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'm always absolutely amazed now people were not allowed a drink with their meal.

My nan used to poach cod in milk. Then serve it with boiled potatoes and greenbeans or peas. It was horrible. Completely flavourless. I asked her once if it was meant to be parsley sauce, not just milk but she said no.

I think I am a pretty good cook - don't get any complaints when we have guests. I used to dread going to our friends house for dinner tho. They were childless and we had 2. There was never really enough food considering how much my boys ate. They always want seconds, as does my DH usually. I remember once she told me she was doing a lasagne. We all love that.
Anyway, we were in the living room and I could hear her making a racket out in the kitchen. I went to look and she had 2 bags of cheese and onion crisps in a zip lock back and was bashing them with her rolling pin. She then sprinkled it over the lasagne.
When cooked, some of it was burnt and the rest was just soggy from the white sauce. I personally HATE cheese and onion crisps with a passion. Spoiled the whole dinner for me 🤢

Glad the potato baguette has some admirers! Try it!

@UniformSchmooniform, that sounds pretty good too, especially for a hangover. I always think eggs are perfect for a hang.

Re hot drinks with meals: we tend to have tea/coffee straight after a meal but not with the meal if it’s a hot meal. Definitely with a fried breakfast or a cold lunch but not with dinner.

As kids we drank tea with our evening meal, but that’s because our evening meal was ‘tea’, having had a hot meal at 1pm. Tea consisted of bread and butter, tomatoes, cheese, Shiphams paste etc, and then cake. The rule was that you had to have at least two slices of bread before you started on the cake.

When 8 months pregnant my DH and I went to SIL's house for a pre Christmas meal ( I was due Boxing Day).
she plated up everybody's food and served me last.
I was presented with (I kid you not) one roast potato,three sliced carrots,two sprouts,a pig WITHOUT its blanket and a very small slice of turkey.
My DMIL was livid and a very fierce yet quiet argument ensued in the kitchen.
DMIL floated back into the dining room and swept my plate away to replace it with a rather more generous selection of all the food the rest of the family were allowed to eat.

I regularly eat cold macaroni from the can. We sometimes have cups of tea with our tea. We have white bread and butter with soup. None of the things mentioned are strange to the people that put them on the table. You eat it and say thank you if you were brought up right. You laugh about it on here if you were not brought up right. Which are you?

@TheGrumpyGoat

When I was a child, if we had a picnic, mum would make egg sandwiches, but instead of using mayonnaise, she would use salad cream, and mash the boiled eggs into that. Sounds strange, but I loved it

My grandmother made egg sandwiches with salad cream too! In fact anything that would normally use mayo (potato salad etc), she used salad cream.

I love egg salad cream. Much better then mayo

You eat it and say thank you if you were brought up right. You laugh about it on here if you were not brought up right. Which are you?

I mean… you can do both. Eat it and say thank you, then discuss it on a lighthearted thread about food habits and customs that you find unusual.

My nanny, who was from Eastern Europe, thought the powdered cheese that came with kraft mac was too indulgent so would prepare us bowls of macaroni mixed with milk with the tiniest imaginable sprinkle of cheese powder on top.
I can recall being delighted by breakfast at friend's houses after sleepover because they often had cereal and juice which were completely unknown at our house!

I'm American and so far have had to look up, pea wet, rice pudding skin, and salad cream (is this just mayo??)

For the commenter that had the whipped cream/jelly salad monstrosity in the south, that was probably ambrosia salad and you should be grateful you weren't in the Midwest because then you would have been given Waldorf salad which is apples, celery, nuts and marshmallows mixed with MAYONNAISE.

@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.

My parents are always amazed that we drink so much water. I don’t think I’ve ever seen my parents drink a glass of water- maybe if they’re having an aspirin or something It’s always tea/coffee with breakfast, maybe a beer with lunch and wine with dinner. It’s amazing they haven’t died of dehyd.

My dad was a bit of a strange lazycook. He'd make tomato spaghetti which was literally 1/2 A bottle of ketchup stirred into cooked spaghetti with a mountain of grated cheese on top. He also put olives in everything as well, sandwiches, roast dinners, cottage pie etc. With chicken breasts he'd make a hole in the middle and pop an olive in!

DH thinks it weird that we eat a slice of plum bread (fruit cake) with cheese on it. Red Leicester or Cheddar generally. But that's not just my weird family it's a Northern thing I think.

Wensleydale with Christmas cake is a thing in Yorkshire.

@BookFiend4Life

My nanny, who was from Eastern Europe, thought the powdered cheese that came with kraft mac was too indulgent so would prepare us bowls of macaroni mixed with milk with the tiniest imaginable sprinkle of cheese powder on top. I can recall being delighted by breakfast at friend's houses after sleepover because they often had cereal and juice which were completely unknown at our house!

