Disgusting foods your parents ate

Cafe Society
141

[QUOTE=wheresgeorge04]
Grandma used to eat bananas sliced up in a bowl of mayonnaise. I’m about to vomit just thinking about it…
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My dad likes to mash up a bannana with mayo and eat in on white bread. El disgusto.

He also likes fried chicken livers. When I would come in to the house and smell those things frying, it was a mixed signal. On one hand, it was a disgusting smell of a disgusting meal. On the other hand, it usually meant that the rest of the family were eating out or ordering something good.

142

[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:
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Thanks for the compliment, chicka!

But even worse stuff my parents eat are “potted meat product” :eek: and a treat in the winter for them was canned tomatoes and corn mixed together. Served cold from the refrigerator. Bleargh!

Don’t get me started on the fried bologna. Eww. Or drinking buttermilk straight. Ack!

143

[QUOTE=Cheez_Whia]
But even worse stuff my parents eat are “potted meat product” :eek:
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I tasted that once.

Once.

144

Complete Wkipedia list of hot dog variations around the globe-

145

I googled “city chicken” (even though the whole topic of undesirable meat grosses me out) and found it was a regional Depression-era recipe specific to western Pennsylvania, to Pittsburgh, where my mother’s mother’s roots came from. No wonder I was fed this. It’s a relict of an era when chicken was more expensive than pork. I think by the 1960s that was certainly anachronistic and any excuse for this dish had expired by the time I came along.

146

[QUOTE=Johanna]
I googled “city chicken” (even though the whole topic of undesirable meat grosses me out) and found it was a regional Depression-era recipe specific to western Pennsylvania, to Pittsburgh, where my mother’s mother’s roots came from. No wonder I was fed this. It’s a relict of an era when chicken was more expensive than pork. I think by the 1960s that was certainly anachronistic and any excuse for this dish had expired by the time I came along.
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Believe it or not, it’s still made and sold around here…upstate NY on the PA border. And…it’s good, too!

147

[QUOTE=vivalostwages]
The folks came from rural Pennsylvania and they never tired of eating scrapple. As far as I can tell, it’s a weird loaf-like hodgepodge of ingredients that is fried in a pan and eaten for breakfast, usually.

Bleccchhh!
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AAAACK!!!

I grew up on this disgusting cube of grey psuedo-meat (Easton, PA).

Think of it as everything that’s not good enough to go into a hot dog compressed into a grey, quivering hypercube.

Not enough ketchup exists to cover up the “flavor” of that stuff.

148

My parents ate hog mogs, chitterlings, hotdogs and pig’s feet. I refused to eat the stuff then, and I refuse to eat it now!

My dad ate raw fish. I hated it then, but I can tear it down, now!

149

[QUOTE=2pelo honey]
Believe it or not, it’s still made and sold around here…upstate NY on the PA border. And…it’s good, too!
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City chicken braised with mushroom soup and an onion soup packet…good eats!

They weren’t really disgusting, but my Dad liked to fry up sizzle steaks. That was like a little fryable manswich. Two paper thin cutletts with ground meat between.

150

[QUOTE=devilsknew]

They weren’t really disgusting, but my Dad liked to fry up sizzle steaks. That was like a little fryable manswich. Two paper thin cutletts with ground meat between.
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I’m not sure if they were all beef, or beef and pork. It’s a very unique product, perhaps the only laminated meat.

City chicken ain’t so bad, Johanna. It’s really just another incarnation of meat on a stick. Midwest Shish Kafta, really.

151

I love baccala (though I don’t have it often- it’s a pain to make for people who don’t normally plan their menus days in advance), salmon loaf, and gefilte fish.

A lot of people who convert to Judaism hate gefilte fish- one person described it as reminding them of cat food. The Neville kitties think gefilte fish tastes exactly like cat food- they love it, and beg for it whenever we have it.

[QUOTE=zenith]
Most any vegetable served by parents in the '50s was boiled to death. I didn’t know anyone else’s Mom who didn’t also overcook veggies. Turned a whole generation off to them.
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Mr. Neville and I once got some fresh brussels sprouts on the stalk and cooked them for my parents. My dad was all excited about us making brussels sprouts for him (he loves them, but Mom won’t make them for him because of the smell). But when he tasted them, he complained that they weren’t cooked enough, because they weren’t cooked to the point where they get that disgusting sulfurous taste.

If any Jewish organization really wanted to increase the number of Jews who keep kosher, they’d get my grandmother’s recipe for cherry-glazed ham and feed the people who don’t keep kosher that. It wasn’t even a proper glaze- it came out as lumps of a jelly-like substance spread over ham (and it tasted like “cherry”-flavored cough syrup). People would start keeping kosher just to have an ironclad excuse not to eat that stuff.

I thought I hated asparagus until well into adulthood, when I discovered that not all asparagus is the disgustingly slimy, stringy canned crap or frozen asparagus (which has an off-taste, at least to me).

I think I may have been convinced there is a merciful God when, in the 80s, my parents learned that liver is full of cholesterol and stopped cooking it at home.

Was anyone else subjected to the horror that was Swiss steak? Oh, that lovely pre-chewed texture… hork Even Alton Brown’s version looks absolutely revolting (WARNING: Do not click on link within three hours of eating).

