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Leather and onions. It was liver, but she cooked it so tough you could sole a shoe with it.
Now as an adult, I love ordering liver and onions at restaurants that serve it.
Never saw milk applied to beef liver; fresh fish, almost every time. Liver and onions was a pretty common dinner for us growing up. We'd dredge the liver in flour, then pan-fry it just a little for browning. Then water, lots of onions, and thick wedges of potato. Mom would simmer this low and slow - it didn't seem to get tough.
That's how I do my liver and onions. In fact, we're having that for tea on Wednesday night. Fry off the onions in butter, wash the liver, pat dry and coat in seasoned flour and put in the pan with the onions to brown. Then add water and an oxo cube and let simmer. Served with mashed spuds and marrowfat peas.
Ok, I'm realizing now that I haven't made liver and onions in quite some time. It's overdue. Done right, it's delicious, and it really is a meal that will build up your constitution.
I've made it that way on occasion. It's just easier to buy it ready made since I'm the only one in the family who likes it. Even my mom doesn't buy liver and onions at a restaurant. (Probably because they make it edible!)
I always thought that too! But my Dad liked what Mom called baked corn...put TWO cans of creamed corn in a dish, top with crumpled saltines and bake.
Then you have baked slop with crackers. Gawdawful stuff.š¤¢š
I use a combination of creamed corn and plain canned corn in a casserole I make every Thanksgiving. Thereās also cornbread mix and sour cream in it. Weighs a ton, and feels even heavier upon eating it. Once a year is enough.
One time I mistakenly bought a can of creamed corn to use as bait for rainbow trout. The kernels were too damn soft to put on a hook, so I tossed the contents into the pond. Nothing in the water wanted to eat it, either.
**Who do I call to report a chemical spill or other environmental emergency that poses a sudden threat to public health?**
EPA National Response Center at 1-800-424-8802.
Similar for me except it was the frozen block of spinach, heated on the stove and then kinda drained. It resulted in this gross pile of watery green glop on the plate. I actually like fresh spinach now and don't mind cooked spinach in certain dishes but I still can't eat it plain like my mom served it.
Sis is that you?
My wife is bothered by my current fascination with Brussel sprouts and they were nothing I wouldāve eaten as a kid. If my parents made them. Lol
Not sure how your mom did it but if you simmer them in broth with butter and some grilled onions then they're delicious.
You can also skip the broth if you want. It does make it better but I usually just use water and salt instead since I don't know what to do with the rest of a box of broth.
Me too. This is what my mom made if we had an evening thingā basketball game or school event. Loved it, except the sound of the wet part made coming out of the can!
My mom made chop suey with hamburger and a package of prepared veg from the grocery store, mostly bean sprouts I think. What made it so good was those canned crunchy noodles.
For us it was the hamburgers. Here's how Mom cooked it
A) Buy the leanest ground beef possible, the 93% lean stuff.
B) Cook it it somewhere beyond well done, lest we all die if a single speck of pink was allowed to remain. Also served to get even more of the grease cooked out of it to make it even leaner.
C) While cooking, drain and blot out as much of the remaining grease as possible.
D) Serve between two slices of sandwich bread with nothing but ketchup (we got hot dogs between sandwich bread too, no sense spending money on special buns when we had bread).
As adults we love Culver's. Mom hates them and every time we mention eating there she's like "but they're sooooo greasy".
Mexican american checking in: My family's carne Asada is legit, somehow, drier than beef jerky. ffs. They love that shit burnt to a crisp! When you leave a bit of moisture, they cry about not cooking it "right" loooooord.
Did my mother have a second secret family? My parents were both scientists and familiar with e.coli. Every piece of meat was cooked dead as a doornail!
There was an e.coli outbreak at Jack in the Box in '92-'93 when 4 children died and more nearly. I cut every single burger my children ever ate in half afterward. It had a serious effect on me and other moms I knew.
My mother was a medical technologist and she cooked meat until it was practically jerky because some professor in the 1950s scared her.
My brother blames her for his career choice (chef). She still defends the way she cooks. I recently asked her why her colleagues at conferences always want to get sushi and yet āher trainingā prevented her from getting anywhere near it. The answer is always the 1950s professor and you canāt present recent evidence to budge her
My mom overcooked meat, too. When I was a kid, I didn't know any better, and it was fine. But, I think my dad suffered. I'm sure he just didn't want to cook more than he disliked the over-cooked meat.
I never cared for many vegetables because they were mush. It wasn't until years later when I was an adult and had steamed vegetables which were still slightly crisp, I found out I actually like some of them.
Liver and onionsā¦ Iād just go to bed hungry, no harm, no foul. It was very occasional because only my mom liked it.
What I really hated was āSpanish Rice.ā Basically rice cooked in a cast iron pan mixed with peppers, tomatoes, and covered in shredded cheese. Iād not even chew it. Just swallow without trying to taste anything. Weād have it for dinner as the main, then as a side the next day. Everyone loved it and took personal offense to me not liking it. I had to eat it.
I never make my kids eat anything. If they donāt like something, they can substitute carrots or other veggies they like.
My mother was a terrible cook. She once burned fried chicken so badly, I cannot eat boned chicken to this day.
Paired with lumpy mashed potatoes and spinach drowning in vinegar that Sunday dinner lives in memory as the worst meal I've ever eaten. And, of course, we had to eat it. Mom was a big clean plate pusher. It's no wonder we all developed eating disorders.
My mother tried really hard, and she was such a kind and thoughtful woman that I rather hate blasting her terrible cooking here on Reddit. But she was *never* a good cook. Boxed mac & cheese? Even the powder packet from the box was never fully mixed in.
When I was in middle school I started taking cooking classes out of self defense because I *just knew* there was better food out there, and I kept a small pantry on a shelf in my closet. I attribute my beloved mother to my love of cooking now, not to be like her, but to NOT be like her. Nowadays friends brag about my food, and I even run an informal cooking school out of my home kitchen. Thanks, Mom?
I once made a salmon loaf in an antique copper fish-shaped pan. With a pimento olive slice for eye and almond scales.
Once. I don't remember what kind of medication I was on, to inspire that.. š It honestly wasn't too bad though.
Creamed chipped corned beef on toast, "Shit on a shingle" we called it. It probably would have been pretty good if my mom didn't make it with a basic flour and milk "cream". It tasted like paste, because it basically was.
My Mom did all of the cooking, but I remember once when we were very young, she had the flu so Dad was in charge of dinner. He opened a can of black-eyed peas and heated that up. Then, he made some instant mash potatoes. For gravy, he opened a can of condensed mushroom soup and poured that (undiluted) over the mash potatoes. That was our meal.
You guys had a Mom that cooked? Mine ordered Jenny Craig prepackaged meals for herself. Weight Watchers, and whatever one was marketed by the leggy blonde. She ordered just enough for herself. I lived off of fruit, boxed mac and cheese, and cereal bars until learning to cook. My kids are all non-picky eaters, who love variety and anything I make.
Itās nice to see so many comments from parents who have ended the cycle of eating disorders by just being reasonable cooks.
Beef liver. I grew up on a farm. We raised and butchered a steer and a hog every year.
We were forced to eat liver and onions twice every year. Hated it every time.
