Disgusting foods your parents ate

Cafe Society
61

[QUOTE=jjimm]
I grew up being fed liver and kidneys, and I was given sliced cow’s tongue in my sandwiches. I thought it was a mystery meat called ‘tung’. So normal was it as a foodstuff that my dad even had a ‘joke’ about someone not eating tongue because they wouldn’t eat something that had been in an animal’s mouth. When I finally made the connection between the joke and the meat, I refused to eat it.

But like many schoolkids of the '40s in England, my dad was regularly served ‘dripping’ on bread. Dripping is the congealed fat that collects underneath a roll of roast beef. I suppose, given the rationing of the time, it was a pretty good calorie source.

ETA: for the second time today, it’s Worcestershire sauce, not ‘chester’. Pron. ‘woostershur’.
[/QUOTE]

Tongue butties and mustard..lovely :smiley:
Incidentally, the jelly that used to collect at the bottom of the bowl your mum saved the dripping in was scrummy, second only to the actual dripping itself.
What about TRIPE then?

Not cooked but raw wi’ vinegar in every 'ole.
Not forgetting the best bit, that dark fatty stuff underneath.

Aaah those were the days

62

Green peppers are bad enough as tiny slices tossed in with the rest of your meal; they ruin everything they touch and make the rest of the meal completely inedible. Their putrid odor turns delicious pizzas into trash. But stuffed green peppers–that is, entire pepper-bowls made of pure vile and stench full of otherwise decent food–I’d rather swallow lit coals. But they still eat that stuff. Regularly.

I used to despise a lot of vegetables they ate, like asparagus and spinach, but I rather like those now. I hated seafood in general, and I have a more refined palate for it these days (although I can’t make the comparison for sure because I haven’t been to a fresh crab and lobster shack like the kind they dragged me to in Maryland). That one’s even gone the other way, somewhat: I have a yen for sushi, which my mother finds uninteresting and my father can’t possibly stomach.

I also had no use for Asian or Mexican food of any kind, which my parents ate a lot until my dad started having stomach problems and couldn’t handle spicy stuff; but now when I eat out I almost always have Mexican or Chinese*.

  • Not really “authentic” Mexican or Chinese, of course; I went to a couple real Mexican taco shops when I was dating an immigrant and I couldn’t get used to cow-tongue and “tacos de tripa”. And I’m sure what actual Chinese people eat is vastly different from what we call Chinese food here.

That doesn’t sound too bad. Not too dissimilar from a more conventional fruit salad, which is a Thanksgiving staple with my family. I’d be willing to give it a try someday.

That’s what that stuff was called? My mom and I used to take those beef slices, put cream cheese on them, and then roll them up and eat them (or even serve them) as hors d’eouvres (pardon my lousy French). I miss that. The closest I’ve gotten to that in my adult life is rolling up cream cheese in Thuringer, which probably tastes better but doesn’t have the benefit of nostalgia.

Not my parents, BTW, but I’ve seen and smelled all manner of horribly offensive Vietnamese food in my best friend’s parents’ house. They were fond of cat, partially-fertilized duck embryos, and a whole host of other things I’ve permanently repressed my memory of for the sake of my sanity. And my roommate once had a Japanese friend stay over as a means of paying off his (the roommate’s) debt to him (the friend), and man, the things that dude cooked! He exposed me to a number of excellent Japanese products (like the candy made from fruit juice, the expensive gourmet Japanese chocolate bars, some kind of super-short rice that looked like seeds, lemon-flavored soy sauce, etc.), but when he cooked fish in our kitchen the house stank for days.

Lynn, I’m going to try that olives-and-cream-cheese thing.

63

[QUOTE=Queen Bruin]
Not my parents, but my grandparents used to (still probably do) eat deviled ham. You know, the stuff that comes in the tin wrapped in paper with a little devil on it? shudder That stuff’s right up there with braunschweigert and egg salad for instant and pure olfactory hate.

My mom doesn’t eat anything nasty; she taught me to cook, after all. :smiley:
[/QUOTE]
I used to eat and enjoy deviled ham. I got some recently and either they’ve changed the recipe to one that’s fattier and spicier, or my tastebuds have changed. My grandfather used to love braunschweiger, and so did his cats. He was always trying to get me to try a taste, but I thought that it smelled like wet cat food, and refused.

