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.

Stew and beans is a cowboy thing. If you have baked beans mixed with anything under mash it's cowboy pie, not cottage. Personally I recommend beans with chopped cooked onion, bacon and sausages with a mash topping. Yum!

Weirdest meal I ever took the dc to was at a friends house whose daughter (according to her Mum) only ate marmite on toast. So all the dc were given just marmite on toast. One slice each. With a cup of water. They were 8-11 years old.

[quote julieca]@Wombat49 is a total class thing. Basically snobbery.[/quote]
I think you are probably right but we were served tea with dinner at boarding school. Personally, I think it is grim with hot food, the tastes clash and I don't find it thirst quenching.

This reminds of the awful cowboy pie we had for school dinners. Beans, spam
And smash - utterly disgusting I used to cry when I saw it come out.

@DoYouLikeOwls - my mum only ever did yorkshires with roast beef. It blew my mind when I found out people have them with other roasts - I love the idea, but I’ve never managed to break free of mum’s training enough to do yorkshires with anything other than beef.

I only do the frozen yorkshires - I’m not a bad cook, but yorkshires are something I just cannot cook. Mum’s used to puff up beautifully - they were light and crisp and delicious, whereas mine tend more towards flat and damp. I’ve tried different recipes, and bought a metal roasting dish specially for yorkshires/toad in the hole, but I’ve only once managed to produce a decent Toad.

Nigella once did Yorkshire puddings with thick cream and golden syrup - that looked gorgeous.

@ginghamstarfish

Wonder if some of these things are a 'class' issue? Growing up working class in Lancashire some years ago it was normal to have sliced white bread with soup (and many other meals, chip butty etc), to drink tea with meals, to have little idea of what a proper salad was. I still have tea with certain meals contains chips or bacon, it just goes ... Had a friend who put tomato ketchup on salad, and a friend whose huge Polish dad amazed me by having everything double strength - my friend had to make his tea, toast for breakfast before she was allowed to come out with me, and he had two teabags, two spoons of coffee in each cup, two slices of bread together in one toaster slot, etc. My own family's weird contribution to this is 'cheese dip', which I still eat to this day. On Sundays mum would fry sausages, then bacon, then in the same pan, put crumbled Lancashire cheese and milk, heated until the cheese melted. With bacon, sausage and hunks of bread to dip, it is heavenly.

Oh my goodness that cheese dip sounds amazing!

[quote ihavespoken]@OverByYer
Same. Nothing better with Heinz tomato soup than white bread and butter dipped in it

False - Heinz tomato soup with white-bread cheese sandwiches dipped in it is better [/quote]
YES!
I was going to say this but it was something we did at home, not had at other people's houses (except it was always Campbell's Cream of Tomato soup, not Heinz)

I also used to put so much grated cheese on Heinz spaghetti in tomato sauce that it was almost solid, which could then be scooped up with buttered white-bread toast. Yum!

Can't eat any of that bar the cheese now - bloody digestive issues!

Someone at work put crushed up crisps on their entire buffet. Sandwiches, sausage rolls, mini sausages etc all with crisps on top

The French version of cottage pie, hachis Parmentier, is sometimes layered with the meat between the potatoes, @Gonnagetgoing. Based purely on my family, I think your observation is right, on average the French version often has more potatoes but, you know, just like we can't agree on whether baked beans belong in shepherd's pie they don't I'm sure it varies hugely between families.

Was the slab of minced beef possibly steak hache? Like a giant burger?

Nobody outside Scotland calls squash “diluting juice”!

That's hilarious. I used to live in Scotland, and have always found it difficult to name this product. Squash seems really alien (makes me think of fruit being literally squashed by sitting on it), but at the same time no one here calls it diluting juice, but I've always gone with the latter because it sounds more right to me, even though I know I'm out on my own with it!

I'm actually a Northerner, hence tea with meals and a slices of bread and butter with my soup.

Did anyone else grow up with crisp butties being a quite normal snack meal?

@HarrisonStickle

Did anyone else grow up with crisp butties being a quite normal snack meal?

Oh yes, my favourite ,cheese and onion crisp sandwich"enhanced"with cheddar cheese and scallions or onions washed down with red lemonade ( tangerine flavoured fizzy drink) I still indulge when I go home

@Saz12

My now DH grew up with “toast and a boiled onion” for dinner.

That made me burst out laughing

As have many of the comments on here, brilliantly entertaining, thank you all

When we have Yorkshire Puddings with Roast beef my mum does extra and we have them for pudding with golden Syrup.. 😋 😋 😋 😋 😋

Oh dear @2Two ! I'm wondering whether your Kennomeat pie was named jokingly? Kennomeat was a famous brand of tinned dog food in the 60s and 70s!

@plk323 I'm just thinking that those brown flour pancakes/crepes might be those amazing Staffordshire Oatcakes known mostly to Staffordshire folk. They can have so many fillings but my favourite is cheese and served with smoked streaky bacon.
So delicious and have them every time we stay over in Staffordshire.

I haven't read the whole thread, but agree there is a class element, especially if we go back some decades.
Tinned meat and mashed potatoes were all my family could afford when I was a child.
Cheap food was not available and fresh produce not easy to find.
So tinned peaches and evaporated milk was a standard dessert

@Elderflower14

When we have Yorkshire Puddings with Roast beef my mum does extra and we have them for pudding with golden Syrup.. 😋 😋 😋 😋 😋

@Elderflower14 oh this sounds heavenly

@HarrisonStickle

Nobody outside Scotland calls squash “diluting juice”!

That's hilarious. I used to live in Scotland, and have always found it difficult to name this product. Squash seems really alien (makes me think of fruit being literally squashed by sitting on it), but at the same time no one here calls it diluting juice, but I've always gone with the latter because it sounds more right to me, even though I know I'm out on my own with it!

I'm actually a Northerner, hence tea with meals and a slices of bread and butter with my soup.

I don’t know anyone in Scotland who calls it diluting juice and I’m now in my 60’s.

My ex mil cooking a meal with a cigarette hanging from her mouth. The ash falling in the food. Disabled bil on a commode at the table. Ex fil taking his newly fitted false teeth out because they were rubbing and putting them on the dining table. This all happened at one meal. On top of that the food was inedible.

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

With raw herrings you have chopped raw onion. You buy your herring from a stall and eat it in the street.

Growing up in Scotland it was always called " diluting juice"

DroopyClematis could be, my grandparents lived in south Cheshire but sound the same. They were heavenly hot with melted butter on.

My mum always put cold baked beans with salad when I was a kid
Along with sardines in tomato sauce.

I eat neither now.

Also growing up in a poor are of scotland I never tasted roast beef. A sunday roast wasn't a thing.
I was 12 when I first tasted a yorkshire pudding.

Just to add weight to the baked beans/cottage pie debate. I always add a layer of baked beans on top of the meat and under the potato. It is not the same without.

my flatmate at uni.
Super noodles, mayonnaise, tinned tuna and curry powder. all mixed together