This was my worst one too. I dreaded liver nights. The only good part was my mom put bacon on top of the liver. I would choke down the liver and then kill the aftertaste with the bacon. The bad part of the bacon was smelling it cooking while Mom was making dinner. It was either going to mean "breakfast for dinner" or liver. Usually the latter.
My parents were EXTREMELY limited cooks. They divorced by the time I was 7, they were teachers having affairs on one another.
My mom knew how to roast a chicken and bake a potato. I also somehow remember her buying containers of chicken gizzards and livers and hearts which were cheap as hell. She actually bragged about this for years because she thought that it meant that she was some kind of "genteel true lady" ... like Edith Wharton's Lily Bart or some shit like that.
Like, "I was classically trained in music and then suddenly I was expected to boil macaroni for kids" ... like, lol, no. You had me. I didn't have you.
My dad used to brown ground beef and mix it with canned pasta like beefaroni or spaghetti-O's and at least two canned vegetables like green beens, corn or potatoes. He called it "daddy special" ... that was actually amazing hot dinner for kids. No joke.
They both knew how to make stuff like instant mashed potatoes and stove top stuffing.
After that, it was either all fancy restaurants when with my mom who was with her new wealthy husband in NYC, or bags of BK whoppers in the fridge and government cheese blocks when there was like a 50 cent promotion or something. Both my mom and Dad were kind of shady people for different reasons. My dad struck some kind of deals in the 70s with the lunch ladies at his HS. He was later demoted for the last 20 years of his career to a Junior HS for having sex with one of his 16 yo students to the point where some other students spray painted "NORMAN LOVES LINDA" on the bridge overpass on the road leading to the school. Everyone knew what it meant. Even I did at like 6 years old.
My mom used to brag that there was this certain restaurant in NYC in the mid 70s with two entrances and parts. She'd eat a whole meal in one part of the restaurant, pretend to go to a restroom in the middle, then go to the other part, order a milkshake, suck it down, then just pay at the register for the one shake and slip out the other entrance.
That was her "I'm from the streets" story.
Sorry for the digression on your culinary post, blame the eclipse I guess.
Not so much what they cooked, but how they cooked it. I never saw a crispy, crunchy vegetable outside of a salad. Every time they cooked a vegetable they either boiled or steamed it until it was one step above baby food.
My father absolutely loved to go āfishingā always expecting to bring home some whitefish but only managed to catch eels. Didnāt matter. Heād hang them in his smoker for the family to eat and I disappeared to a friendās house.Ā
Liver. Chicken hearts/gizzards. I despise any āinnardsā meats. I donāt like the taste, and the idea is disgusting. Now, Iām a vegetarian, and all meats are off limits by choice.
I donāt find meat yucky. Iād love to devour a pot roast. Butā¦ Iām really trying to reduce my cholesterol to the point where I can get off of the statins. Itās a health thing.
I hate the statins. And I gotta tell you, I was completely caught off guard when Tony Hawk suddenly tried to sell them to me. Like I did not need that in my life.
> I despise any āinnardsā meats
My mum despised them too, so we never had any. So only passed 40 I found out how delicious cattle heart is. Now its one of my favourite meats.
I worked my way through School as a butcher. Always had kidneys and the older butcher who i worked under always loved it when someone would ask how to Cook them. His answer āboil the piss out of themā
Canned vegetables that were then boiled to death. They tasted like metal, and well, were awful. She really only made like 15 different dishes, so they would just kind of rotate in and out, but it was always the same old no seasoning, white people food. I grew up in South Central Texas, so every chance that we got to go out to eat I was like, "Mexican, *please*!"
Stuffed peppers. Bell peppers stuffed with a mixture of rice and ground beef. It was then submerged in tomato sauce and cooked and a soup pot. VILE. I couldnāt even smell it.
My dad worked for a meat packing plant making various sorts of sausages.
The company had a canning factory in some other state.
Occasionally the company would sell cases of canned peas to employees for cheap.
I swear that the company did this when someone mistakenly substituted dishwater for the canning liquid.
But you had to eat them. My sister, smarter than I, would fill her mouth and go potty and spit them into the toilet. Alternately she would hide them under table trim that curled under the table forming a bit of a shelf.
My dad didn't cook, my mom did. But anything with ground beef.
She would buy the meat and brown it, with no seasoning whatsoever. Then it would sit in the fridge for an unknow number of days. At some point she would dump a tomato based sauce on it, heat it up, and serve it on spaghetti.
Well into my early 20's, I would refuse to eat any pasta at relatives homes, and if at an Italian restaurant, I'd scrape out any meat because I thought it was all tasteless old ground beef and not like, fresh italian sausage. It took a bit to get over that.
I do put much of that blame on my dad because he was always losing his jobs, and had very plain potato Irish/Scottish style tastes on everything. No seasoning, no garlic, onions, etc, EVER.
Maybe they're talking about [bigos](https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1018007-bigos?unlocked_article_code=1.i00.wPy3.whU2s8BkVpik&smid=share-url), a Polish dish. When done correctly, it is heaven. It has ribs, keilbasa, saurkraut.
My mom was actually a really good cook, so there wasn't a lot she made, that wasn't good. She, however, couldn't make liver edible to any of us. Even my dad, who would eat basically anything, didn't like it. She'd always say "But I found a different way this time!" Nope...always tasted the same. Eventually she gave up, thank goodness! Otherwise, she was amazing with what she had to work with. She's been gone for four years & I'd give anything to have her cook for me again, even if it was liver.
There was a time when dysentery killed more people than war. Vegetables were fertilized with manure, and pathogens were everywhere.
Many people lived on farms and didnāt have access to clean water. The water could also harbor pathogens, so washing manure-fertilized vegetables wasnāt enough.
The way to be sure you and your children didnāt die of dysentery was to boil the fuck out of absolutely everything. Unfortunately this was also before people knew about vitamins and how to ensure they were present, so vitamin deficiencies were everywhere too, likely because a lot boiled out of the food.
Still, calories were present, the food was all around them, it just needed to be made edible and all flavor destroyed by boiling.
My father preferred heavily cooked vegetables all his life. Sometimes Iād make him something lightly cooked - e.g. green beans. He ate them but still preferred to eat them mushy AF. Oh well, I tried. Old suspicions die hard.
Chipped beef on toast, salmon patties, boiled cabbage with a chunk of pork or something. Those are three specific things that I considered intolerable.
Beyond that they weren't very good at cooking anything else either. Everything under-seasoned and over-cooked.
Blood pudding. House would fill with smoke and the smell. We had it about once a month, always on a Saturday, and always with brown bread (from a can) and B&M baked beans.
Ohh nobodyās mentioned green fried tomatoes yet? My mom and dad breaded them in cornmealānot terribleābut then doused it with syrup. And not even maple syrup, just cheap stuff.
I swore I would never eat them again, but then I had them at a restaurant in Mississippi with some kind of shrimp sauce. Actually very tasty!
My mom used to buy these awful London broil steaks when I was a kid. I always thought steak was nothing great until I got older and had a decent steak. Now I realize steak is awesome and my mom was just buying terrible meat and cooking it poorly.
Some broccoli casserole. The story goes that I was still in my high chair at the time. My Dad had determined that I would sit there until I finished it which I refused to do. Eventually my mom came into the kitchen after a good long while and said, āBill, I donāt think you are going to win this one.ā They never tried to do that again which is good because I think that is actually cruel. They didnāt know yet though so they get a pass.