I'm American and so far have had to look up, pea wet, rice pudding skin, and salad cream (is this just mayo??)

For the commenter that had the whipped cream/jelly salad monstrosity in the south, that was probably ambrosia salad and you should be grateful you weren't in the Midwest because then you would have been given Waldorf salad which is apples, celery, nuts and marshmallows mixed with MAYONNAISE.

No salad cream isn’t mayo. It’s similar but has loads of extra ingredients. It’s much more vinegary than mayo.

My FIL would put a ginger biscuit between two slices of bread and butter, eat cheese with fruitcake and sliced apple spread with marmite 🤢
We always had bread and butter with fish and chips and for tea without fail (1950’s child), no cake unless you’d had b&b and for a treat tinned fruit with evaporated milk (I absolutely hated evaporated milk)
A school friend of mine’s mum gave us fried bread sprinkled with sugar- absolutely delicious, tastes like doughnuts.
Another friend’s mum gave us cold baked beans on bread and butter, very strange to me.
I do like baked beans in shepherd’s pie, definitely better with them!
I had a friend who would fill a mug three quarters full with Horlicks powder, top it up with hot milk and eat it with a spoon, utterly gross to see, smell or taste!

@TReXX

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.

What’s odd about a veggie curry with sultanas? I thought that was normal! The thing with the tinned spaghetti is weird though.

@Drinkingallthewine - please will you share your spicy chicken and rice recipe? I promise not to leave bits out or substitute the chicken with beef!

@MummyMayo1988

My nan used to poach cod in milk. Then serve it with boiled potatoes and greenbeans or peas. It was horrible. Completely flavourless. I asked her once if it was meant to be parsley sauce, not just milk but she said no.

I think I am a pretty good cook - don't get any complaints when we have guests. I used to dread going to our friends house for dinner tho. They were childless and we had 2. There was never really enough food considering how much my boys ate. They always want seconds, as does my DH usually. I remember once she told me she was doing a lasagne. We all love that.
Anyway, we were in the living room and I could hear her making a racket out in the kitchen. I went to look and she had 2 bags of cheese and onion crisps in a zip lock back and was bashing them with her rolling pin. She then sprinkled it over the lasagne.
When cooked, some of it was burnt and the rest was just soggy from the white sauce. I personally HATE cheese and onion crisps with a passion. Spoiled the whole dinner for me 🤢

Fish’n’milk is something my granny would make every Wednesday when I was growing up in Scotland. It was delicious. She’d add butter to the milk as well and serve it with peas and potato’s. Nowadays I add a packet of spinach to it and have it with bread and butter.

I was in hospital with covid, in the Spring, and I was really worried about the food - when I was training as a nurse, the food we served the patients was atrocious - but I needn’t have worried.

My sense of taste had almost completely gone, but I still had some left, and the food was nicely savoury - soup and a sandwich for lunch, and a hot meal for dinner - but some of the combinations were odd, to say the least.

Lasagne with boiled, diced carrot and mashed potatoes, and macaroni cheese with cubed, boiled swede and mash were the highlights!

My Dad always asks for his Yorkshire pudding separate from his roast dinner. Then he pours sugar all over it, eats that and then eats his roast dinner.
Now I know that filling up on Yorkshires before getting the meat was pretty standard when he was a kid (1950s), but I never got the sugar.

@sleepyshiftworker

A friend of mine, dear dear friend - serves absolutely everything with a handful of dried crispy salad leaves. The sort that are half dead and crap in the bag before they even leave the shop. At the end of every meal they get scraped back into a bowl and put back in the fridge so as to not waste them as no one eats them.

Oh sweet Christ that’s awful

You eat it and say thank you if you were brought up right. You laugh about it on here if you were not brought up right. Which are you?
I’m… the one who understands the difference between table manners and an anonymous Internet forum.

A colleague once brought to the Christmas buffet a prawn mayo and banana salad...

I was also served raw broccoli with a hot meal in the US

My great aunt used to eat bread & butter with either crisps as a filling or just sugar.
Once my dad went to the house of a new workmate for dinner.
All the time he was eating their dog just sat at the side of him & stared at him. He likes me, said dad. No, said the chap, that’s his plate you’ve got.

I was in hospital with covid, in the Spring, and I was really worried about the food - when I was training as a nurse, the food we served the patients was atrocious - but I needn’t have worried.
Oh GOD my first postpartum meal (aside from the classic NHS tea and toast) was a boiling hot plate of macaroni cheese with a green salad of shredded iceberg dumped directly on top so it all wilted. I threw it back up and thought I was going to burst my stitches.

" We have white bread and butter with soup. "

Somebody thinks that's odd?

My great aunt used to eat bread & butter with either crisps as a filling

Crisp butties are the snack of the gods.