What’s wrong with egg salad? It’s delicious. I always cut the eggs in half, scoop out the yolks, and mash them with mustard and mayo, just like I would if I were making deviled eggs. THEN I dice up the whites, and mix them in with the other stuff. It’s best on toasted rye bread. Yes, I DO like rye toast. I like tuna salad on rye toast, too.

64

[QUOTE=Lynn Bodoni]
What’s wrong with egg salad? It’s delicious. I always cut the eggs in half, scoop out the yolks, and mash them with mustard and mayo, just like I would if I were making deviled eggs. THEN I dice up the whites, and mix them in with the other stuff. It’s best on toasted rye bread. Yes, I DO like rye toast. I like tuna salad on rye toast, too.
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My dad grew up Jewish and he loves him some egg salad or tuna salad on rye. I liked tuna salad when I was little; I’m not a huge fan of it anymore, but I dig egg salad every once in a while.

65

I guess I should dredge up some painful childhood memories of my own.

My Grandma Bodoni taught my WASP mother how to cook various pasta dishes. And she always put anise in the tomato sauce. I can eat a shoelace or two of licorice, but I don’t like it in tomato sauce. In fact, it’s fair to say that I HATE it in tomato sauce. I refused to eat just about any Italian pasta sauce until I was an adult, and started making my own for my husband. I found out that I don’t hate it. I am still not terribly fond of it, unless it’s covering a cheese dish (cheese ravioli, lasagna, etc.), but I no longer hate it.

My mother was on Weight Watchers most of the time when I was growing up. At that time, WW required either one or two organ dinners a week. My hatred of anice-flavored spaghetti sauce was only exceeded by my hatred of liver, which my mother loved and which the rest of the family tolerated.

I learned to prepare my own meals at a fairly young age.

66

[QUOTE=Wile E]

ETA: I read this whole thread and no one else had posted about Braunschweiger, then Queen Bruin posts about it just a few minutes before me.
[/QUOTE]

Actually, I did, too. But I always knew it as liver sausage, so that’s what I called it in my post. I remember trying to sound out the word “Braunschweiger” from the little plastic tube package.

67

Well, my parents are older than me and I’ll chalk it up to more sophisticated palates, but nothing they ate really disgusted me. I didn’t like corned beef… that’s about all I have. All the crap I hated that they ate I like now.

I still learn from them every day, with respect to food.

68

I was in college when my mom told me how much she liked “Brains n’ Eggs.”

Heave.

Of course, that’s nothing compared to the squirrels she ate growing up. According to mom, getting to eat the head was a “treat” that the kids would fight over. So my uncles would come in from hunting squirrels with their .22s and Grandma would cook up the tree rats, boiling the heads. Apparently the proper method of ingesting the squirrels brain was to suck it out through the eye hole. Mom would mime this action while telling the story.

Double Heave.

Dad says that I’m lucky that he didn’t find this out about Mom until after they were married.

69

I just recently discovered that I do like sweet potatoes. And I will eat them on a train, and I will eat them in the rain, etc. All my life I thought I hated them, but it turns out that I only hate them the way Mom makes them: covered in melted marshmallow.

On the other hand, it was Mom who got me to try Saltine crackers spread with mayonnaise. Sounds disgusting, but it’s salty greasy crunchy good.

70

Nope, not disgusting at all…I love mayo on crackers!!! Bad habit, perhaps, but quite tasty. I like Triscuits better, though…

Obviously, I like everything else, as well, since many of these posts subjects, I think, hey, I love that!

Examples: Stuffed Peppers and/or Green Peppers in general…YUM!!! However, I like them cooked better than raw. Hard-boiled eggs??? Yum, and even better Devilled or in Egg Salad. If in Salad, as someone noted, what could be better than on toasted Rye??? I know, w/ fresh garden ripe tomatoes! And a bit of bacon, if handy.

I still like Devilled Ham, but rarely buy it anymore, and cream cheese w/ olives??? Hello? It was a regular schmear in the bagel place we hung out at in the 70’s! Love sauerkraut, braunschweiger/liverwurst, creamed chipped beef (even though I haven’t eaten it in years…and yes, w/ peas), casseroles made w/ Campbells Cream of Whatever Soup…apparently I’m like “Mikey”, but the only things I’m not too keen on are some of these funky organ meats (Squirrel brains sucked out from between the eyes??? Ack!), and some fermented fish items. Honestly, I might like some of them, since I like Kimchee??? Is there a correlation there, does anybody know? I only know that there’s dried shrimp in Kimchee.