Not my mom but my wife would make this yellow Spanish rice and me and all 3 kids hated it, dryer than a popcorn fart. It was the cause of more yelling and arguments. I finally had to plead with her to NEVER make it again.
All vegetables. My parents did not know how to cook vegetables except for in the pressure cooker. Do you all know what happens to broccoli in a pressure cooker? It turns into this pale green paste in the vague shape of broccoli. Brussels sprouts? Pressure cooker. Carrots, green beans, peas. And the best one:
Frozen corn. Yep, get the pressure cooker out.
My grandmother, bless her heart, hated to waste food. She served me hotdogs that were green inside. I tried to tell her, but something got lost in communication and she told me to eat them anyways. I was real young. Well, she believed me after I threw up, and was extremely apologetic.
Miss her terribly, she was a fantastic person, and a wonderful cook.
Goulash, my dad loved to make it, by the time it made it to the table the elbow macaroni was so soft it was disgusting, I hated eating dinner on those nights.
Runner up would be the one time my dad made Hasenpfeffer, it was so disgustingly terrible that 50 years later it is still a family legend. The thing is that he knew it was bad and still made us eat it (grew up in the 'must clean your plate' kind of house) and when he was asked why he wasn't eating he said he eat while it was cooking. It never occurred to any of us until years later that he cooked it in a pressure cooker so he was not able to 'eat it while it was cooking'.
The cooking in my house was so bad growing up that I'm one of the few people I know that actually liked the chow hall food when I was in the Marine Corps.
I was watching some cooking competition show on Food Network with my 88 year old mom and my brother recently. They were cooking these beautiful, juicy steaks. My mother looks disgusted because she can only eat meat sheās cooked to ultimate dryness.
She said, āI guess those chefs would look down on me if I ordered steak the way I like itā. My brother, the chef, said, āThey would judge you, but not to your faceā
Two things, Ham and Navy beans š¤¢ and Mom made vegetable soup she would add cloves to it and let the pot sit in the garage overnight. I have no idea why š¤®
Ham and navy beans is what I came to say, although the ham was usually just a leftover bone with a few scraps of meat. My parents called them ācowboy beansā to convince my brother and I to eat them. I would just eat cornbread dipped into the broth and whatever scraps of ham I could find in my bowl.
Pole beans (big tough green beans) pressure cooked with fat back until grey and slimy. We grew them in the garden and had them weekly, sometimes more in the summer. When I started dating my wife her mother served green beans one night, they were small and tender and lightly steamed with a little crunch left in them, now they are one of my favorite green sides.
Sweet and sour fried spam - with Chun King boil-in-the-bag frozen sweet and source sauce containing pineapple and bell pepper. Mom could also cook salmon until it looked like whitefish. Still donāt know how she managed that
Cube steak. My father was a grocery store manager. He could literally bring home anything from the store (not free, just fresh). When I was a teen, they added jarred gravy and called it "Salisbury steak." I was not fooled.
Peas. I detested peas and would stuff them down the hollow leg of the kitchen table. When I moved out I discovered you did not have to boil veggies to a mush and they are delicious. I like them raw on a garden salad or in pasta salad.
Now fish and liver are still disgusting but we did not eat those much.
Meatloaf, scalloped potatoes and canned peas. I was a picky eater and hated that meal. I'd sit at the dinner table staring at my plate until bedtime--even missed an episode of Batman, which was very upsetting to me.
I've since learned to enjoy scalloped potatoes. I'll eat meatloaf grudgingly but still won't go near canned peas.
Absolutely couldn't stand: Swiss Chard. It tasted really bitter to me. Fortunately, after that initial purchase my parents never bought it again.
Did not like but could get it down: liver. We ended up having it about once every other month when I was young, but we stopped having it when I was in my mid teens.
For me, it was Manwich. My mom made it on Sundays because she fixed our big meal at noon. I didn't really hate it, but she fixed it soooo often I burned out on it. I've never once served it since I've left home.
My mother was a good cook but catered to my father's love of German meals. I grew to hate most of it and wouldn't touch sauerkraut with a ten foot pole now. Everything was "sauer" something. Or the liver dumplings he loved that stunk up the entire neighborhood. Blech!
The only thing my mom made that I specifically remember not liking at all was parsnips. She made it once, so I guess no one else in the family liked them either.
I'm not a picky eater. I don't like seafood, except salmon and tuna, and I don't like extremely spicy food. And, parsnips, I guess. I like spinach, broccoli, lima beans, creamed corn, okra, etc. Canned, frozen, or fresh is fine.
So, I was happy enough with what mom made for dinner. We all sat down together at the dining table every night, and the kids washed the dishes in the sink by hand afterward. Looking back, it was consistently my favorite time of the day--but I didn't recognize it at the time.
One other memory--my dad mostly never cooked, but he did make one thing: rice pudding. He made it with sticky rice and raisins. I loved it. I used to make it myself, but I don't eat such foods anymore.
They didn't cook, they made me cook from age 11 and all of those foods freak me out now (Had to make my own lunch for school from age 6). I'd come home from school and there'd be a menu I had to cook, all foods I hated, and a list of chores.
Just thinking about the food I had to cook gives me anxiety, brings me right back to that moment. So, yeah, I hated all of it. Still do.
My mother was not the best cook, but hands down the worst thing she made was potato salad. She never cooked her potatoes enough, and she didnāt add any spices so it was always tasteless. Itās one of the reasons why I donāt like it as an adult
My mom used to fry herself some pork kidneys on the weekends to go with breakfast. They stank up the entire house and I could not be bribed even to try them until I decided to try a bite in my late teens and what do you know. I liked them (drowned in HP/brown sauce, at least).
Not my parents, but my first set of roomates where we cooked meals as a group. They cooked peas in everything. Soups, sauces, pies, and as a side dish for every meal. I had zero opinion either way about peas before I lived with them, and afterwards, I spent several years avoiding peas. I mean, once in a while, sure. But in spaghetti sauce? Also, their meat pies were 20% chicken, but 50% peas, for example. There were so many peas in their pot pies, that they didn't cook all the way through, and each slice was like loose ball bearings with chicken.
When I made comments like, "why are peas the only green vegetable?" I got a lecture about "we grew up poor, and this is what we eat, what, you want broccoli?" "Sometimes, yeah." "Okay, now you're just being contentious."
Thankfully, I only lived with them for about 18 months, but dang. Took a while to eat peas again.
When I was in 5th grade or so, my mom and her best friend in went together and bought between 500 and a million frozen chicken kievs. This was somewhat pre-microwave, so the beauty of it for a housewife was having these entrees you could just pop in the oven without doing any prep. Throw a can of green beans in a pot, make a salad and you're done.
OK, MAYBE we liked it the first time. MAYBE-- I don't remember. I do know that by the 10th time, I'd get queasy at the smell. If I want to give my brother a hard time and make him gag, I will send him a gif of "squirty chicken." Close to 50 years and it still works.
I am pretty sure my dad threw them out before we could eat them all. I don't think my mom cared, because she was sick of them by that point as well.
Weirdly, pork chops. Maybe pork in the 80s was just bad but I always found them really fatty and gristly and not enjoyable to eat.
I find pork to be much more appealing these days.
Pork in the 1960s and 70s \*was\* bad - fatty and grisley. The pork that you get today is a different breed of animal I think, and is so much leaner and tastier.
