What I thought of when I read the thread title wasn’t food or anything like the OP talked about. “It’s not for us” = common phrase used by production companies / publishers when blowing off writers to let them down easy. Implying “it’s good but just doesn’t fit with our company”.
For awhile we lived with an aunt and her family. There were about 13 of us living in a two bedroom house in good old Opalocka, Florida. One of those 13 was my uncles mom from Poland. She would make a big pot of pigs in a blanket every week for herself and her son. We were not allowed to have any and it always smelled so good. And we were always hungry. She hid the peanut butter too. She once said the bread was for pretty only.
Strange old woman, she was.
I’ve been known to do something like that. “You can’t have that apple, it’s for dinner! Go find something else.” That kid can go through a bag of apples in nothing flat, and I always have to warn her to leave two in case I need to make dinner out of them.
My mom’s been known to fix food for taking someplace and not leave any for people at home.
Not often–and we were vocal in protest when she did so. And she usually cooked good food for us.
But yes, there were a few memorable things she made for groups that we though were unfair.
My mom baked for us. And she was really good at it. She also sometimes baked for others.
I’m familiar with “they’re not for us” but not to the point of despair.
I can remember when if I had to cook or bake something for SOMEONE ELSE, I’d have to hide the ingredients - never having taken an interest in chocolate bark, pineapple tidbits, or dried apricots before, somebody would spy them and think, hey, those look good! nom nom nom. And I would have to scrape together some money, get in the car and drive 20 miles to the store to buy more. It’s not like they were starving or were not well fed, but not everything was for them 365 days a year, goddam it. I found it easier to cook or bake after they filled up their stomaches earlier in the evening, otherwise it would have been eaten or at least picked at, as if by starving orphans…A common theme, or used to be common, in comic strips was mom having baked something for the church bake sale and somebody in the family saying, hey, cake! and decimating it like an eating machine.
I want to bring all of you baked-good-deprived souls cookies.
My mother and grandmother both baked, and gave a LOT of stuff away. What they would do, is what I do now. If need to take cookies somewhere I make a double batch of dough. If I’m short on time I’ll only bake as many as I need to take along to the meeting/party/event. Folks left behind at home are free to bake up the rest, but if they don’t I’ll do it when I get home.
And both of them would say something like “These are for the League. You can only eat the messed up ones”, and then mess one up on purpose.
My mother was a marvelous baker, and always making stuff for church bake sales, charity events, etc. – enough that she often had special orders in advance for church sales. So it was pretty common to be told to “stay out of the chocolate cake & the pineapple upside-down cake in the kitchen – they were for the bake sale.”
But there was always another one available for us to eat. Maybe it was the one that hadn’t turned out to look so good – but it tasted fine! And we got her baking every day. She was so good because she practiced on us all the time. We were not deprived at all.
This is why when I bake things for others, I make things that come in multiples—i.e., cupcakes rather than a cake. Then I can leave some at home for my husband and kids to enjoy.
We didn’t have the “not for us” thing very much, but what we did have was this weird attitude about food that had just been purcahsed. My dad did all the grocery shopping on Saturday mornings. If, on a Saturday afternoon, one of us went to get a snack, he would get irritated if we were eating something he had just bought. Similar to the “don’t wear your new school clothes before school starts” rule we had, too. 
In the version I heard, he didn’t even get a bite! 