I forgot to mention my mother’s turkey. You can read all about it here. It’s an old thread, but my feelings are the same.
Thankfully, we now do Thanksgiving at my in-laws, as they head to Florida for the winter shortly after Thanksgiving.
If that’s not an abomination, I don’t know what is.
Egads, 12 hour turkey? That is just so wrong.
I used to know someone (actually, identical twins with identical cooking deficiencies) who managed to take the flavor out of everything. The idea of seasoning foods was an alien concept to her. Not even salt and pepper. Just boil the flavor out of the food and serve it up.
Actually, that’s kind of the way she lived her entire life.
When I was in high school Chinese food was still a foreign thing to my family and friends. I had tried it and loved stir fry. I even found a pre-packaged stir fry set-up at a local grocery store…brocolli, peppers, bok choy, etc. I picked it up and took it to my boyfriend’s parent’s house and stuck it in the fridge for us to cook later.
The next day was Sunday. His mom always made a Sunday dinner with homemade biscuits, creamed potatoes, a roast or something. That Sunday there was a new dish on the table that looked absolutely horrible. I asked her what it was and she said it was the stir fry that I had bought. She had absolutely no concept of eating a vegetable that was tender-crunchy. My glorious package of stir fry had been cooked to mush. She must have stirred it around in the frying pan for 30 minutes or more till they were “done”. 
I never corrected her as it was unlikely she would ever eat at a Chinese restaurant and figure out the difference.
Her food was otherwise fabulous, and I wish I could recreate her biscuits. Her biscuits were unlike any other I’ve ever encountered. I would skip dessert and eat more biscuits.
My mom once made this absolutely delicious oven fried chicken. It was crispy and crunchy and perfectly breaded on the outside, juicy and tender on the inside. I kept sneaking little bits of chicken because it was so good I couldn’t wait for dinner.
Dinnertime rolled around and, just before bringing the chicken to the table, she deliberately dumped a half cup of butter over the pile of chicken. What had been an absolutely lucious, lighter counterpart to regular fried chicken was now a sodden, buttery mess. Apparently it was part of the recipe she was using. It was a travesty. Luckily, that recipe has been completely retired.
My dad once made a tuna noodle casserole and doused it in Tabasco sauce. My mother and I immediately informed him that he had Done Wrong and that he had ruined the casserole. Tuna noodle casserole, at our house, is comfort food. Comfort food is salty and creamy and very little else. Put hot sauce on it if you want, but for heaven’s sake put it on your OWN plate!
Also, my mother puts soy sauce on just about everything. Even, say, Mexican food. This amuses (and possibly offends) my brother-in-law, who is a very good cook and makes sure that everything has enough flavor without having to add anything extra.
This isn’t a cooking violation. You don’t like it, and you decided to complain about it here. As you have pointed out, there are enough people that like this concoction for Budweiser to make money off of it. I love this stuff, and I drink it regularly. I hated it at first. I thought it was entirely wrong. But I tried it again, fully expecting the taste and it was great. Once the surprise was gone, I loved it.
I once had a friend whose stir fry never quite came out right. It was always soggy and mushy. I finally decided to watch her cook some to see what she was doing wrong. As it turns out, she was afraid of heating up just oil in the pan, so she added a few cups of water. She’d put the food in and then turn the heat on.
Ah, stir boiled food.
I see what you did there.
If you hadn’t said this was your boyfriend’s mother, I’d suspect we both knew this person.
My mom ordered eggplant parmesan at a local diner. It seemed okay until she got to a part that was extremely hard and impossible to cut. When she pointed it out, the server asked her if she’d like a steak knife for it.
Yep, they changed owners and are declining even more rapidly than our economy is.
Mom just related another tale to me:
My brother asked her if he could make buttermilk by simply adding butter to milk. She patiently explained that there is a process to it, but that one wasn’t it.
Ironically, buttermilk was originally what was left after you took the butter out.
Oh, yeah, I remember that one. And there was another horror story that was similar. I remember someone who had a grandmother or something with a similar 12 hour “cooking” method. But she was horrified and turned off the oven after an hour. And restarted it in the morning.
There was much betting in the thread on how soon the puking would begin.
Any chance you remember the name of the dish? Or are you purposely withholding the name from us out of spite in case we still might have it where we live?
Ah, okay. I misunderstood your phrasing (“seem to think that it is a reasonable way to get cheese into an omelet to make a very thin frittata, then fold it in half”) to mean you thought that the folding in half with the stuff in the middle was a strange way to make an omelet. But apparently your objection is to the Kraft Singles, not the actual omelet style.
Of course, while most of the places I’ve cooked have allowed the customer to specify what kind of cheese they want in their omelet, the default is usually “American Cheese” (aka “pasteurized cheese food product”) if they don’t ask for something else.
Ah, the Shameless Autocondimentor*
My wife is an “autocondimentor” with ranch dressing.
How do you keep the apples fresh (and juicy) while they’re on display under that thing?!
It was a fine ham until the dog chewed on it.
Ball is a brand of canning jar. I just cant spell ball … when for some odd reason I type it as bell … =)