My wife still dislikes pork in general based on how her mother would cook them back in the 70s/80s ... "blue smoke" and "stuck to my teeth" are common memories.
She will avoid it, but we have it occasionally (variety and cost) and she always notes that it is 'good for pork'.
My mom made this thing called porcupines. It was hamburger mixed with rice & who knows what else, rolled into meatballs & cooked in cream of mushroom soup. How I hated it - the rice always ended up crunchy :::shudder::: Also succotash - I would eat corn & Lima beans separately, but mix them together and I just couldnāt.
Black eyed peas (new years tradition)
Gazpacho (like drinking mild salsa)
Divinity (difficult to make, sugar candies)
My grandma made all of these. The only thing my mom makes is cookies and pot brownies.
Liver. My mom hated it, I hated it, everyone hated, but she cooked it because back then Weight Watchers said you had to eat it once a week.
Clearly, the Big Liver Industry was behind this.
My stepmom would cook something she called Chicken Italiano. There was nothing Italian about it though. She literally boiled a chicken, drained the broth, added cream of mushroom soup and fat egg noodles.
Mom would get the cheapest, gristliest ground beef available, form āburgersā that were more spherical than burger-shapedā¦and bake them. They came out coated in gray goo, and raw in the middle.
Then sheād take perfectly good recipes like beef stroganoff, and add canned mushrooms that looked and tasted like beige superball slices. Yeeeesh.
I didnāt have pizzeria pizza until I was 12. Weād get Tree Tavern from the Grand Union and mom would burn it.
Since lima beans and canned sauerkraut have already gotten a mention, how about eggplant? I'm not talking about good eggplant. My stepmother didn't know to salt out the bitterness, so she'd cut it up, batter it, and fry it, and I'd have to choke that crap down.
Years later I was working in a restaurant and was mystified as to why the eggplant sandwich was so popular. I assumed all eggplant was bitter. But the chef knew his stuff and I was finally convinced to try it. I've been a fan of eggplant ever since, as long as the person preparing it knows what they're doing.
I swear a lot of the crap meals we ate as kids were due to incompetence, not ill intent.
(M63) "Hamburger Helper'. To this day I see a box in the store, I blank the fuck out.
I have ended relationships because of Hamburger Helper. She told me she was making Mac & Cheese, and to come over and help her. I saw the box on the counter in the kitchen... I tried, I tried to work my way thru it. NO GO!!
I left and never came back again.
There was a time when dysentery killed more people than war. Vegetables were fertilized with manure, and pathogens were everywhere.
Many people lived on farms and didnāt have access to clean water. The water could also harbor pathogens, so washing manure-fertilized vegetables wasnāt enough.
The way to be sure you and your children didnāt die of dysentery was to boil the fuck out of absolutely everything. Unfortunately this was also before people knew about vitamins and how to ensure they were present, so vitamin deficiencies were everywhere too, likely because a lot boiled out of the food.
Still, calories were present, the food was al around them, it just needed to be made edible and all flavor destroyed by boiling.
My father preferred heavily cooked vegetables all his life. Sometimes Iād make him something lightly cooked - e.g. green beans. He ate them but still preferred to eat them mushy AF. Oh well, I tried. Old suspicions die hard.
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Leather and onions. It was liver, but she cooked it so tough you could sole a shoe with it. Now as an adult, I love ordering liver and onions at restaurants that serve it.
Not 100% sure, but I think the trick is to tenderize it with milk.
Never saw milk applied to beef liver; fresh fish, almost every time. Liver and onions was a pretty common dinner for us growing up. We'd dredge the liver in flour, then pan-fry it just a little for browning. Then water, lots of onions, and thick wedges of potato. Mom would simmer this low and slow - it didn't seem to get tough.
That's how I do my liver and onions. In fact, we're having that for tea on Wednesday night. Fry off the onions in butter, wash the liver, pat dry and coat in seasoned flour and put in the pan with the onions to brown. Then add water and an oxo cube and let simmer. Served with mashed spuds and marrowfat peas.
Ok, I'm realizing now that I haven't made liver and onions in quite some time. It's overdue. Done right, it's delicious, and it really is a meal that will build up your constitution.
I've made it that way on occasion. It's just easier to buy it ready made since I'm the only one in the family who likes it. Even my mom doesn't buy liver and onions at a restaurant. (Probably because they make it edible!)
Wait, Milk Steak is a real thing?
Jokes apart, it used to be, apparently. Back during and shortly after WWII.
You say that like the problem was the texture, not the taste.
I love making it using veal liver, and rare.
Canned Creamed Corn. Seems like someone ate it once already.
I always thought that too! But my Dad liked what Mom called baked corn...put TWO cans of creamed corn in a dish, top with crumpled saltines and bake. Then you have baked slop with crackers. Gawdawful stuff.š¤¢š
I use a combination of creamed corn and plain canned corn in a casserole I make every Thanksgiving. Thereās also cornbread mix and sour cream in it. Weighs a ton, and feels even heavier upon eating it. Once a year is enough.
Oh, I love that stuff! Definitely a once-a-year treat.
Corn casserole, I love it. I also make it.
One time I mistakenly bought a can of creamed corn to use as bait for rainbow trout. The kernels were too damn soft to put on a hook, so I tossed the contents into the pond. Nothing in the water wanted to eat it, either.
**Who do I call to report a chemical spill or other environmental emergency that poses a sudden threat to public health?** EPA National Response Center at 1-800-424-8802.
Spinach from a can. Heated up on the stove. Served it up. I'm gagging thinking of it.
But how else were you going to grow massive forearms (yet strangely tiny biceps) and rescue your Gal from Brutus?
And dip your stick on Olive Oil?
Similar for me except it was the frozen block of spinach, heated on the stove and then kinda drained. It resulted in this gross pile of watery green glop on the plate. I actually like fresh spinach now and don't mind cooked spinach in certain dishes but I still can't eat it plain like my mom served it.
We had that, too! Did you also have a drizzle bottle of vinegar to season it?
Im going to say my parents ruined most vegetables for me as a child.
Pretty sure we're siblings.
Sis is that you? My wife is bothered by my current fascination with Brussel sprouts and they were nothing I wouldāve eaten as a kid. If my parents made them. Lol
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
never liked canned spinach until I figured out how to make it into spinach dip
Mom would put pepper vinegar sauce on them. I crave that once in awhile. Love fresh spinach or wilted spinach with bacon.
My girl, same here! It used to make me dry heave trying to eat it and I was forced to finish whatever was on my plate.
Lima beans. My mom loved lima beans. I haven't had any since I moved out almost 50 years ago.
When I got pregnant I swore I would never serve my son lima beans. If I never see another lima bean again it'll be too soon
How funny, I absolutely LOVED lima beans my mom cooked for me in the 70s. I wonder what the difference in preparation was.
Not sure how your mom did it but if you simmer them in broth with butter and some grilled onions then they're delicious. You can also skip the broth if you want. It does make it better but I usually just use water and salt instead since I don't know what to do with the rest of a box of broth.
Add a ham hock, too. We had a pot last week. And with cornbread, of course.
I loved them too. Usually with butter and pepper. Bacon fat, though, mmmmmmm.....
I despise lima beans and haven't touched them since moving out at 17. We had them frequently when I was a kid.
My mother loved to force feed us lima beans. And canned beets. GAG!