My grandfather once ordered breaded beef brains at a restaurant. 20 years later, the thought of that still makes me nauseous.

152

[QUOTE=Anne Neville]
Was anyone else subjected to the horror that was Swiss steak?
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My mom used to make that when I was a kid. I didn’t prefer it. For one thing, the meat always came out tough for some reason. (Probably the recipe called for a cheap cut of sirloin.) For another, I didn’t like the taste of the veggies.

And for the record, mom made liver too. (No onions.) She liked it. I liked it. My dad and sister would only eat it with lots of catsup to cover the taste. (And yes, I like faggots and deep-fried chicken livers, and I put turkey livers in the Thanksgiving gravy.)

153

[QUOTE=Johnny L.A.]
…like faggots…)
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I can think of 3 meaning for that word, but none of them involve food. :confused: What are you talking about?

154

[QUOTE=alphaboi867]
I can think of 3 meaning for that word, but none of them involve food. :confused: What are you talking about?
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Basically, a liver meatball with gravy; often served with peas.

155

In the immortal words of Jewel, “Ohhhh, Faggot!”

156

[QUOTE=Cheez_Whia]
Thanks for the compliment, chicka!
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Oh well depending on who you ask that may not be a compliment! Although I think you know who I am talking about and their opinions can be discounted. :smiley: (I have Emily’s Bean Soup in the fridge - no one can deny it!)

Oh man I forgot about that one. Also, Grandma’s ability to drink half and half as if it were milk. Your son-in-law though that sounded like a good idea; suddenly all my coffee half and half is disappearing to be put in cereal. :smack:

157

I was raised Jewish, but have never had gefilte fish. (My family didn’t keep kosher.) The one time it was really ever convenient for me to try it without spending money on it was at the Novotel in (oddly enough, the Arabic part of) Jerusalem. It visually squicked me out, though, and I didn’t bite, so to speak.

But I got hooked on falafel and shwarma there. Well, more accurately, I first got hooked on shwarma in some quaint little town somewhere else in Israel. I forget what it was called, but I vividly remember there being a 7-Eleven knockoff there called “Seven to Eleven”, and I remember that the city’s stray cat population was pretty comparable to its human population. I mean, there were cats everywhere. They learned to walk downtown and they lived like kings, roaming the streets and getting fed shwarma. I want to say it’s somewhere between Tel Aviv and Caesarea, only because I was suffering from incredible jet lag and I’m pretty sure we went to Caeserea pretty soon after that. But then again, just as likely it was somewhere between Tel Aviv and Kibbutz Hagoshrim in the Golan Heights. Ring a bell for any Israelis? Anyway, falafel is falafel, but I’ve since found out that what passes for shwarma here is just not the same.

158

Well, I was subjected to my aunt’s Swiss steak. Her theory was, the only thing that required more cooking than veggies, was meat. Therefore, any meat she prepared came out looking and tasting like shoe leather. However, I make Swiss steak, started on the stove and finished in the Crock Pot, that totally rocks! (Not saying you’d like it, but my family scarfs it down. . .)

Hey, is it any sign that my generation is so different from my mom’s because, if I fix something once that the whole family hates, I never fix it again? I also don’t make the kids eat stuff they hate. If I make something that only hubby and I like, or only us and one of the kids, the remaining people can eat peanut butter sandwiches. House rules.

159

[QUOTE=fetus]
I
But I got hooked on falafel and shwarma there. Well, more accurately, I first got hooked on shwarma in some quaint little town somewhere else in Israel. I forget what it was called, but I vividly remember there being a 7-Eleven knockoff there called “Seven to Eleven”, and I remember that the city’s stray cat population was pretty comparable to its human population. I mean, there were cats everywhere. They learned to walk downtown and they lived like kings, roaming the streets and getting fed shwarma. I want to say it’s somewhere between Tel Aviv and Caesarea, only because I was suffering from incredible jet lag and I’m pretty sure we went to Caeserea pretty soon after that. But then again, just as likely it was somewhere between Tel Aviv and Kibbutz Hagoshrim in the Golan Heights. Ring a bell for any Israelis? Anyway, falafel is falafel, but I’ve since found out that what passes for shwarma here is just not the same.
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Hadera? Netanya? Kfar Saba? Could be any of a hundred different communities - that area of the country is called the Sharon, and it’s very heavily populated.

The thing with the cats could be anywhere, too, including Tel Aviv. Israelis don’t really think of street cats as “strays” - rather, human cities are their natural habitat, just like it is for pigeons. The way we see it, cats, as a species, aren’t so much domesticated as parallel evolving. Sometimes they live in a state of symbiosis with humans, sometimes they don’t; either way is valid.

My cat, for instance, was found in the street as a kitten by my wife. Maybe she’s descended from housecats, or maybe her ancestors were never domesticated - maybe they wandered up from Egypt 5,000 years ago, and have been living here ever since. By that logic, cats have as much a right to run wild as people do.

160

Duck’s blood soup (czarnina).Here’s a recipe for ya, it is an Easter dish.

My aunt makes it, but not with a live duck (she has a source for duck’s blood. I don’t want to know where she gets it). I tried it once. It wasn’t terrible, it was very bitter. My uncle likes it with sugar. My cousin likes it with salt.