What was the worst concoction your parents forced on you as a kid?
I have no idea where my mother got the inspiration for this culinary delight, but I regularly suffered through “cream cheese roll-ups”–a gob of cream cheese smeared on baloney, then rolled up and speared with a toothpick. Nasty, not to mention having as much fat as Crisco.
[pukey smilie]
Brussel sprouts
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Well, aside from her cooking (she was a horrible cook when we were kids), the grossest thing she made me ingest was Green Magma. She’d blend a fresh batch every morning using either orange or apple juice.
The finished product was bright green and tasted like powdered grass.
I have a weird food phobia about sweet food touching non sweet food. This means, no syrup touching bacon or cranberry sauce touching mashed potatos, no raisins in curry, etc.
My mom used to make this awful thing as a “treat” when I was a girl. It was the “Pear Girl.”
Pear Girl was made with half a canned pear as the body (note: I also hate pears, too grainy) and a lettuce leaf skirt (ack, sweet non sweet violation!) , carrot sticks for legs, carrot shavings for hair and a mouth made out of a cherry. I forget how, but cottage cheese was involved somehow.
This was like a total nightmare for me, made worse by the fact that my mom always presented with Pear girl with such obvious love, it was intended to be very special and wonderful so I had to eat the damn thing to show my appreciation.
Blech.
My dad remarried when I was 15 or so and I still remember the first dinner with his new wife. She made a canned ham topped with pineapple rings and canned cherries. Back then I was still eating meat, and didn’t hate ham, but I did loathe canned ham. And of course, with the whole sweet/non sweet thing, I hated the idea of cherries touching ham.
In order to be nice for the first dinner with the new stepmother, I ate everything and complimented her. The next time I made a visit to their house, she said, “I made your favorite, canned ham and cherries!”
Blech.
How can I possibly pick just one thing? My mother, bless her heart, is an atrocious cook!
Let’s see, there was the eggplant (sliced and baked). I waited until she left the kitchen, and threw it away. Then she came back, saw my naked eggplant lying in the naked trash can, took it out, and made me eat it. 
Then there was the Spam (sliced, a dollop of bbq sauce on top, and baked). I just flat wouldn’t eat it. Fortunately I was old enough then to defy and win.
And I can’t forget the meatloaf! Small clumps of meat with more oatmeal than beef, watery tomato-ey juicy sauce with bran flakes floating around in it.
And the tofu eggs–she scrambled eggs and put chunks of tofu in it.
Speaking of eggs, she used to put chopped tomatoes and chopped onions in her scrambled eggs, along with some cottage cheese. One day I was at her house and at her request got the cottage cheese out of the refrigerator. It was moldy. She told me to spoon out the moldy portion and put the rest in the eggs. Needless to say, I didn’t eat breakfast with her that day.
What makes it hard is that on the rare occasions when I’m able to return to Utah for a visit, she always wants to make me one home-cooked meal. But my sister and I have found one that even my Mom can’t ruin, so we always praise it to the highest heavens and end up getting to eat chicken & rice instead of who knows what distasteful slop.
Oh yeah, one more. Mr. crazy4chaucer and I were married in November; his birthday is in February. His first birthday after we were married, my Mom invited us over for birthday cake. It was whole wheat orange-flavored angel food cake that was heavier than a brick. My sweet hubby tried to eat it, and I could tell that the effort was about to choke him. So I held his plate for him as he got up to do something, and politely held it low enough for the dog to lick it so he wouldn’t have to finish. He thanked me appropriately when we got back home. 
Liver. Actually, I was the 5th child and my parents were done having fights about food by the tiem I came along. My oldest sister, however, was the victim of The Great Liver Battle. As in, “You sit at the table until you finish it. If you have to go to bed before it’s gone, you’ll have it cold for breakfast.”
By the time I was old enough to dislike foods (although my mother is a great cook, and there’s little of her’s I won’t eat) it was “okay, then make yourself something else, just don’t expect me to cook something special for you.”.
StG
Yes, I despised them.
But every once in a while, my mother would try and test her authority by forcing me to sit there until they were eaten.
I recall sitting there a loong time, maybe a half hour; gagging when I tried to eat them.
I don’t eat them nowadays. Or any kind of eggs.