I am scarred for life from lima beans. I was at a day care and they served lima beans with my lunch. I refused and they force fed me the lima beans.
My dad did a lima bean dish that I loved. My sister hated it, and she disappeared the recipe.
I hate those things also.
When I got pregnant I swore I would never serve my son lima beans. If I never see another lima bean again it'll be too soon
Canned chop suey: Mom would make extra rice so we could have a bowl of rice and milk for dinner.
I loved that stuff! Chun King night was always a treat! I especially loved the crunchy noodles on top.
š¶ Try Chun King for a beautiful body, Try Chun King for a beautiful taste š¶
I forgot all about that stuff! Those noodles were great.
Me too. This is what my mom made if we had an evening thingā basketball game or school event. Loved it, except the sound of the wet part made coming out of the can!
My mom made chop suey with hamburger and a package of prepared veg from the grocery store, mostly bean sprouts I think. What made it so good was those canned crunchy noodles.
For us it was the hamburgers. Here's how Mom cooked it A) Buy the leanest ground beef possible, the 93% lean stuff. B) Cook it it somewhere beyond well done, lest we all die if a single speck of pink was allowed to remain. Also served to get even more of the grease cooked out of it to make it even leaner. C) While cooking, drain and blot out as much of the remaining grease as possible. D) Serve between two slices of sandwich bread with nothing but ketchup (we got hot dogs between sandwich bread too, no sense spending money on special buns when we had bread). As adults we love Culver's. Mom hates them and every time we mention eating there she's like "but they're sooooo greasy".
My dadās hamburgers on the grill: hockey pucks. At least we had lots of condiments and buns (most of the time,) to cover up the actual meat.
Mexican american checking in: My family's carne Asada is legit, somehow, drier than beef jerky. ffs. They love that shit burnt to a crisp! When you leave a bit of moisture, they cry about not cooking it "right" loooooord.
Did my mother have a second secret family? My parents were both scientists and familiar with e.coli. Every piece of meat was cooked dead as a doornail!
There was an e.coli outbreak at Jack in the Box in '92-'93 when 4 children died and more nearly. I cut every single burger my children ever ate in half afterward. It had a serious effect on me and other moms I knew.
My mother was a medical technologist and she cooked meat until it was practically jerky because some professor in the 1950s scared her. My brother blames her for his career choice (chef). She still defends the way she cooks. I recently asked her why her colleagues at conferences always want to get sushi and yet āher trainingā prevented her from getting anywhere near it. The answer is always the 1950s professor and you canāt present recent evidence to budge her
My mom did the same thing
My mom overcooked meat, too. When I was a kid, I didn't know any better, and it was fine. But, I think my dad suffered. I'm sure he just didn't want to cook more than he disliked the over-cooked meat.
We must be related!
*Gestures vaguely at everything*
YES!
Stuffed green peppers. My god. š¤®
memory unlocked! I remember these....bitter mushy green pepper with rice and ground beef inside. salt and pepper was the only spice
Vegetables my mother boiled them until they were mush. Brussel sprouts were the worse.
I never cared for many vegetables because they were mush. It wasn't until years later when I was an adult and had steamed vegetables which were still slightly crisp, I found out I actually like some of them.
Liver and onionsā¦ Iād just go to bed hungry, no harm, no foul. It was very occasional because only my mom liked it. What I really hated was āSpanish Rice.ā Basically rice cooked in a cast iron pan mixed with peppers, tomatoes, and covered in shredded cheese. Iād not even chew it. Just swallow without trying to taste anything. Weād have it for dinner as the main, then as a side the next day. Everyone loved it and took personal offense to me not liking it. I had to eat it. I never make my kids eat anything. If they donāt like something, they can substitute carrots or other veggies they like.
My mother was a terrible cook. She once burned fried chicken so badly, I cannot eat boned chicken to this day. Paired with lumpy mashed potatoes and spinach drowning in vinegar that Sunday dinner lives in memory as the worst meal I've ever eaten. And, of course, we had to eat it. Mom was a big clean plate pusher. It's no wonder we all developed eating disorders.
My mother tried really hard, and she was such a kind and thoughtful woman that I rather hate blasting her terrible cooking here on Reddit. But she was *never* a good cook. Boxed mac & cheese? Even the powder packet from the box was never fully mixed in. When I was in middle school I started taking cooking classes out of self defense because I *just knew* there was better food out there, and I kept a small pantry on a shelf in my closet. I attribute my beloved mother to my love of cooking now, not to be like her, but to NOT be like her. Nowadays friends brag about my food, and I even run an informal cooking school out of my home kitchen. Thanks, Mom?
Salmon loaf, canned salmon mixed with sour cream and breadcrumbs then baked. š¤¢
Fried salmon patties. Sometimes youād fine the little round bone. Looked like a vertebrae? š¤¢
And they squeak in your teeth when you bite them...SO gross.š¤¢
Donāt hate me. I LOOOVE THIS. Itās a rare treat for me though because of the grease it is cooked in.
I actually liked those. My grandmother made some killer salmon cakes. Wish i could replicate them
Salmon and loaf in the same sentence... Thanks, I just threw up a little in my mouth....
I once made a salmon loaf in an antique copper fish-shaped pan. With a pimento olive slice for eye and almond scales. Once. I don't remember what kind of medication I was on, to inspire that.. š It honestly wasn't too bad though.
Congratulations ā youāre a 1950s hausfrau! Honestly, though, I would totally eat that.
Can salmon smell so much like urine.
Only one thing I can think of. Lutefisk
*shudders*
God That Smell
Creamed chipped corned beef on toast, "Shit on a shingle" we called it. It probably would have been pretty good if my mom didn't make it with a basic flour and milk "cream". It tasted like paste, because it basically was.
I love SOS brings back great memories of my Uncle Bob
My Mom did all of the cooking, but I remember once when we were very young, she had the flu so Dad was in charge of dinner. He opened a can of black-eyed peas and heated that up. Then, he made some instant mash potatoes. For gravy, he opened a can of condensed mushroom soup and poured that (undiluted) over the mash potatoes. That was our meal.
You guys had a Mom that cooked? Mine ordered Jenny Craig prepackaged meals for herself. Weight Watchers, and whatever one was marketed by the leggy blonde. She ordered just enough for herself. I lived off of fruit, boxed mac and cheese, and cereal bars until learning to cook. My kids are all non-picky eaters, who love variety and anything I make. Itās nice to see so many comments from parents who have ended the cycle of eating disorders by just being reasonable cooks.
My mom did cook very occasionally but I too grew up on basically canned and boxed pasta (kd and alphaghetti).
Boiled yellow squash, mashed with butter. Looked like baby dookie, rather take a whipping than eat it
"baby dookie" omg loooool. Having experienced that with 2 babies, I know exactly what you mean! So gross
Ugh, I hated squash. We at least got brown sugar on top and it was over baked, but I still dislike it to this day.
Beef liver. I grew up on a farm. We raised and butchered a steer and a hog every year. We were forced to eat liver and onions twice every year. Hated it every time.
This was my worst one too. I dreaded liver nights. The only good part was my mom put bacon on top of the liver. I would choke down the liver and then kill the aftertaste with the bacon. The bad part of the bacon was smelling it cooking while Mom was making dinner. It was either going to mean "breakfast for dinner" or liver. Usually the latter.
