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.

As a vegetarian kid before the internet, my mum used to give me dinner minus the meat.
So spaghetti bolognaise - plain pasta.
Shepherds pie - mash and veg
Stew - potatoes and carrots
Chicken curry - plain rice
I imagine lots of people though she was harsh to me but she just didn’t know better lol

I usually eat pizza with a knife and fork, including takeaway pizza.

I don’t like having greasy fingers. I’m not a clean freak or a germphobe or anything like that. Quite happy to get my hands dirty in various ways…I just don’t like the feel of grease on my hands!

…or tomato sauce 😆

Angrymum22 re porcupine meatballs; I used to make them when my DC were little and they loved them, except the recipe was called Hedgehogs. It was delicious : meatballs made with rice in them gently cooked in a sauce made from Campbells condensed tomato soup, and served with mashed potatoes and baked beans. DD asked for the recipe years later. It was in an M&S cookbook I bought in the early 1980s

@Chicchicchicchiclana

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 .

I came on here to mention this exact thing.

My MIL makes her roast beef and turkey the 24th of December and serves it all up cold on Christmas Day. I figured it was to alleviate the cooking pressure but apparently it was and served cold due to the hot gravy.

I'm American and thought all English people do this (they do on Mumsnet, apparently) but it seems it's not totally common.

My dad did this really weird thing, just once, when we were kids. He bought a whole pigs head in jelly, then cut it up and put it in lots of jars. It really freaked the rest of my family out; we wouldn't go near it. My friend's dad came to pick her up when this was on the go.. he offered some to him.. he was like "no thanks, Mr Charley50's dad. I'm Jewish." He wasn't. It was one of many strange things my dad did..

Another one was when he cooked and ate London garden snails!!!!! 😱😱😱😱😱😱😱

@Charley50

Another one was when he cooked and ate London garden snails!!!!! 😱😱😱😱😱😱😱

I'm not sure what's wrong with this? Common garden snails are edible and are no different to escargots, so isn't this just another form of foraging, which is very trendy these days.

Poor people used to eat snails in times of hardship (similar to mussels, which were also traditionally eaten by poor people).

I mean, it's not weird to shoot rabbits for the pot if you were rural, or gather mussels from the beach if you live by the coast, so snails in London seems similar.

@waterlego I remember the Heinz vegetable salad. I think there was a potato salad as well. it always came in my DMs Christmas hamper.

Something I loved but DH thinks is weird is butter pie (basically potato, butter, salt and lots of pepper in a pie) and parched peas which both seem to be a north Lancashire thing,

@CSJobseeker

I mean, it's not weird to shoot rabbits for the pot if you were rural, or gather mussels from the beach if you live by the coast, so snails in London seems similar.

I think it's a different type of snail? Anyway when I was a child it was traumatic. Maybe nowadays it's the way forwards.. a good food source and a way of limiting the pesky snail population.

@Drinkingallthewine

Your post took me back many decades. Thank you.

@Charley50 ‘No Thanks, I’m Jewish’ was for many years my one liner to get rid of any evangelicals on the doorstep (don’t seem to get evangelical synagogues I guess?!) It worked a treat until one year 7yo DS piped up ‘What IS Jewish?’

I think it's a different type of snail?

It's essentially the same kind of snail. The main danger is that you might inadvertently eat a snail that has ingested some form of poison (pesticides, weedkiller etc), so might be worth avoiding for that reason!

@GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER - cow's udders are called 'elders'. I remember reading about them a while ago. I know it's stupid of me, but

@waterlego

I usually eat pizza with a knife and fork, including takeaway pizza.

I don’t like having greasy fingers. I’m not a clean freak or a germphobe or anything like that. Quite happy to get my hands dirty in various ways…I just don’t like the feel of grease on my hands!

My comment about being ejected from the restaurant was a bit of an exaggeration. In New York we have a tradition of politicians making campaign stops in local restaurants. Those who were witnessed eating pizza with a fork (including former President Crazypants Trump) were roundly ridiculed for doing so.

www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-new-york-primary-food-20160416-story.html

@MissConductUS Arrrrggghhh! I have something in common with Trump? Right, looks like I’ll have to get used to eating pizza without cutlery then!

Snails contain parasites, primarily lung worm. These are zoonotic. Snails for eating are farmed and should be parasite free.

[quote waterlego]@MissConductUS Arrrrggghhh! I have something in common with Trump? Right, looks like I’ll have to get used to eating pizza without cutlery then![/quote]
I quite understand. With Trump, he might have done so because he is a notorious germaphobe.

It is a bit of fun to eat with your hands. With a thin-crust pie, you can keep things neat and clean by folding the slice. This keeps the cheese, sauce, and toppings contained and away from your hands.

www.timeout.com/newyork/restaurants/folding-pizza-debate-nyc

We stopped getting takeaway pizza during the pandemic. I buy the dough premade at a posh Italian supermarket. It's really simple to make and about half the cost of takeaway.

@Idontlike

Baked beans in the cottage pie. Luckily they were family & just laughed as I picked them out. Beans and grave though, makes me feel all funny just thinking about it!

I’ve since become vegetarian and did have to tell a 40 something friend that picking the cut up spicey sausages out of the pasta dish she was making us didn’t suddenly make it vegetarian.

My mum did this growing up! So I quite like it 😂 she called it (not very PC), "blind mans mince" because she'd just take a bunch of random tins out the cupboard without looking!

@RonaKnob

Snails contain parasites, primarily lung worm. These are zoonotic. Snails for eating are farmed and should be parasite free.

🤢🤮🤢🤮🤢🤮🤢🤮🤢🤮🤢🤮 I knew there was a reason not to eat them.

@Chicchicchicchiclana

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 .

Ugh, I can’t understand why anyone does this. Cooking a turkey and bringing it hot to the table in all its golden glory, really isn’t a big deal. I don’t know why people make out it’s such a colossal Thing. If you’re at all organised, it certainly isn’t.

the practice of chilling meat before carving enables you to carve it wafer thin. This is either to make tough meat chewable, or to serve very mean portions.

It is sometimes done in restaurants or institutions, where you might have to serve a great many people in a short time, and considered rather poor practice. To warm the meat, the plates are heated scorching hot, and the gravy served near boiling.

I can't imagine cooking a turkey and expecting the gravy to heat it up. But then I don't like gravy, so in that scenario, I would be having cold turkey.

Not a catering habit as such, but MIL did once memorably serve up a ‘curry’ for Sunday lunch, which was basically her normal roast chicken and veg (roast potatoes and boiled-to-death sprouts and carrots) smothered in a jar of lukewarm Cook In sauce with sultanas, accompanied by rice.

No one really knew what to say, but God bless her for trying.