My dad’s fried squash. It was just slimy and nasty, and it pretty much put me off squash for life. Of course, Dad loved it, so he made it just about every chance he got.
My strategy for eating it: I usually drank milk with dinner, but on squash nights I would get ice water instead. Before eating the squash, I’d suck on an ice cube for a while. Then, when my taste buds were sufficiently numbed, I’d hurriedly swallow the squash.
First…Spinach Soup. My mom made it on Christmas Eve one year when I was a kid (the joys of growing up vegetarian). I refused to eat it and had it for breakfast the next morning. Nothing like the threat of no presents on Christmas to stifle the gag reflex!
Next…Oatmeal. I know its not so bad but I had it for breakfast six days a week until I was in high school. And we’re not talking maple syrup/brown sugar oatmeal delight either. Mom made it with powdered milk so every few bites you would get a big chunk of dehydrated milk powder. Yecccccccch. My wife will occassionally make it (but with real milk) and I can’t even be in the same room.
Finally…Scrambled Eggs at my grandparents house. Grandpa would cook about two pounds of bacon and then scramble the eggs in the leftover fat until they were completely saturated in bacon grease. We didn’t eat the bacon but were apparently allowed to consume that artery-choking mess.
I’m shocked to discover that I’m the first person to mention asparagus. My parents are both pretty good cooks, but they do love their asparagus and I absolutely can’t stand the stuff. I’m sure it’s good asparagus as asparagus goes, but I just kind of sit there and hold my nose and try not to look at it.
We used to have these epic battles when I was a kid where my parents wouldn’t let me leave the table until I’d eaten my asparagus and I wouldn’t eat it, so the three of us would be sitting around a table glaring silently at each other; no plates in front of my parents, a plate clean except for the asparagus in front of me, and the clock ticking on for half an hour or so before someone gave up.
You think you’ve got it bad? I had to eat little balls of blood. I don’t know what they were but it was called Kashanka or something like that and everytime I ate some, which was after I cried and cried, I puked my guts out. It was blood something… oh and I had to have some blood pudding. That was just abuse… or my parents were crazy… both.
Another vote for liver. I was another poor child who had to clean my plate before I could leave the table and even now the thought of it makes me heave.
I feel like some kind of sicko, but I liked liver.
( I do not eat it now)
My mom fried it and it was okay with lots of mashed potatos(the smell bothered me)
And liver dumpling soup was my favorite.
To each his own, i guess.
My fave food Nowadays is beans; any and all kind.
Love em!
It’s really a wonder my sisters and I survived my mothers cooking. I guess there was one positive aspect though…we all learned, through necessity, how to prepare a decent meal.
One of the worst things she would serve up was ‘Chop Suey’, and Australianised version of Chow Mein (I think) and was made with minced beef, green beans, chicken-noodle soup and soy sauce. God, even thinking about it now makes me gag.
Peanut butter and pickle sandwiches…bleeech! Of course, I’d never know she’d made it until after I was already at school, and I don’t care, taking the pickles off does nothing to help it, by lunch time, the pickle juice has totally saturated the peanut butter.
Unfortunately, my boyfriend actually likes this concoction.
~V
Believe it or not, but I like grilled liver and onions, if its cooked right. Mom didn’t cook it right. She blasted that liver till it was the consistency of shoe leather and twice as bitter. There is no amount of ketchup you can pour on to slide the liver chips down your throat. My younger brother had it worse. He had issues with peas and wouldn’t eat them. One time my dad tried to force feed him and my brother vomited all over him. The one dish that even my dad wouldn’t eat was a kidney casserole. When he threw his out, we all followed him. My mom also would mix up skim milk right before dinner and so our milk was warm and lumpy. We can laugh about it now, but sometimes mealtimes were a battleground.
Salisbury steak. Hamburger patties swimming in a brown cream sauce.
I barfed so fast, I couldn’t even get up from the table. I remember what a perfect little moat my puke formed around the meat pattie.
I don’t think anybody wanted salisbury steak for a while after that.
Trust me, there are a lot of gross-sounding Chinese dishes. I had to eat a bunch of them. I’d have to say pork intestine, pork uteri, bitter melon, durian, ginseng (the really bitter kind), plus a whole bunch more I have hopefully blocked from my memory.
F_X
Turkey fries. Think mountain oysters, but from a bird.
Spotted dick. <shudder>