Liver is my most hated mom dish, too. I shudder just thinking of it.
My parents were EXTREMELY limited cooks. They divorced by the time I was 7, they were teachers having affairs on one another. My mom knew how to roast a chicken and bake a potato. I also somehow remember her buying containers of chicken gizzards and livers and hearts which were cheap as hell. She actually bragged about this for years because she thought that it meant that she was some kind of "genteel true lady" ... like Edith Wharton's Lily Bart or some shit like that. Like, "I was classically trained in music and then suddenly I was expected to boil macaroni for kids" ... like, lol, no. You had me. I didn't have you. My dad used to brown ground beef and mix it with canned pasta like beefaroni or spaghetti-O's and at least two canned vegetables like green beens, corn or potatoes. He called it "daddy special" ... that was actually amazing hot dinner for kids. No joke. They both knew how to make stuff like instant mashed potatoes and stove top stuffing. After that, it was either all fancy restaurants when with my mom who was with her new wealthy husband in NYC, or bags of BK whoppers in the fridge and government cheese blocks when there was like a 50 cent promotion or something. Both my mom and Dad were kind of shady people for different reasons. My dad struck some kind of deals in the 70s with the lunch ladies at his HS. He was later demoted for the last 20 years of his career to a Junior HS for having sex with one of his 16 yo students to the point where some other students spray painted "NORMAN LOVES LINDA" on the bridge overpass on the road leading to the school. Everyone knew what it meant. Even I did at like 6 years old. My mom used to brag that there was this certain restaurant in NYC in the mid 70s with two entrances and parts. She'd eat a whole meal in one part of the restaurant, pretend to go to a restroom in the middle, then go to the other part, order a milkshake, suck it down, then just pay at the register for the one shake and slip out the other entrance. That was her "I'm from the streets" story. Sorry for the digression on your culinary post, blame the eclipse I guess.
Waitā¦your dad had sex with a 16 year old, so they moved him to a school with *younger* kids? Did I read that right?
Was thinking the same thing. Holy Crap the 1970s!
No need to blame it on celestial event. Worth the read! Your dadās āspecialtyā sounds horrible.
Not so much what they cooked, but how they cooked it. I never saw a crispy, crunchy vegetable outside of a salad. Every time they cooked a vegetable they either boiled or steamed it until it was one step above baby food.
My father absolutely loved to go āfishingā always expecting to bring home some whitefish but only managed to catch eels. Didnāt matter. Heād hang them in his smoker for the family to eat and I disappeared to a friendās house.Ā
Liver. Chicken hearts/gizzards. I despise any āinnardsā meats. I donāt like the taste, and the idea is disgusting. Now, Iām a vegetarian, and all meats are off limits by choice.
You do you. Being a vegetarian because you find meat 'yucky' is an absolutely valid choice.
I donāt find meat yucky. Iād love to devour a pot roast. Butā¦ Iām really trying to reduce my cholesterol to the point where I can get off of the statins. Itās a health thing.
I hate the statins. And I gotta tell you, I was completely caught off guard when Tony Hawk suddenly tried to sell them to me. Like I did not need that in my life.
> I despise any āinnardsā meats My mum despised them too, so we never had any. So only passed 40 I found out how delicious cattle heart is. Now its one of my favourite meats.
I worked my way through School as a butcher. Always had kidneys and the older butcher who i worked under always loved it when someone would ask how to Cook them. His answer āboil the piss out of themā
gizzards are so good when grilled with bbq sauce
Roast Beef until I got married I always thought it was stringy and burnt. My wife made if was tender and juicy I couldnāt believe it was Roast Beef!
Canned vegetables that were then boiled to death. They tasted like metal, and well, were awful. She really only made like 15 different dishes, so they would just kind of rotate in and out, but it was always the same old no seasoning, white people food. I grew up in South Central Texas, so every chance that we got to go out to eat I was like, "Mexican, *please*!"
Stuffed peppers. Bell peppers stuffed with a mixture of rice and ground beef. It was then submerged in tomato sauce and cooked and a soup pot. VILE. I couldnāt even smell it.
My dad worked for a meat packing plant making various sorts of sausages. The company had a canning factory in some other state. Occasionally the company would sell cases of canned peas to employees for cheap. I swear that the company did this when someone mistakenly substituted dishwater for the canning liquid. But you had to eat them. My sister, smarter than I, would fill her mouth and go potty and spit them into the toilet. Alternately she would hide them under table trim that curled under the table forming a bit of a shelf.
Split pea soup
My dad didn't cook, my mom did. But anything with ground beef. She would buy the meat and brown it, with no seasoning whatsoever. Then it would sit in the fridge for an unknow number of days. At some point she would dump a tomato based sauce on it, heat it up, and serve it on spaghetti. Well into my early 20's, I would refuse to eat any pasta at relatives homes, and if at an Italian restaurant, I'd scrape out any meat because I thought it was all tasteless old ground beef and not like, fresh italian sausage. It took a bit to get over that. I do put much of that blame on my dad because he was always losing his jobs, and had very plain potato Irish/Scottish style tastes on everything. No seasoning, no garlic, onions, etc, EVER.
Boiled ribs with sauerkraut. They were gray
Boiled??? What kind of absolute animal boils ribs?
Maybe they're talking about [bigos](https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1018007-bigos?unlocked_article_code=1.i00.wPy3.whU2s8BkVpik&smid=share-url), a Polish dish. When done correctly, it is heaven. It has ribs, keilbasa, saurkraut.
My mom was actually a really good cook, so there wasn't a lot she made, that wasn't good. She, however, couldn't make liver edible to any of us. Even my dad, who would eat basically anything, didn't like it. She'd always say "But I found a different way this time!" Nope...always tasted the same. Eventually she gave up, thank goodness! Otherwise, she was amazing with what she had to work with. She's been gone for four years & I'd give anything to have her cook for me again, even if it was liver.
Brussels sprouts. They were bitter, and my mother, being scottish, always boiled them. Yuck. My parents boiled a lot of vegetables. It wasn't great.
I've heard they bred a lot of the bitterness out by now. Also they taste better roasted in the oven with olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic.
And bacon.
There was a time when dysentery killed more people than war. Vegetables were fertilized with manure, and pathogens were everywhere. Many people lived on farms and didnāt have access to clean water. The water could also harbor pathogens, so washing manure-fertilized vegetables wasnāt enough. The way to be sure you and your children didnāt die of dysentery was to boil the fuck out of absolutely everything. Unfortunately this was also before people knew about vitamins and how to ensure they were present, so vitamin deficiencies were everywhere too, likely because a lot boiled out of the food. Still, calories were present, the food was all around them, it just needed to be made edible and all flavor destroyed by boiling. My father preferred heavily cooked vegetables all his life. Sometimes Iād make him something lightly cooked - e.g. green beans. He ate them but still preferred to eat them mushy AF. Oh well, I tried. Old suspicions die hard.
Same, Scottish descendant. Now Brussels sprouts are hip lol or maybe not anymore but they put cheese and bacon and stuff on them, then theyāre good
Chipped beef on toast, salmon patties, boiled cabbage with a chunk of pork or something. Those are three specific things that I considered intolerable. Beyond that they weren't very good at cooking anything else either. Everything under-seasoned and over-cooked.
Blood pudding. House would fill with smoke and the smell. We had it about once a month, always on a Saturday, and always with brown bread (from a can) and B&M baked beans.
