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.

@BSideBaby

My dad always served Heinz tomato soup with an Oxo cube crumbled on the top (and with buttered white bread on the side which of course is normal).

My best friend at Primary school had sliced banana, brown sugar and hundreds-and-thousands sandwiches in her packed lunch every day.

My mum puts raisins in everything... salads, all puddings, curries. And slices of apple with just about every meal.

My DP thinks jam on toast is a lunch food, when it is very plainly a breakfast.

I’ve just had jam (and peanut butter) on toast for dinner! (DH is out tonight and I only finished my jobs at 9pm). Had an apple on the side for vitamins

“It’s the Birmingham Way” is making me lol

A friend used to cook hot meals, then when they were nice and cooked and ready, she would announce that she was going up to the WC, then stay there for a while, then come down in at least five minutes time, so that every time the food was nearly cold.
I never understood it.

@SchadenfreudePersonified

She is also well known for serving rice pudding with "skin" which horrifies my very middle class DH, he is so polite he never says anything even when asked if he wants extra skin.

The skin is the best bit of a rice pudding - and of custard, too.

We used to fight over it.

There was NO arguing about it in our house, it was my Dad's and that was that!

Suited me anyway as I didn't like the skin!!

@JennyForeigner That reminds me of the Christmas Roast Potato War of 2010 in my inlaws house.

I wasn't there (thank God). My MIL, bless her, has issues about food (putting it mildly) and when challenged doubles down. There's not a hill that woman won't die on.

So, one Christmas she decided for the four of them that she would do 4 roast potatoes. My then boyfriend and his sister wanted more than one potato. MIL countered that each potato would be CUT UP INTO TWO. Nope, not enough according to my boyfriend who decided that it would be the hill that he would die on, something about apples and trees. He offered to cook more. No, they didn't have enough. He offered to go out and buy them. No. Not acceptable. He offered to cook, clean up after them. Still no.

Apparently shouting was involved.

My boyfriend and his family ate their two halves of a roasted potato in the end when everyone was pissed off with each other.

They can almost joke about it now, a mere 10 years later. His MIL claims not to remember it.

My great aunt used to cook a "boiling fowl" which was a chicken which was too old and tough for roasting. Just boiled the whole thing in water for several hours and served it with cauliflower which had been cooked for so long it looked like mashed potato

My husband and I were invited to Sunday lunch at friends of his he met working abroad. This was a special reunion as he hadn't t seen them for a few years. We were all in our 40s.
Lunch was cauliflower soup - just cooked cauliflower put through a blender, no seasoning or anything, super thick and bland. Roast lamb (which was lovely) served with sliced white bread and plain salad. It was like they bought the meat and forgot the rest.
Another friend asked us to lunch to see their new house - we travelled about two hours to get there. They served us a salad, which both of us assumed was a starter. But that was it! I'm not even sure they had bread with it. We stopped at a McDonald's on the way home.

I am reminded that my DH thinks my family is weird because when we were children’s we’d have weetabix with warm milk in the winter. We’d also have hot ribena. My Gran would give me lukewarm lemon swish which I always regretted accepting 🤢

Egg sandwiches made with salad cream are much superior to egg mayo!

@MumofSpud I thought it was only me!!! My fat ass will eat it straight out of the tin! And only at room temperature too! I hate it warm as well 🤣

@GlitterSquid

I remember being absolutely aghast as a child (and still am) that my Grandparents -on posh occasions- would have a glass of fresh orange juice as a STARTER. It was to be savoured too, as a very rare and exotic thing.

Crushed up crisps on a pasta bake.

An unnecessary egg. (Basically plonking a poached egg on every dish)

Bean juice! I cook baked beans in their juice but then have to sieve it off. And god forbid I find a 'bean shell'

There'll be more!

I remember fresh orange juice as a starter growing up! I used to have it as often couldn't manage 3 courses. So odd to think of that now, it was in the 1980s too so not that long ago!

When I moved in with DH he used to eat half a loaf of bread over the day, he would have 4 slices with his main meal whatever that would be!

Ex-Pils were obsessed with overcooking meat/the idea that it had hidden raw bits in. They were convinced that all meat, especially poultry, should be cooked for at least 4 times longer than any recommendations (preferably the day before it was consumed) then cut up very thinly and examined closely for any sign of blood/pinkness.

The first Christmas we stayed with them we arrived Christmas Eve to find Mil taking a very shrivelled up turkey out of the oven and hacking it to pieces, then rummaging through all the shredded dry meat with her hands to find any lurking raw bits. When I asked what she was doing and why, Fil informed me sagely that all poultry was riddled with disease and needed this treatment. He then incredulously told me the recommended time for this bird was only 5 hours, but any sensible person would know it needed at least 15 hours, and that they'd given it 17 to be on the safe side.

The meat wasn't served warmed through either. It was served fridge cold with mils speciality gravy - boiling water with a couple of tbsp of wholemeal flour and a few tsp of marmite. They also forgot to do potatoes, so Christmas dinner was that turkey, boiled to death veg and 'special' gravy.

One year I offered to cook and woke at 7am to the smell of cooking meat. I went downstairs and they said that when I went to bed the night before I obviously forgot to put the turkey on so not to worry they'd done it for me - they still were concerned it wouldn't be done for 3 tho. My lovely bronze turkey I'd splashed out on was ruined.

