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Strange catering habits you have experienced when eating at friends/family houses?

1000 replies

Chicchicchicchiclana · 12/10/2021 19:02

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.

OP posts:
BertieBotts · 14/10/2021 10:01

I think my house might have been the weird one Shock :o

We had warmed-through whole plum tinned tomatoes as a vegetable side. I loved them. Still do love them. The taste, the texture, everything.

My mum used to buy these "perfect pasta" stock cubes from Knorr and cook pasta in them, because she said it made it taste better. I couldn't eat plain pasta like other people served for years.

A college friend was one day horrified when we were frying sausages for lunch, one fell on the floor (which he later described as - no offence Bertie, but disgusting with dirt, animal hair, rodents running around - we had cats, and guinea pigs, in cages, not running around) and I picked it up and cheerfully plopped it back in the pan saying "The heat will kill any germs"

I don't think my friend was bothered by the dirty floor until food fell on it and I planned to eat it anyway. But it was an interesting perspective for me. I now look back and realise our house was pretty dirty growing up. My mum struggled with chronic fatigue and never made my sister or I do anything and there wasn't anyone else.

I also remember the time we were having these weekly post NCT meet ups at everyone's house. I was a very young mum. My house was small and cramped and I felt anxious about it so I never offered to host until I did one day, I prepared so carefully for it, I found some scones on clearance and bought real butter and jam to have with them. We had to postpone because DS was ill or something so I told my NCT friend I'd pop the scones in the freezer for next time. I still remember her fixed smile as she said politely "That sounds lovely." I realised too late that most people would not consider shop-bought scones to be a special and rare treat and also that it was not compulsory to save the exact same treat that had been planned the next time. If I'd had to postpone a meeting with my mum and sister, that's exactly what we would have done - so I just assumed that was the normal way to do things.

DH's family are also terrifying in their food hygiene standards. It took me ages to convince DH out of the idea that leftovers go in the microwave. Not to be reheated, but to be stored until you want to reheat them. He's intelligent enough to understand the concept that bacteria multiply more slowly at fridge temperature, but somehow the practice of keeping food in a microwave (which MIL believes to be some kind of magical food-preserving portal because of the thick "insulated" walls) was so normal to him that he couldn't get himself out of the habit of it. I think it probably was to protect food that was too warm to go directly into an old fashioned fridge from the dogs, and then probably MIL never saw the point of transferring it to the fridge later. But it was grim.

ihavespoken · 14/10/2021 10:16

@sashh

I took a friend to visit my parents in Lancashire, he went with my dad to get fish and chips and was amazed at someone asking for a 'fish butty' ie a whole fish folded over and put in a buttered barm cake.

He still has not seen a 'meat and potato pie butty' I'm not sure he entirely believes me.

He was also highly amused when there was a radio advert for a pub quiz with a 'pie and pea supper'.

I love a pie and pea supper! Normally held at the community centre and combined with a beetle drive in my childhood Grin (North East England)
florentina1 · 14/10/2021 10:39

@EmmaOveries it was n the 50s. We also had to make the coal fire and light it with a sheet of the News of the World to ‘draw the fire’. That had a habit of catching alight too. My parents had a somewhat Cavalier attitude to our safety.

Devonsent19 · 14/10/2021 10:43

I remember so many unusual meals from the seventies which didn’t seem odd at all at the time.
My grandmother used to make roast dinner for 11 of us inc 5 kids. She knew the kids liked sausages,beans fishfingers etc so she would cook those as well and serve it on the roast dinner!! Also if one of us was ill, she would give us a small amount of lucozade (original flavour the only one at the time) in a medicine measuring cup. I still think of lucozade as medicine to this day, so never drink it.
My friends parents ran a hotel in Torquay ( not the fawlty’s 😁) When I went there to play, we could have anything we wanted to eat off the restaurant menu. But my friend and I generally had cornflakes out of a huge industrial sized storage bin with ice cold milk from a massive dispenser with a tap. It was great fun!

5thnonblonde · 14/10/2021 10:50

@Bertiebotts I’d freeze the scones! It’s not the kind of thing I’d eat unless we had guests and I hate waste

NormallyFairlyLevelHeaded · 14/10/2021 10:56

Deep fried pizza in Scotland. I really really liked that.

I can't bear waste so will keep lots of leftovers. My husband used to think it was weird till he started to go home for his lunch - and he loves the fact there's a left over sausage, some left over roasted veg and a bit of salad so he can make an omelette or whatever easily.

I wasn't convinced on omelette with left over sausage but he's convinced me. I drew the line at left over roasted beetroot in omelette.

His family when they come over to visit take the piss by asking if I want to keep left over oven chips, or tiny bits of broccoli.

MrsHookey · 14/10/2021 11:06

I remember going to a friend's house as a teen. Now they had a little dog and that dog's hairs were literally everywhere. I had a toasted sandwich with ham, cheese and dog hair. I was too polite to say a thing and ate the lot. No one else seemed to think anything of it.