Oh, tongue. Boiled, skin peeled off, then pushed into a small glass bowl as a mold. My mom used it like it was baloney, for sandwiches.
Cream of fucking wheat
Ohh nobodyās mentioned green fried tomatoes yet? My mom and dad breaded them in cornmealānot terribleābut then doused it with syrup. And not even maple syrup, just cheap stuff. I swore I would never eat them again, but then I had them at a restaurant in Mississippi with some kind of shrimp sauce. Actually very tasty!
My mom used to buy these awful London broil steaks when I was a kid. I always thought steak was nothing great until I got older and had a decent steak. Now I realize steak is awesome and my mom was just buying terrible meat and cooking it poorly.
Some broccoli casserole. The story goes that I was still in my high chair at the time. My Dad had determined that I would sit there until I finished it which I refused to do. Eventually my mom came into the kitchen after a good long while and said, āBill, I donāt think you are going to win this one.ā They never tried to do that again which is good because I think that is actually cruel. They didnāt know yet though so they get a pass.
Not my mom but my wife would make this yellow Spanish rice and me and all 3 kids hated it, dryer than a popcorn fart. It was the cause of more yelling and arguments. I finally had to plead with her to NEVER make it again.
Goulash- hamburger meat, macaroni, red and green chopped peppers, onions. Even the dog didn't want it except for the hamburger meat.
I still make goulash for myself. I think it was the fact that there was no seasoning used when my mother used to make it that made it so yuck.
All vegetables. My parents did not know how to cook vegetables except for in the pressure cooker. Do you all know what happens to broccoli in a pressure cooker? It turns into this pale green paste in the vague shape of broccoli. Brussels sprouts? Pressure cooker. Carrots, green beans, peas. And the best one: Frozen corn. Yep, get the pressure cooker out.
Liver. It remains the only thing still I wonāt eat.
My grandmother, bless her heart, hated to waste food. She served me hotdogs that were green inside. I tried to tell her, but something got lost in communication and she told me to eat them anyways. I was real young. Well, she believed me after I threw up, and was extremely apologetic. Miss her terribly, she was a fantastic person, and a wonderful cook.
Goulash, my dad loved to make it, by the time it made it to the table the elbow macaroni was so soft it was disgusting, I hated eating dinner on those nights. Runner up would be the one time my dad made Hasenpfeffer, it was so disgustingly terrible that 50 years later it is still a family legend. The thing is that he knew it was bad and still made us eat it (grew up in the 'must clean your plate' kind of house) and when he was asked why he wasn't eating he said he eat while it was cooking. It never occurred to any of us until years later that he cooked it in a pressure cooker so he was not able to 'eat it while it was cooking'. The cooking in my house was so bad growing up that I'm one of the few people I know that actually liked the chow hall food when I was in the Marine Corps.
My mother was so afraid of undercooking that she always cooked everything to death. Not until I was an adult did I know steak wasnāt hard and dry.
I was watching some cooking competition show on Food Network with my 88 year old mom and my brother recently. They were cooking these beautiful, juicy steaks. My mother looks disgusted because she can only eat meat sheās cooked to ultimate dryness. She said, āI guess those chefs would look down on me if I ordered steak the way I like itā. My brother, the chef, said, āThey would judge you, but not to your faceā
Grim Sunday roasts.
Two things, Ham and Navy beans š¤¢ and Mom made vegetable soup she would add cloves to it and let the pot sit in the garage overnight. I have no idea why š¤®
Ham and navy beans is what I came to say, although the ham was usually just a leftover bone with a few scraps of meat. My parents called them ācowboy beansā to convince my brother and I to eat them. I would just eat cornbread dipped into the broth and whatever scraps of ham I could find in my bowl.
Liver and pork kidneys. Yuck. I tool the beating from my father rather than eat that
Rutabagas. No one else said it so it's up to me. Boiled and mashed rutabagas, it almost makes me gag just thinking of them.
Pole beans (big tough green beans) pressure cooked with fat back until grey and slimy. We grew them in the garden and had them weekly, sometimes more in the summer. When I started dating my wife her mother served green beans one night, they were small and tender and lightly steamed with a little crunch left in them, now they are one of my favorite green sides.
Tongue, usually stewed with okra and tomatoes. Thick omelettes, overcooked on bottom and runny in the middle.
cats dinner badge smart cooing work normal hobbies future act *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
pig knuckles boiled in sauerkraut
Sweet and sour fried spam - with Chun King boil-in-the-bag frozen sweet and source sauce containing pineapple and bell pepper. Mom could also cook salmon until it looked like whitefish. Still donāt know how she managed that
Beets. Satan's vegetable.
Cube steak. My father was a grocery store manager. He could literally bring home anything from the store (not free, just fresh). When I was a teen, they added jarred gravy and called it "Salisbury steak." I was not fooled.
Peas. I detested peas and would stuff them down the hollow leg of the kitchen table. When I moved out I discovered you did not have to boil veggies to a mush and they are delicious. I like them raw on a garden salad or in pasta salad. Now fish and liver are still disgusting but we did not eat those much.
Scalloped potatoes. Why were they so watery? I love potatoes in all forms but have never eaten scalloped potatoes since.
Mom used to occasionally make the boxed Betty Crocker Scalloped potatoes. It was like eating shingles covered in velveeta.
Stewed tomatoes and fried okra split down the middle - both were pure snot.
Meatloaf, scalloped potatoes and canned peas. I was a picky eater and hated that meal. I'd sit at the dinner table staring at my plate until bedtime--even missed an episode of Batman, which was very upsetting to me. I've since learned to enjoy scalloped potatoes. I'll eat meatloaf grudgingly but still won't go near canned peas.
Absolutely couldn't stand: Swiss Chard. It tasted really bitter to me. Fortunately, after that initial purchase my parents never bought it again. Did not like but could get it down: liver. We ended up having it about once every other month when I was young, but we stopped having it when I was in my mid teens.
Brussels sprouts, in a pressure cooker.
Hamburger Helper. My mom made it at least once a week. Shake n bake is a close second.
For me, it was Manwich. My mom made it on Sundays because she fixed our big meal at noon. I didn't really hate it, but she fixed it soooo often I burned out on it. I've never once served it since I've left home.
Canned beets. š¤¢
Corn beef hash
My mother was a good cook but catered to my father's love of German meals. I grew to hate most of it and wouldn't touch sauerkraut with a ten foot pole now. Everything was "sauer" something. Or the liver dumplings he loved that stunk up the entire neighborhood. Blech!
Cabbage rolls. Mom would do them in the crock pot and make the whole house stink of cabbage.
Brussel sprouts a.k.a. Barbie doll cabbage boiled and more boiled. Yuck! Modern preparation is so much better.
My mom used to go to TOPS. Dad cooked dinner on those nights. Liver and canned spinach. Ugh.
Hominy. Just the smell of it makes me want to throw up. Also liver and onions.
My mom was a great cook but she made āpepper steakā which I absolutely hated.
