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.

[quote ImFree2doasiwant]@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?[/quote]
He's from Suffolk - so maybe it's an East Anglian thing @Elderflower14 ?

@Standrewsschool

I know an elderly couple who still lay a breakfast table, have their main meal at lunch and have tea in the evening - bread, jam, cheese, cake etc, with tea.

That was my parents. If dad was on his own he’d fold the tablecloth so it only covered his half of the table. Breakfast things went out the night before - place settings, sugar bowl, toast rack etc (as well as the regular toast rack they have an expanding toast rack that looks like a spring and clips over the edge of a plate that they’d take on holiday if they were self catering.).

Dinner at dinner (lunch) time - between noon and 1 - would be soup, main and pudding - and tea at tea time (5pm) would be rolls/scone and cake of some sort. Supper (cup of tea and a biscuit) at 8-ish. They’re both pre-war, I think it’s more common that generation, and dad’s an early riser/early to bed so a big meal in the evening would be far too heavy!

@TReXX you’re the winner. Sultanas is fine but serving only one person at the table tinned pasta shapes. Amazing.

I'm from the Southern US. Drinking tea with a meal is standard, but it's iced tea ("the house wine of the South" per Truvy in Steel Magnolias).

We usually had (and still have) Saltine crackers with soup, or if we are feeling a bit fancy, a baguette.

Google is saying that sausages boiled in milk is a definite thing Delia Smith has a recipe

@harriethoyle

Oh we used to make bread ducks to float in our soup too! I had completely forgotten about it until you mentioned it.

Nothing weird at all about bread with soup in general though.

I love a cup of tea with certain meals - especially a chippy. DH is southern and thinks this is mad. I’ve recently had to stop drinking tea because it was triggering headaches and I am craving a brew so badly now!

My MIL serves curry with carrots and peas. So a lovely chicken tikka masala, pilau rice, samosas, naan bread and carrots and peas and sometimes broccoli. She doesn't use them to make a vegetable curry or side dish just serves them up like she would with a toast!

Some of these are normal to us, bread and butter with soup, pickled onions with shepherd's pie (I only discovered this a few years ago and at first turned my nose up but then tried them and wow!),

Also food in serving dishes on the table not plated up (I think it's weird when I go to someone else's house and they plate it all up instead of dished on the table).

The rule is homemade soup = posh bread; Heinz tomato = white ready-sliced plastic bread. You can’t mix and match. You CAN put a bit of lemon juice on top of soup and it’s AMAZING.

@limer must be the ones I know were Cambs but a stones throw from Norfolk. Weirdos.

Fondue. At a 4 year olds party.

The birthday girls mum invited a few of the kids from nursery but as they were so young us parents stayed. I assumed the fondue was a misguided attempt to impress but a few little 'stations' had been set up precariously and it was pretty dangerous. Not to mention my DC had CMPI and there was nothing else on offer other than the cake they did at the end, which looked and tasted like shit.

Was just very odd and the mum still bleats on about my "fussy" DC many years later.

We usually had (and still have) Saltine crackers with soup,

Oh I liked saltine. Crackers I don't think you can get them in the UK

@Limer..
We are Suffolk folk too!!

@hotmeatymilk I didnt know I knew this rule, but I've been following it anyway. I love heinz tomato and sliced white bread. We were never allowed butter on the bread when I was a child, it wasn't needed, apparently!

I remember being about 13 and a friend of mine was called in for tea. Id had mine at home so was allowed to stay and watch tv.

It was something like sausages rolls and crisps. Remember those chess flavoured golden nuggets puff balls?

I remember thinking they must not have much money because the dad was eating the same. I kind of felt sorry for them.

I remember on the French exchange, back in the day when you just stayed at someone's house. The getting in from school snack was a hunk of baguette with a plain chocolate bar in it. That's my kind of snack

@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.

We were invited to a dinner party at the home of a fairly high-ranking Army officer. There was little evidence, eg smells, of any cooking and we were all puzzled until the lady of the house announced that Dinner is served! The mobile chip van was outside for us to choose our dinner! This was very long before food being delivered to your home.

@Mrsjayy I googled too to see if I could find proof. Delia browns her sausages first which is definitely not the way I saw it done. Raw sausages, straight into the milk. I think Delia has tried to improve a really unpleasant local "delicacy"

@hotmeatymilk
We call that “sweaty salad” in our house. I’ve never before met anyone else who eats it. Sweaty salad solidarity! 😀

Oh god... an old friend of mine had been on an Indian cooking course. They had taught her how to make deep fried samosas so she gathered friends round after the course to make these deep fried samosas for us to try.

She wrapped them up in perfect triangles and chucked them in a big saucepan of oil. But she hadn't preheated the oils so they just slowly unfurled in the cold oil.

Once the oil had heated and they were "cooked" she poured the whole lot into a sieve over the sink so all the oils went down the sink into the drain.

Then she rinsed them in cold water.

We ordered a takeaway.

@MacMahon

Cracking an egg on a pizza before it goes in the oven.

We used to ask for a soft egg on our pizza every time went to Pizza Express. Four Seasons with a soft egg. They didn’t bat an eyelid!

The sliced and buttered iced bun is a real treat, more so if that iced bun has sultanas in it.

You can get iced buns with sultanas in?

@MrsTerryPratchett

My late MIL.

Roasts a chicken for too long, then slices it, removes the skin, leaves it in a plate in the oven. Driest meat I've every tasted. Like a meaty Ryvita.

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

I grew up in the 60s and money was tight. There was a rule that we had to eat 4 slices of buttered white bread with our tea every day. It was cheap and meant we ate less of the expensive stuff. My mum isn't much of a cook so the bread and butter was often the best but.

@KohlaParasanda

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.

We use homemade jelly as an accompaniment to meat. No different from redcurrant/mint/cranberry jelly.