Childhood Culinary Horrors

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JoeEkaitis

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Jim Lileks's Gallery of Regrettable Foods awakened a few memories. As a mother of seven children (5M/2F), Mom had to come up with ways to feed us all. Chili ladled over mashed potatoes was actually enjoyable. I can easily imagine Wolfgang Puck doing the same thing with turkey white bean chili and garlic mashed potatoes, garnished with a cracker made from a net of toasted Cheddar shreds. Ditto for stuffed cabbage extended the same way.

But sometimes, things went terribly wrong, like the misguided concoction called "Three-In-One" (no, NOT the light-duty lubricant). An innocent meatloaf is set atop a bed of sliced potatoes, drenched in several cans of whole peeled tomatoes and peas, and baked until it nearly floats in a dual-strata liquid with a layer of red-tinted grease floating on top and an opaque red layer below. It was served by digging a spoon into the meatloaf until it hit the bottom of the roasting pan, and then scooped up with the potatoes, peas and tomatoes. A few spoonfuls of the pan drippings complete the presentation.

Mom and Dad loved it, but we put it away as best we could: eating the meatloaf and potatoes while spreading out the peas and tomatoes until it looked like we had eaten most of it (which never fooled Mom and Dad).

When I left home to live on my own, I vowed I would never make Three-In-One and I've never looked back.

Oh, and Mom and Dad still speak to us, even when we describe Three-In-One to incredulous in-laws at family gatherings.

Your turn. :)
 

eldragon

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My maternal grandmother, although a fabulous baker, was a pretty bad cook. Lumpy potatoes were common holiday fare.


Once, my sister was there because she had MONO....and apparently my parents didn't want her to infect us. (Grandma just lived next door). My grandma served her cream of wheat with tomato soup - mixed.

I rest my case.
 

Sailor Kenshin

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Three-in-one actually sounds quite yummy compared to what my mother foisted upon us.

drunk.gif
 

Sailor Kenshin

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My mother's cooking was the reason I learned to cook at an early age. Pure self-defense.

Like her trademark, carbonized onions. I mean little black tiles of what were formerly perfectly good onions, the stench of which crept into every surface of the house, never to be eradicated.
sick.gif


The one thing she made that I actually liked was chopmeat, with a can of kidney beans dumped in, and a can of tomato sauce, served over spaghetti.

She called it "chili."

Compared to the rest, it was gooooood.
 

oswann

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My mother once steamed a cucumber thinking it was something else, I imagine. It was a horrid, flaccid mess, but my father ate it anyway saying it wasn't so bad. He didn't want to hurt her feelings.



Didn't stop her divorcing him.
Os.
 

thistle

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When I was in high school, my dad used to do all the cooking while Mom worked and took college night classes.

Dad also used to go hunting for squirrel. He never bagged any, though. He always "fell asleep in the woods."

I was a smart kid. You'd think I would have put two-and-two together when Dad didn't buy meat at the grocery store.

It wasn't until I came back from a year abroad that I finally realized why the chili always tasted so funny. I opened the freezer in the garage and found bag upon bag of frozen meat labeled, "Fresh game."

Yes, squirrel chili, squirrel stew, rodent-wiches.

Just to let you know: my dad was a big-time executive at a huge multi-national company. We weren't poor. My father was cheap, cheap, cheap.
 

JoeEkaitis

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eldragon said:
Once, my sister was there because she had MONO....and apparently my parents didn't want her to infect us. (Grandma just lived next door). My grandma served her cream of wheat with tomato soup - mixed.

I rest my case.
Please tell us she didn't try to pass it off as "polenta the way your mother likes it".
 

thistle

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Maybe someone can help me with this mystery.

When I spent my year abroad in Belgium, I visited a friend in Germany. My friend wasn't there when I arrived, so her mom and I had lunch while we waited for her. I don't speak much German beyond asking for a beer and a W.C., in that order. Susanne's mom didn't speak English or French. We pointed and nodded a lot.

Anyway, Frau Kohler served me this really weird dish that was like thick tomato soup with chunks of beef and...bananas. The soup/beef combo was OK, but the bananas were...unexpected.

Has anyone heard of such a thing? Is this a common German food? No one I've talked to has heard about it...
 

MadScientistMatt

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thistle said:
Yes, squirrel chili, squirrel stew, rodent-wiches.

Just to let you know: my dad was a big-time executive at a huge multi-national company. We weren't poor. My father was cheap, cheap, cheap.

My father sometimes served cooked squirrels too... but he never tried to pass it off as anything else. Brunswick stew is pretty good with them.

And there was a time my brother's pet rabbit got completely mean. It would, literally, bite the hand that fed it. We finally wound up shooting it and making it into stew.

But I think the worst dish in the family was when I tried cooking gingerbread. I was maybe nine at the time. I'm not actually sure what it tasted like. Nobody actually knew, because we only got as far as trying to cut it. Might as well have been trying to cut plywood with a kitchen knife. I never did figure out what I did wrong.
 

maestrowork

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Try making hard-boiled eggs with a microwave...

p.s. my dad had a big jar of Chinese rice wine filled with herbs and... baby mice and bugs and things I couldn't even recognize. It stayed in the kitchen cupboard for 3 years. Eventually he tossed it away (it just got too gross) at our (and my mom's) "gentle" suggestion...
 