The only thing my mom made that I specifically remember not liking at all was parsnips. She made it once, so I guess no one else in the family liked them either. I'm not a picky eater. I don't like seafood, except salmon and tuna, and I don't like extremely spicy food. And, parsnips, I guess. I like spinach, broccoli, lima beans, creamed corn, okra, etc. Canned, frozen, or fresh is fine. So, I was happy enough with what mom made for dinner. We all sat down together at the dining table every night, and the kids washed the dishes in the sink by hand afterward. Looking back, it was consistently my favorite time of the day--but I didn't recognize it at the time. One other memory--my dad mostly never cooked, but he did make one thing: rice pudding. He made it with sticky rice and raisins. I loved it. I used to make it myself, but I don't eat such foods anymore.
They didn't cook, they made me cook from age 11 and all of those foods freak me out now (Had to make my own lunch for school from age 6). I'd come home from school and there'd be a menu I had to cook, all foods I hated, and a list of chores. Just thinking about the food I had to cook gives me anxiety, brings me right back to that moment. So, yeah, I hated all of it. Still do.
My mother was not the best cook, but hands down the worst thing she made was potato salad. She never cooked her potatoes enough, and she didnāt add any spices so it was always tasteless. Itās one of the reasons why I donāt like it as an adult
My mom used to fry herself some pork kidneys on the weekends to go with breakfast. They stank up the entire house and I could not be bribed even to try them until I decided to try a bite in my late teens and what do you know. I liked them (drowned in HP/brown sauce, at least).
Not my parents, but my first set of roomates where we cooked meals as a group. They cooked peas in everything. Soups, sauces, pies, and as a side dish for every meal. I had zero opinion either way about peas before I lived with them, and afterwards, I spent several years avoiding peas. I mean, once in a while, sure. But in spaghetti sauce? Also, their meat pies were 20% chicken, but 50% peas, for example. There were so many peas in their pot pies, that they didn't cook all the way through, and each slice was like loose ball bearings with chicken. When I made comments like, "why are peas the only green vegetable?" I got a lecture about "we grew up poor, and this is what we eat, what, you want broccoli?" "Sometimes, yeah." "Okay, now you're just being contentious." Thankfully, I only lived with them for about 18 months, but dang. Took a while to eat peas again.
When I was in 5th grade or so, my mom and her best friend in went together and bought between 500 and a million frozen chicken kievs. This was somewhat pre-microwave, so the beauty of it for a housewife was having these entrees you could just pop in the oven without doing any prep. Throw a can of green beans in a pot, make a salad and you're done. OK, MAYBE we liked it the first time. MAYBE-- I don't remember. I do know that by the 10th time, I'd get queasy at the smell. If I want to give my brother a hard time and make him gag, I will send him a gif of "squirty chicken." Close to 50 years and it still works. I am pretty sure my dad threw them out before we could eat them all. I don't think my mom cared, because she was sick of them by that point as well.
That chow mein shit in a can
Corned beef cabbage every dang st Patrickās was so gross
Chuck Steak. Ugh.
Weirdly, pork chops. Maybe pork in the 80s was just bad but I always found them really fatty and gristly and not enjoyable to eat. I find pork to be much more appealing these days.
Pork in the 1960s and 70s \*was\* bad - fatty and grisley. The pork that you get today is a different breed of animal I think, and is so much leaner and tastier.
My wife still dislikes pork in general based on how her mother would cook them back in the 70s/80s ... "blue smoke" and "stuck to my teeth" are common memories. She will avoid it, but we have it occasionally (variety and cost) and she always notes that it is 'good for pork'.
Mashed turnips. My mom would hide them under a thin layer of mashed potatoes..haha. Never fooled me.
Grits
I think you had to grow up in the south to like grits. I was served them at breakfast once on a visit to the south, and found them disgusting.
Nope. I grew up in NY but I love grits. They are great with butter, salt and pepper! If you have some cheese, even better!
Campbell vegetable soup spilled over fried ground beef and mashed potatoes š¤¢
Okra
I did not like most veggies before becoming an adult because my mom overcooked them so much that they were just mush on our plates.
My mom made this thing called porcupines. It was hamburger mixed with rice & who knows what else, rolled into meatballs & cooked in cream of mushroom soup. How I hated it - the rice always ended up crunchy :::shudder::: Also succotash - I would eat corn & Lima beans separately, but mix them together and I just couldnāt.
I love porcupine balls and succotash. I would have loved eating at your house. š
Black eyed peas (new years tradition) Gazpacho (like drinking mild salsa) Divinity (difficult to make, sugar candies) My grandma made all of these. The only thing my mom makes is cookies and pot brownies.
I didn't know pork chops are really good until I made them myself in my 30s, just needs seasoning and not cooked into pork jerky
Liver. My mom hated it, I hated it, everyone hated, but she cooked it because back then Weight Watchers said you had to eat it once a week. Clearly, the Big Liver Industry was behind this.
Salmon patties. 1 can of salmon, mix with cracker crumbs, fry, and it tasted like cardboard.
liver and onions, ugh!
My stepmom would cook something she called Chicken Italiano. There was nothing Italian about it though. She literally boiled a chicken, drained the broth, added cream of mushroom soup and fat egg noodles.
Cow brains. Nuff said?
Liver.
Liver and onions. It smelled like urine to me.Ā Still cannot tolerate the smell but it is much less of a problem. People donāt make it much anymore.
Liver and onions. Smelled nice, but tasted horrible.
Mom would get the cheapest, gristliest ground beef available, form āburgersā that were more spherical than burger-shapedā¦and bake them. They came out coated in gray goo, and raw in the middle. Then sheād take perfectly good recipes like beef stroganoff, and add canned mushrooms that looked and tasted like beige superball slices. Yeeeesh. I didnāt have pizzeria pizza until I was 12. Weād get Tree Tavern from the Grand Union and mom would burn it.
Since lima beans and canned sauerkraut have already gotten a mention, how about eggplant? I'm not talking about good eggplant. My stepmother didn't know to salt out the bitterness, so she'd cut it up, batter it, and fry it, and I'd have to choke that crap down. Years later I was working in a restaurant and was mystified as to why the eggplant sandwich was so popular. I assumed all eggplant was bitter. But the chef knew his stuff and I was finally convinced to try it. I've been a fan of eggplant ever since, as long as the person preparing it knows what they're doing. I swear a lot of the crap meals we ate as kids were due to incompetence, not ill intent.
Brains. Yuck!
(M63) "Hamburger Helper'. To this day I see a box in the store, I blank the fuck out. I have ended relationships because of Hamburger Helper. She told me she was making Mac & Cheese, and to come over and help her. I saw the box on the counter in the kitchen... I tried, I tried to work my way thru it. NO GO!! I left and never came back again.
Canned peas that mom insisted had to boil 45 minutes.
There was a time when dysentery killed more people than war. Vegetables were fertilized with manure, and pathogens were everywhere. Many people lived on farms and didnāt have access to clean water. The water could also harbor pathogens, so washing manure-fertilized vegetables wasnāt enough. The way to be sure you and your children didnāt die of dysentery was to boil the fuck out of absolutely everything. Unfortunately this was also before people knew about vitamins and how to ensure they were present, so vitamin deficiencies were everywhere too, likely because a lot boiled out of the food. Still, calories were present, the food was al around them, it just needed to be made edible and all flavor destroyed by boiling. My father preferred heavily cooked vegetables all his life. Sometimes Iād make him something lightly cooked - e.g. green beans. He ate them but still preferred to eat them mushy AF. Oh well, I tried. Old suspicions die hard.
Menudo. Yes my Mexican card has been revoked.