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 went to a friend's and she made Lasagne with peas, sweetcorn and bake beans in it! It was truly grim 😂

At a friend’s house for lunch, pudding was individual Mr Kipling’s apple pies. Friend’s dad crushed his and put it between 2 slices of bread and butter to make an apple pie butty 😂

When I first had Sunday dinner with my (now) husband and his parents they served Yorkshire puddings with gravy first, then a Sunday roast with mushy peas and the pudding. I couldn’t get my head around the no Yorkshire’s on your dinner thing. Not the mushy peas.

Now guess who’s the one who does both of those things?! 🙈

@DeJaDont

I remember we had a friend as kids and she had one single tea party in her entire childhood. Her birthday consisted of us being ushered in quietly. Standing around a table and we each had a paper plate with a tiny sausage roll, a single crust free cheese spread triangle sandwich, a tiny hot dog and a ready salted crisp. We were given 3 minutes to eat before we were served a dessert of a spoon of cold rice pudding on a triangle of toast , in a plastic cup. Nobody apart from the birthday girl ate it and we were scolded for leaving it. We played one round of pass the parcel where my friend won the only and only prize after 20 seconds . The whole thing lasted 5 minutes before we were ushered out again. Very very strange and this was in 1990 and her parents drove new cars etc. They had all attended many other kids birthday parties including mine /my sisters and my mum always went OTT. It was like her mum and gone waaaaay the other way 🤷🏼‍♀️😂

This is really sad - sounds like quite a dysfunctional home ...

Thought of another one! Mil doesn’t like “wet food”. So no sauces or gravy on anything!!

Ridiculous.

On the subject of bread and butter with meals, my great grandmother always had a piece of bread and butter with her dinner. She said it was to 'take the richness off' 😂

As a teenager I went around a friend's house for tea and after the main course they got the breakfast cereal and milk out for dessert.

@Hallowbat

My parents eat cold corned beef and cold baked beans, can’t remember ever being forced to eat them but I find it strange, oh and cold rice pudding out the tin

I'm assuming this only sounds good because I'm pregnant 😂

We often had corned beef as a cold meat, and my Gran used to do cold baked beans as a standard salad plate ingredient.

@Claudia84

I put baked beans in cottage pie. I thought that was fairly standard?!

Baked beans aren’t in any cottage pie I’ve ever seen! Baked beans and mince 🤢

@Hallowbat

My parents eat cold corned beef and cold baked beans, can’t remember ever being forced to eat them but I find it strange, oh and cold rice pudding out the tin

I LOVE rice pudding out of the tin (has to be at room temperature not from the fridge - I am not a monster)

Sausages cooked in milk. As in boiled . Or poached I suppose. With mashed potato and the hot meaty milk as gravy.
Hi, I’m going to need to burn the entire internet to the ground to expunge the words “hot meaty milk”.

An ex-boyfriend’s family have Christmas mashed potatoes with chicken livers sort of blended and liquified and stirred in; they spoke of nothing else for WEEKS before we went round and this putrid thing took pride of fucking place in the middle of a fairly crap and meagre buffet, with them all circling round me smiling and nodding like a cult, encouraging me towards the livery mashed potato. Grim.

When i was a little kid in the late 70s i went to a school friend's b.party.

Asian family - the lovely grandma was only recently arrived in the UK. She was put in charge of pouring out the orange squash for the kids and and was happily stirring in a tea spoon of salt into each one.

I was SO confused and thanked her and went away and hid the drink

Looking back i'm thinking it was because it was used in her own country for hydration. Had no clue of that at the time though.

i love cold beans my mum always dished som up with salad

nothing wrong with cottage pie and beans

My grandma used to make me ‘ham sandwiches’. Except it wasn’t like any ham I’d encountered before, and it came out of a tin.
It was only when I was a bit older that I realised it was tongue 🤢.

Baked beans in cottage pie are very normal.

America - a stacks of pancakes along side the American version of a fry-up: they were aghast that I was aghast at the sheer size of breakfast.

@TheGrumpyGoat

My grandma used to make me ‘ham sandwiches’. Except it wasn’t like any ham I’d encountered before, and it came out of a tin. It was only when I was a bit older that I realised it was tongue 🤢.

OMG i ate so may tongue sandwiches as a child made by my Grandmother, despite the name I didn't realise it was some poor animal's actual tongue.

@MrsTerryPratchett
That does sound divine, I would have been happy with that!
However a far cry from these marge and shredded lettuce triangles

@whoopsnomore

One of the parents , the mum was a perfectly nice helper at our primary school. The dad I didn't really like. I never saw him smile once or even heard him speak more than two/three words. The house was immaculate but rather dated. And it had a very strange odour and that "party" was the only time anybody was ever allowed over the threshold. A few family came and went occasionally but nobody outside of that very small circle went in. My friend was my besty for years and she was incredibly food averse and ate the same packed lunch every day of primary, then in secondary. She was terrified of animals like cats and dogs. It was a very strange situation to be honest. But she was great fun when we were playing out sand always seemed happiest then. Maybe there was a lot more to it

Some of these are regional, I think. Cup of tea and bread and butter with every meal is normal here.

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.

I found it very odd when we had Christmas Dinner at my ex MIL and she did chips with it. Turkey, veg, all the trimmings - but chips. It felt a peculiar thing to add to your traditional Christmas Day.

@Allthesefolks

I remember being 4 and staying with my aunt and uncle while my mum was in labour, we had chip shop ships with gravy, my tiny mind was blown by the concept of gravy with chips!

Are you from the South and stayed up North?
Perfectly normal fodder up here! Chips, gravy and pea wet 😋

I grew up in the 60s and 70s, a working class household, and bread and butter being available with every meal was standard. As others have noted, a hangover from the days of less food, so filling up on bread.

My parents were scandalised when I told them the meals in halls of residence at university had no bread and butter.

Mind, I also love toast, butter and then dripping on the top.

DH is horrified by some of my eating habits...

Salad as my mum makes it has small separate piles of round lettuce leaves, raisins, ready salted crisps, occasionally salted peanuts, one or two quarter tomatoes, and some coleslaw.