Solatium

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Golly . . . about my worst food experience in childhood was getting a chicken sandwich at Wendy's and finding some gristle in it. I guess I had it pretty good. (And I was picky.)

Yeah, but then I went to a Seventh-day Adventist high school. Their vegetarian lunches were interesting -- things with names like Prime Stake (sic), Chik Fry, and Special K Loaf (which is exactly what it sounds like). I never understood the impulse among vegetarians to feed themselves on pale imitations of flesh meat; they're not only bad in comparison to the real thing, they're objectively bad.

One thing I actually did like was haystacks -- a buffet salad of corn chips, beans, shredded lettuce, cheese, salsa, and so forth. (Is this anything like the Frito salad robeiae mentioned?)

---

I suppose story about the Montana brownies would be OT . . .
 

Paint

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I was one of seven children too. (4b-3g) We had fried bologna. (balony?) Anyway...it curled up in the skillet and had pockets of grease in the center. We wolfed it down. Sick fare was milk toast. Butter toast heavily, pour over hot milk, salt and pepper. I consider it comfort food. We used to chicken fry squirrel. We always wondered why one pizza place in town had better pizza than anyone else. Finally they were arrested for putting Alpo dogfood horsemeat on the pizza. (This could be a childhood myth) Mom had a runny soup she called goulash. Ground beef, macaroni and ketchup. Amazingly I still want it when I go to her house!
 

BradyH1861

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My mom made this horrible, disgusting casarole. I have no idea what ingrediants went into it. I still gag just thinking about it. Anytime anyone came over to the house for supper, that is what she would serve. I refer to it as company casarole. She still threatens to make it for me from time to time...

Brady H.
 

arrowqueen

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My mother-in-law used to make tripe soup. I never ate any, but the smell and the look of it was quite enough to induce nausea.
 

arrowqueen

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Um...that doesn't quite qualify as 'childhood food'. Can I claim to have been a child-bride?
 

Fractured_Chaos

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My mother could burn water. Needless to say, we had alot of boxed, and frozen dinners. At least they were edible.

When Iw as 14, I gave my mother one too many grey hairs, so she sent me to live with my dad. He -liked- to cook, and was generally pretty darn good at it. He's the one who taught me, and taught me never to be afraid to experiment. This is much to my fiance's dismay, but I'll get to that in a minute.

My father, who is usually a wonderful cook, never used a recipe. He just seemed to have a knack. Like the cake he just threw together one time that had not just cinnamon and cocoa, but coffee, and mayo...and believe it or not...it was absolutely to die for. Unfortunately, he was never able to duplicate it. So don't ask me what all was in it, I couldn't tell you, if I tried.

But every now and again, he'd make something that defied description, and was just......horrendous!

Like the potato salad with radishes in it (I don't know what else he put in it, but it was disgusting). Or the attempt at coconut wine (which was tossed before it exploded). Cooking around my house was always an adventure, because you never knew what you were going to get. And I was always game to try -something- new and different. It might not be good, but nothing he made killed me. Well almost nothing....

He would always make fresh-squeezed lemonade in the summer, too. But he and I always disagreed about how much sugar went in it. He liked alot more than I did. So, my father decided to settle the arguement one time by not putting in any sugar at all. If I wanted sugar, I could add my own. Well, that was fine with me.

Except he forgot he did that, and took a huge swallow of lemonade...with NO sugar. At all! That time, I almost died!

From laughter!

My father was an avid fisherman. So when the weather was right, we always had fresh fish.

My dad also liked making his own bait.

He also made his own BBQ sauce, which he cooked in the crock pot on low for several days, adding ingredients a little at a time. And naturally, I was always sampling it the whole time it cooked.

One day, I came home from school, and discovered he had something in the crockpot that didn't look like his usual BBQ sauce, but remember, my father always experimented. It smelled funky as all get out, but that's not always so unusual around that house. So I took a taste.

It was the most gawdawful thing I had ever tasted in my life! And I've tasted some nasty stuff my father had made, believe me. NOTHING ever made me nearly gag and puke quite like that...whatever it was did.

So here I am, hanging overt the kitchen sink, making horrible retching noises, when my father walks in, and just leans against the doorway with his arms wrapped around his stomach, laughing until tears ran down his face. I, personally, failed to see the humour in the situation, but he sure did!

When I stopped wretching, and rinsed my mouth out with whatever was handy (Dad, bless his heart, handed me his beer), and when my father could finally catch his breath, he calmly informed me that he was cooking up a new bait recipe. I know it had liver and limberger cheese in it, I don't remember what else.

I don't think we ever got rid of the smell either.

Come to think of it...Dad ended up throwing away the crock pot.

But he did catch some big-azzed catfish that year.

As for what my father teaching me about cooking that my fiance regrets? I'm a very good cook (I will follow a recipe for some things). I've even -tried- to screw up, and it just doesn't happen. So, needless to say, Sam has gained some weight since we met, and he blames it all on me! :ROFL:
 

Maryn

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I was in my first apartment when I learned that vegetables didn't come in 6 x 8 x 2 rectangles but could be purchased fresh and were really rather tasty. Who knew?

My mom was a lot of terrific things, but cook wasn't among them.

Maryn
 
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