I think I’m in need of breakfast. :wink:

71

My dad also cut a slice of angel food cake, turned it on it’s side and buttered it like bread.

72

My parents never really ate anything that was absolutely disgusting but my grandfather loved him some sardines :gack:. He was apparently helpless when it came to feeding himself because one time my grandmother went to visit relatives in Indiana for a week. I stopped by one day and found him enjoying a nice big bowl of Ritz crackers in milk. mmmmgood.

73

Geeze, I’m glad I haven’t eaten yet!

My mom was of German extration and grew up on a farm so the more ‘earthy’ German foods were her main favs. It didn’t translate for me. I had to eat braunschweiger or deviled ham sandwiches at school for lunch and I hated them. She also kept Limburger cheese in a hermetically sealed jar in the fridge. Even worse than that was the pickled pigs feet. She would go to the butcher and get the feet then prep and marinated them. Bleeeech! I wouldn’t even look at them.

Previously my worst food encounter was ‘Deli BBQ’. Sounded ok to me until I took a bite - all the meat roll butts too small to slice had been thrown in a crock pot with BBQ sauce. Barf-o-matic!

My current food horror was at Mama Fu’s chain restaurants. Don’t get the wonton soup. I bit into the wonton and the most og-awful, green shit flavor came out. My eyes watered as I tried not to barf right there. I don’t go back there and I’m getting queasy at the memory… <shudder>

74

[QUOTE=fetus]
Green peppers are bad enough as tiny slices tossed in with the rest of your meal; they ruin everything they touch and make the rest of the meal completely inedible. Their putrid odor turns delicious pizzas into trash. But stuffed green peppers–that is, entire pepper-bowls made of pure vile and stench full of otherwise decent food–I’d rather swallow lit coals. But they still eat that stuff. Regularly.

I used to despise a lot of vegetables they ate, like asparagus and spinach, but I rather like those now. I hated seafood in general, and I have a more refined palate for it these days (although I can’t make the comparison for sure because I haven’t been to a fresh crab and lobster shack like the kind they dragged me to in Maryland). That one’s even gone the other way, somewhat: I have a yen for sushi, which my mother finds uninteresting and my father can’t possibly stomach.

I also had no use for Asian or Mexican food of any kind, which my parents ate a lot until my dad started having stomach problems and couldn’t handle spicy stuff; but now when I eat out I almost always have Mexican or Chinese*.

  • Not really “authentic” Mexican or Chinese, of course; I went to a couple real Mexican taco shops when I was dating an immigrant and I couldn’t get used to cow-tongue and “tacos de tripa”. And I’m sure what actual Chinese people eat is vastly different from what we call Chinese food here.

That doesn’t sound too bad. Not too dissimilar from a more conventional fruit salad, which is a Thanksgiving staple with my family. I’d be willing to give it a try someday.

That’s what that stuff was called? My mom and I used to take those beef slices, put cream cheese on them, and then roll them up and eat them (or even serve them) as hors d’eouvres (pardon my lousy French). I miss that. The closest I’ve gotten to that in my adult life is rolling up cream cheese in Thuringer, which probably tastes better but doesn’t have the benefit of nostalgia.

Not my parents, BTW, but I’ve seen and smelled all manner of horribly offensive Vietnamese food in my best friend’s parents’ house. They were fond of cat, partially-fertilized duck embryos, and a whole host of other things I’ve permanently repressed my memory of for the sake of my sanity. And my roommate once had a Japanese friend stay over as a means of paying off his (the roommate’s) debt to him (the friend), and man, the things that dude cooked! He exposed me to a number of excellent Japanese products (like the candy made from fruit juice, the expensive gourmet Japanese chocolate bars, some kind of super-short rice that looked like seeds, lemon-flavored soy sauce, etc.), but when he cooked fish in our kitchen the house stank for days.

Lynn, I’m going to try that olives-and-cream-cheese thing.
[/QUOTE]

You might like Dirty Martini spread/dip from Vermont Country Store. It’s made with olives, cream cheese, and spices. Expensive as hell, but good for a one-shot Christmas or birthday gift. Has a nice kick to it.
My mom likes cottage cheese on her pancakes, but that’s not nearly as bad as the previously mentioned peanut butter and pickles on them!

75

Chinese food – really, all Asian food – is delicious. Stir-fry, etc., is healthy and fabulous.

