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've always found it really interesting how other people serve their food. I've never really experienced anything BAD (other than perhaps my first meal cooked by now DH when we were at uni), but just different to what I was/am used to.

E.g. my dad will always serve up foods into a small buffet if he's cooking for anyone more than just himself (even if he's making homemade breaded chicken and chips, he won't plate up EVER, always puts it in bowls on the side in the kitchen and starts a buffet line - even if its just the 3 of us). Even when cooking for just him and my step mum, he'll decant the chips or rice or whatever the 'side' is into a large bowl. I understand not wanting to serve too much, but why can't he ask as he serves? Just to create extra washing up? I don't know, he didn't do it when I was growing up (but we also didn't have a dishwasher).

My friend of mine had 5 siblings, and I loved going to her house as a teenager, as there always seemed to be so many options for dinner. There were always extra friends, grandparents, etc over so there were often 10 or more people to feed and there'd be such a mix of food on the table. I think leftovers would just be bought out at the next dinner as there wasn't enough to served everyone again. Large boxed salads, a bowl of sweetcorn, a bowl of peas, a lasagne, herby potatoes, mashed potatoes, sausages, shredded roast chicken, jug of gravy, half a fish pie. As an only child of divorced parents I LOVED IT, as my houses were very "you eat what you're given" and were just me sat alone as parents ate later.

@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.

I'm convinced my otherwise excellent local Indian restaurant does this with the salad on the starters.

A friend I lived with would buy a whole chicken for a roast. Serve the breasts and chuck the rest. I almost died. But obviously the next time time got in there quick and rescued the rest of the chicken for myself.

This thread is so odd! So much of this is normal!

@evilharpy I'd love to eat that!

Nothing weird but I have a friend who caters very small portions and then puts it in a large serving bowl where you help yourself.

So often there is for example six or eight of us, each one will carefully take a small serving of bolognaise and pasta from th bowls to make sure it goes round all of us and no one goes without.

I find it odd, when I’m catering I always have left overs. And folks can eat their fill. So does everyone else I know. But this one friend always cooks a small amount.

They are very comfortably financially and it’s really not her being tight, she will throw booze at you, it’s simply she cooks very small portions for everyone. As in you get about half a ready meal worth of each. Which generally results in us all be8ng starving later and raiding her fridge 😂

@BIoodyStupidJohnson

Schoolfriend’s family had a toaster in pretty much every room. Lounge — toaster. Dining room — toaster. Bedrooms — toaster.

Blimey.

Did they use them in every room ?

‘Hot meaty milk’ is one of the worst combinations of words I’ve ever come across
Indeed, but I’ve been needing a name change.

My PILs are also of the “no drinks with meals, only slices of bread” ilk. I’ve never knowingly been served a vegetable there in my life. But DP finds going to my parents weirder and more stressful: everything in serving bowls! Salad! Starters and dressings! What are all these spoons for?

@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.

I always put baked beans in my cottage pie . Makes the gravy lovely and rich.

American here. We ALWAYS had a big glass of milk and bread and butter with every meal.

First time having dinner round my partners brothers he made us spag bol.... with baked beans in... tasted alright but i personally wouldnt add it in myself at home.

Partners mother served bread with mince and gravy with veg mixed in, like sheppards pie but bread instead of mash. My partner loves it and if he knows im going on the walk past the bakery asks if we can have mince and bread for dinner with the bread beeing from the bakery.

@MissAmbrosia

Egg and chips done well is thing of beauty.

Oh yes. I remember being delighted by this when I first encountered it as a student in the UK. It was my favorite thing to order in a cafe.

What I really love but I’m told is odd and no one but me eats: the little warm nappy bag of shredded lettuce, dry cucumber slice and mealy tomato wedge - sometimes a lemon wedge too - that comes with a chicken tikka starter with Indian takeaway. Absolute manna.

my dad will always serve up foods into a small buffet if he's cooking for anyone more than just himself (even if he's making homemade breaded chicken and chips, he won't plate up EVER, always puts it in bowls on the side in the kitchen and starts a buffet line - even if its just the 3 of us). Even when cooking for just him and my step mum, he'll decant the chips or rice or whatever the 'side' is into a large bowl. I understand not wanting to serve too much, but why can't he ask as he serves?

I do this, I never ever serve, i only did it when my daughter was little. Past that I put the food in bowls and let everyone help themselves, I hate being served a portion too unless in a restaurant.

@Limer were you never tempted by the hot meaty milk and the soft sausages?? ? I have never met anyone who has heard of sausages boiled in milk, where is your Dh from?

Ooh I had homemade cottage pie this evening made by DH that contained baked beans….delicious.

Cup of tea with a meal? Only if it’s a cooked breakfast.

A strange thing at a friend’s house when I was a teenager - her Dad made a lovely roast but instead of gravy, he heated up a can of Heinz oxtail soup and poured it over their meals. This happened even Saturday when they had their weekly roast. Weird.

@Idontlike we always had beans on cottage pie at home. Amazing

@butterflyze

We've eaten meals at a friend's house several times, and not once have I ever seen so much as a scrap of anything resembling veg, salad or fruit in their house. It is such a standing joke between me and DH that we have real trouble keeping a straight face while we're there.

Tell a lie: fried onion & ketchup with the hot dogs. Otherwise nothing. Nil.

That’s nice…your poor friends though.

My dad always used to get hot dogs out of a can, fry them in a wok and add peas and crushed potatoes and sweetcorn in, he used to have it as a snack at weekends with his glass of whisky.

dish my mum made in the early 1990s, which I have never forgotten although I think she only made it once: beetroot jelly

Oh my. Aunt used to make beetroot jelly I quite .like it.

@cantgetmyheadroundit

What's weird about sliced white bread with soup?

Exactly. What else would you have with soup?!

When I was a teenager, one of my schoolfriends joined us for one of my family's autumn foraging outings, on this case picking blackcurrants. When my mother had made the blackcurrants into jam, she gave my friend a jar. My friend's mum invited me to have dinner with them. They were well-to-do people and it was a lovely dinner, roast beef and all the trimmings. And then she brought out the jar of blackcurrant jam and my eyes almost fell out of my head when everyone put a dollop on to their plate and ate it with their roast dinner. In my household, jam was for spreading on bread and butter or adding to semolina or rice pudding. We'd never have eaten it with a main course.

More recently, I discovered that my husband likes a variation of beans on toast which involves stirring scrambled egg into the beans. Blergh.

What does everyone have with soup if not buttered bread????

@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.

OMG this reminded me of going to lunch or something on school journey at some butlins type place and every day they served tinned tomatoes as a cold side! I was shocked that anyone would do this at the time!

We used to have oxtail soup with chips. A bowl of soup for everyone, then a big bowl of hone fried chips in the middle of the table (in the 80scwhen we had a chip pan)