no present (we always get theirs), ignored the birthday girl and ate her ‘birthday pizza’ as well as the huge spread. Found dd in living room crying on her birthday. It was awful!! Never again!!!

Sometimes you cant beat sausage, egg, chips and beans with a huge mug of tea. It's childhood and very comforting.
In fact, I think I know whats for tea 😂

There are some truly strange examples here. But most are either class-based or simply old fashioned foods and combinations that were once commonplace. I can imagine grandchildren as adults sharing strange foods their grandparents used to serve them things like ground-up chickpeas and a type of bread - pitta. Or just a plate with carrot batons, cherry tomatoes, cooked meats and cheese.

How else do you spoon the soup, hopefully in a little swirl, onto the plate to mop with bread, preferably good bread.
What!! This is even odder than the “bread with soup” debate – you’re taking the soup from the bowl and putting it on the plate? I’ve never heard of this – you mop with the bread in the bowl, surely?

@ImFree2doasiwant

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

Horrific!

I am also from Lancashire and was struggling to see what’s wrong with either of those, must be a northern thing!

@RosesAndHellebores

Soup is one of the few dishes that requires a side plate for the bread, of whatever description. How else do you spoon the soup, hopefully in a little swirl, onto the plate to mop with bread, preferably good bread.

One should never dunk.

Why on earth would you do that? If you want to mop with bread, you just mop up what is left in the bowl at the end.

There are a lot of snobby posts on this thread.

I eat mint sauce with all my roast dinners. That started when my Mum was pregnant with my sibling and craved mint sauce. It was served with everything.

@TheGrumpyGoat

I don't know why people are being so sniffy. Unless it's a class thing?

Not a class thing for me, I come from a very working class background. It’s just the thought of hot milky liquid sloshing round in my stomach with food!

But surely most people have tea or coffee with breakfast, so it's all sloshing around your stomach together. Or coffee after lunch or supper. Likewise having tea with sandwiches, scones and cakes is the whole essence of afternoon tea.

@HarrisonStickle

I sometimes have a cup of tea with my lunch or tea, mostly though it's diluting juice. Is that wrong too?

Likewise I have a couple of slices of bread and butter with a bowl of soup. The colour depends on whatever loaf is out at the time. I'm quite taken aback that this isn't a normal thing.

Nobody outside Scotland calls squash “diluting juice”!

But surely most people have tea or coffee with breakfast, so it's all sloshing around your stomach together. Or coffee after lunch or supper. Likewise having tea with sandwiches, scones and cakes is the whole essence of afternoon tea

No idea what ‘most people’ do, I was talking about myself! I can’t drink hot drinks with food 🤷🏻‍♀️.

With my MIL it's not so much what she serves but the way she serves it. She has a very strict pecking order of who gets served first. SIL is always first, then me, then FIL, then DH, followed by DD and finally DS. I think the world actually ends if this order is ever deviated from.

@RosesAndHellebores

Soup is one of the few dishes that requires a side plate for the bread, of whatever description. How else do you spoon the soup, hopefully in a little swirl, onto the plate to mop with bread, preferably good bread.

One should never dunk.

Er, I think you may be the only person in the entire world who does this @RosesAndHellebores!

@Flufferty

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

Sprouts and vinegar are food of them gods!!!

The rice with a roast dinner is delicious if it is placed under the joint (I had beef but might work with other meats, prob not chicken) and cooks in the meat juices to be a lovely savoury accompaniment!

When I was growing up, me and my sister used to love sausage and mash with 'pea gravy' poured over the top.

Come to think of it, I don't know what happened to the peas as we just had the juice.

Nothing really - my best friend from childhood was often left to fend for herself as youngest (by at least 7-8 years) of 4 DC and her DM worked long hours. So she mostly had ready meals/pre prepared food or takeaways. But I got used to Findus Crispy Pancakes etc and my DM always fed me and her anyway.

The strangest one was a few years ago. A close friend of mine (French) who always cooked very well, think Raclette but also nice meals too and I was invited around a lot. I invited her over too but she didn't come so much due to distance and we ate out a lot too. One time I went round and she had a her fairly new boyfriend living with her and she just served up a tiny serving of minced beef with a huge amount of mashed potatoes on top, like Shepherds Pie. I was a bit shocked but ate it and presumed they were very short on money. Funnily enough, a few years earlier my parents had foreign students to stay, one French guy was very spoiled (very rich family) and would often eat huge tubs of chocolate ice cream alone. He said he'd cook one night and served up a huge piece of minced beef (maybe it's a French thing?!). My parents were a bit shocked.

@foxychox

The rice with a roast dinner is delicious if it is placed under the joint (I had beef but might work with other meats, prob not chicken) and cooks in the meat juices to be a lovely savoury accompaniment!

There is a Greek version of this with that tiny pasta that looks like grains of rice, orzo I think it’s called. Leg of lamb with onions and tomato, roasted on the oven so that the juices soak into the pasta.

We were very fancy growing up and often had toasted pitta breads filled with butter on the side of our meals particularly spaghetti Bolognese which we could pile into the toasted pitta. More carbs, anyone?!

My DH was appalled by us dunking bread in the beef dripping at the end of a meal, but he comes from a family of meat phobics (not vegetarians, they do eat meat so long as it has never looked at an animal in its life and was given birth to by a machine), now he will admit he likes the taste but is still grossed out by the concept

@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 don't need two full glasses of water with a meal either. That is a lot of water. Do you eat very salty food?

@ImFree2doasiwant

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

Tripe is cooked that way so perhaps it’s just a variation of the cooking method.

I went to a friends house for tea decades ago and was given a packet of malted milk biscuits and cup of tea.
Always wondered if that was the equivalent of jam butties and tea in ours when Mum was skint.