Why, then, for the love of all that is holy, do they sell canned “chinese” food, and why did my mom buy it, heat it, and MAKE US EAT IT. It believe it is La Choy. It has a sour nasty canned flavor that I can conjur up just sitting here. It came in a two-part can; what was in each individual part I have repressed.

And they still sell it. I saw it not long ago in one of the international food aisles at Meijer’s, which must cause a lot of confusion and/or convulsions among the actual Asians who shop there.

The crunchy canned noodles are good, though.

76

Good German boy here.

Braunschweiger sandwichs are comfort food.

Love the kraut. My good friend calls it “festering some kraut” when he fills up a slow cooker with kraut, sausage, potatoes and beer. When we were at Disney’s Epcot Center on our honeymoon (my wife and I, not my friend and I) we went to the german pavilion for dinner. We got this dinner for two that consisted of three different german saugages covered in a mound of kraut. We still sit around and talk dreamy-eyed about that meal.

No one has yet mentioned Pumpernickel but I have heard several people in real life express alarm at it being eaten. Try it some time toasted with peanut butter.

Not german, but I also love tinned kippers, much to my wife’s dismay.

There were a few things that the folks would eat that I never could stomach but most were fairly common. Their favorite celebratory dinner was oyster stew, which was a watery, pale, oily broth with oysters bobbing around in it. None for me thanks.

I can’t stand liver either. The taste I can take or leave but the texture is just nasty. It’s like eating fine saw dust mixed up in lard. Blech.

There were a few veggies that I like now but that the folks never could figure out how to cook, mostly sweet potatoes and various forms of squash. Their answer for either was to boil the hell out of it until it could be mashed into pap.

Other than that all I can think of that I didn’t eat were some of mom’s attempts at dinner. Several times we threw away whatever it was and went out to eat. Fortuantely dad was an ex army cook and, at one point, taught cooking at the college level. Otherwise we might have starved.

77

Looks like we have to start a “liver and onion therapy group”.

I too had to endure mum serving this, and I had to sit at the table until I had eaten what was on my plate.

One time after my parents had left the kitchen leaving me to finish my serving, I saw an opportunity to get rid of the stuff. Happily I left the table to get on with my Legos, when mum two minutes later came with an angry scream from the kitchen; she had found the liver and onion scraps in the potted plants on the window sill :smiley:

Another thing I hated when I was younger was herring. We would have either fried herring or old salted herring, and I would pick through all them tiny bones with horrified precision, like a giraffe licking the leaves of a thorny acacia.

78

Look here you colonial upstarts.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with liver and onions…nothing at all., same goes for tripe,steak and kidney pudding, faggots in rich gravy and a host of other culinary delights which we British have blessed the civilized world with.

it’s good grub like this that built the Empire

79

[QUOTE=LifeOnWry]
Actually, I did, too. But I always knew it as liver sausage, so that’s what I called it in my post. I remember trying to sound out the word “Braunschweiger” from the little plastic tube package.
[/QUOTE]

Ah, I thought yours was just some generic liver sausage not the lovely smoked liver sausage treat that is Braunschweiger. :smiley:

I admit, sometimes my inner Good German wants to buy this for old times sake but I keep reminding myself of the time I tried Vienna Sausages as an adult. It was definitely not the same treat I enjoyed as a child. At least the dog liked them, but I don’t think it would be good for the dog to eat a whole tube of Braunschweiger.

I forgot about sardines, my mom got me eating them and I still like them however I always insist on having the spine removed. If I want my sardines sandwiches crunchy I’ll put some lettuce on it.

My mom liked to get the occasional pickled herring in cream sauce. I never picked up that habit. In fact she usually only ate a little out of the jar and then she got sick of it and the rest went to waste.
Re: Sauerkraut. A little family story. I inherited my paternal grandma’s recipe box. In it was a recipe for sauerkraut. I found it funny since paternal grandma was 100% Italian but I guess she learned how to make it for German/Scottish grandpa. Here’s the recipe:

1950 was a banner year for sauerkraut!
I guess the stomping part explains why sauerkraut tastes a bit like feet. :smiley:
But yes, I still like it anyway.

80

My mom made liver & onions once… once.

I tried some of my dad’s gefilta fish once and that was nasty (I even like pickled hearing and other gross fish stuff).

The absolute worst was the mock chicken leg. It was like they took all the fat and grissle off the pig and put it on a stick. Please, if these things are still around don’t feed them to your children.