Fink · 14/10/2021 11:11

@ihavespoken
I was also bemused by the pie and pea supper thing at first. When I worked in the north-east we had a work outing within a few months of my arrival that was a quiz with a pie and pea supper. It was the pea bit that still confuses me a bit to this day. I like a nice pie, and I would have one with a variety of sides, of which peas are one. It's the idea that the peas deserve equal billing with the pie and are the only side that throws me a bit. We were even offered a choice of mushy peas or normal. I think I also found it unusual to go to a pub/community club/working men's club and have only one thing on the menu - everyone's having pie tonight. I've since seen that a bit more (e.g. curry night at a pub) but when I first moved to the north-east the whole thing seemed very strange. Nice, because I do love pie, but strange.

Pinkfairylights · 14/10/2021 11:11

Mum was really house-proud but the odd dog hair got into good. We'd sit at the table and find out who had the lucky dog hair.

GreyhoundG1rl · 14/10/2021 11:17

@Pinkfairylights

Mum was really house-proud but the odd dog hair got into good. We'd sit at the table and find out who had the lucky dog hair.
😂
bluecarry · 14/10/2021 11:28

Weirdest one was a Sunday lunch with my teenage boyfriend at his grans house. She made us an otherwise completely standard roast dinner, but with the addition of Smokey bacon crisps. They were on each plate in a little pile, along with the vegetables and also had gravy poured over them. Everyone acted as though this was a very normal side for a roast dinner, and being 16 I didn't like to question it further!

Safe to say I've never come across this 'tradition' since!

fuckoffImcounting · 14/10/2021 11:37

I see your Hot Meaty Milk and raise you Boiled Lamb Hearts. The heart meat was grey and of a paste consistency and we used to lick the grey meaty mess from the rubbery heart tubes.

Strawberrytartsplease · 14/10/2021 11:58

My mum did exactly the same, jelly with evaporated milk, I quite liked it as a kid

Strawberrytartsplease · 14/10/2021 12:11

@Pinkginlover

Mrsjayy · 14/10/2021 12:14

Oh jeez heart meat🤢

Jelly and evaporated milk though 😋

FantasticButtocks · 14/10/2021 12:36

At boarding school we used to make fake doughnuts - white bread with jam and lots of crunchy sugar, crusts off and rolled up. White sliced bread was in plentiful supply.

chesirecat99 · 14/10/2021 12:45

Spoons are for desserts/soup.

I'm with @Flufferty, @echt. Pot Noodles are a "soup". You would eat a bowl of ramen in broth with chopsticks and a spoon. Pot Noodles are just instant ramen noodles by a different name with different flavours, Golden Wonder copied the idea from a Japanese company.

Although I've never eaten one either Grin

hotmeatymilk · 14/10/2021 12:46

DH's family are also terrifying in their food hygiene standards. It took me ages to convince DH out of the idea that leftovers go in the microwave. Not to be reheated, but to be stored until you want to reheat them.
Oi, I do this and it’s totally normal! For things like a crumble or a fruit tart or a cake, where you don’t want the fridge to ruin it but you don’t want flies or mice on it either, the microwave IS a magic preserving box! Disclaimer: I am also of the “just scrape the mould off the jam” breed, vs DP and in-laws “keep the jam in the fridge” hive of villainy.

hotmeatymilk · 14/10/2021 12:47

Also it’s nice when you go to heat your milk for coffee up in the morning and discover a microwave surprise of a pudding you’d forgotten you put there

Fizbosshoes · 14/10/2021 12:54

DH's family are also terrifying in their food hygiene standards. It took me ages to convince DH out of the idea that leftovers go in the microwave. Not to be reheated, but to be stored until you want to reheat them.

My PIL washed chicken in a washing up bowl of cold water, and then washed some cereal bowls in the same water!Confused

GreyhoundG1rl · 14/10/2021 12:57

My PIL washed chicken in a washing up bowl of cold water, and then washed some cereal bowls in the same water! Confused
Oh my God!! Even reading that has made my anxiety levels go through the roof! I'm not even near their cereal bowls and I want to heave Grin

hotmeatymilk · 14/10/2021 13:00

Why are they washing chicken?

meg70 · 14/10/2021 13:04

@Workinghardeveryday

I have colitis so my diet is strict to say the least.

I can however eat all meats, fish, potatoes, white bread, rice, pasta, root veg and iceberg lettuce.

Every year when I go to in laws for Boxing Day the only thing I can eat and they know this and also made especially for my meal is a bowl of iceberg lettuce!!!! Yum....

What do they serve then? I wouldn't go! Total f*ckers, poor you. X
KilledByWitches · 14/10/2021 13:11

I used to have tripe supper with the old couple next door when I was a kid. I ate it and enjoyed it. The whole idea of it now makes me feel a bit ill tbh.

Chicchicchicchiclana · 14/10/2021 13:27

I've seen people on Mumsnet say they roast and carve the Christmas turkey on Christmas Eve, refrigerate overnight and serve cold for Christmas dinner the next day. Apparently it doesn't matter that it's cold because it gets covered in hot gravy Shock.

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