@TheGrumpyGoat my mum (Scottish) used to fry some tinned spam and put it in to buttered bread. I loved it, can’t touch it now and it’s around 25 years later!!

OMG you married my ex-boyfriend...

Except he didn't have a sister and hell would have frozen over before raised voices were allowed in that house. And also you don't seem to hate her, so can't be the same MIL.

Four potatoes is not a terrible allocation imho, just... per person.

Invited for dinner by a couple who were close friends of my new boyfriend (now DH)
Heaps of laundry on the kitchen table and BF and I were given a small frozen pizza each (the ones that were 10 for a quid from Farmfoods)
Our 'hosts' spent the entire evening arguing and we sat uncomfortable in their living room watching a crap Sylvester Stollone movie until we could escape and go to the pub (hungry)

Ah I do recall in their later years my parents, after a perfectly nice lunch of whatever, having a slice of bread or toast with marmalade on for dessert. We grew up rarely having a dessert other than fruit, and my mother was an amazing cook, but this was a fairly new thing they did once retired. Like they wanted something sweet but not a dessert as such.

@MrsKoala

Ex-Pils were obsessed with overcooking meat/the idea that it had hidden raw bits in. They were convinced that all meat, especially poultry, should be cooked for at least 4 times longer than any recommendations (preferably the day before it was consumed) then cut up very thinly and examined closely for any sign of blood/pinkness.

The first Christmas we stayed with them we arrived Christmas Eve to find Mil taking a very shrivelled up turkey out of the oven and hacking it to pieces, then rummaging through all the shredded dry meat with her hands to find any lurking raw bits. When I asked what she was doing and why, Fil informed me sagely that all poultry was riddled with disease and needed this treatment. He then incredulously told me the recommended time for this bird was only 5 hours, but any sensible person would know it needed at least 15 hours, and that they'd given it 17 to be on the safe side.

The meat wasn't served warmed through either. It was served fridge cold with mils speciality gravy - boiling water with a couple of tbsp of wholemeal flour and a few tsp of marmite. They also forgot to do potatoes, so Christmas dinner was that turkey, boiled to death veg and 'special' gravy.

One year I offered to cook and woke at 7am to the smell of cooking meat. I went downstairs and they said that when I went to bed the night before I obviously forgot to put the turkey on so not to worry they'd done it for me - they still were concerned it wouldn't be done for 3 tho. My lovely bronze turkey I'd splashed out on was ruined.

Oh god MIL was the same. Christmas was turkey that tasted like dust, 2 small deep fried potatoes, tinned veg boiled to death and thick bisto beef gravy. Wine came from the biggest/cheapest bottle they could find. Accompanied by a lecture on gluttony and we all needed to go on diets after this feast. I have stomach ache thinking about it.

I know someone who has marmite spaghetti (not envy).

@Larryyourwaiter

Staying at a friends as a teen the parents served breaded chicken and chips, and the ‘veg’ was tinned plum tomatoes. No seasoning, just heated through. It’s not the weirdest thing it’s just something would never occur to me to do.

That sounds perfectly normal. I love plum tomatoes with a fry up or bacon. I add the salt and pepper when its on the plate.

One of my friends at middle school, and looking back all her family were morbidly obese, had buttered potatoes with every lunch and dinner (in packed lunches, lunch at home, every dinner). Now I know what you are thinking, potatoes with some melted butter on them, but no. These cold, barely cooked, boiled potatoes, sliced, then thickly buttered as if they were bread, potato probably 1cm thick with a layer of butter probably 6-8mm thick on them. They ate them from a side plate with every meal, there were always cold, sliced, boiled potatoes in their fridge, sometimes my friend would have them as a snack before dinner as well. They seemed to think this was perfectly normal, I have never met anyone else who does this.

@feelinglostt

I know someone who has marmite spaghetti (not envy).

That's a Nigella "recipe"!

On one occasion MIL served up for dinner at about 4 pm after everyone had been waiting since around 1. One. Couple gave up waiting and went home. For 6 adults plus 5 children she served up 1 individual small pizza. Originally intending of course that it would serve 6 adults plus the 5 children. Even a full sized pizza would have been stingy

@WiseUpJanetWeiss try any supermarket- tongue is there in the deli counter (should you need to do a shop for him).
My French neighbours often had my kids round for supper but they always came home hungry . More often than not dinner was spaghetti with soy sauce. Nothing else, just that. They were given enough but couldn't eat that much it was so salty and one note.

@leatherboundbooks

On one occasion MIL served up for dinner at about 4 pm after everyone had been waiting since around 1. One. Couple gave up waiting and went home. For 6 adults plus 5 children she served up 1 individual small pizza. Originally intending of course that it would serve 6 adults plus the 5 children. Even a full sized pizza would have been stingy

That's just plain odd. Was it usual for her?

@Thecurtainsofdestiny Ah yes, that’s the stuff!

It seems I could have found that on Google very easily had I just written my question there rather than here 😆 Thank you for doing it for me!

I loved that stuff. And sandwich spread.

Nigella's marmite spaghetti is good of the gods. Absolutely delicious!!

I'm making fairy bread at Halloween but might make it ghoulish colours and call it fairy fright bread or something. Dc would love it.

There are some truly disgusting things on this thread 🤢