Both of my grandmothers were excellent cooks. I only remember a few things they made that were “misses”, but that was most likely because I just didn’t like the food that was made. The rest of the family seemed to like the “misses” just fine.
Dad’s mom always made pickled eggs every time we came over for dinner. Didn’t matter what the rest of the meal was, there would be pickled eggs. I despise eggs, so I refused to eat them. My dad made me try one once to be polite and I nearly barfed.
Mom’s mom made something we called ham salad. Chopped up cooked ham mixed with Miracle Whip and onions. And that’s it. Ugh.
On a side note I said for years that I hated mayo. The first time I actually tried real mayo instead of Miracle Whip it was a revelation. Turns out it’s Miracle Whip I can’t stand and real mayo is fine in small doses.
I’ve posted this many times, but I’ll share it again.
One thing dad made frequently was SPAM[sup]®[/sup] salad sandwiches. Run the meat through a grinder, mix it with Miracle Whip and sweet pickle relish, and chill. Serve of soft white bread.
This is a thread about ‘misses’, but dad’s SPAM[sup]®[/sup] salad was good! The sweetness of the Miracle Whip counterbalanced the saltiness/greasiness of the SPAM[sup]®[/sup]. (Don’t use mayonnaise. It does not provide the necessary counterbalance.) Dad would have to coax people to try it, because many people don’t like this delicious pig product even when they’ve never tasted it. After the first sandwich, everyone was like, ‘Do you have any more?’
Originally Posted by Dr. Girlfriend
Mom’s mom made something we called ham salad. Chopped up cooked ham mixed with Miracle Whip and onions. And that’s it. Ugh.
my grandma (and probably everyone else’s) got that recipe from a rationing cookbook back in 42 or 3 but the recipe originally called for chunk bologna that was shredded …its not bad but these days id recommend the low sodium chunk
Oddly enough one on the younger girls tried making it with real ham for a picnic and no one liked it…
Everyone in my family eats spam or “luncheon loaf” except for my dad and my uncle who were in vietnam … my dad banned it from his house and plate for 20 years my uncle didn’t like it but if someone else was serving it hed eat it…
My mom was generally a good cook, though by the time I was in high school pretty much everything we ate was of the bake-from-frozen variety. But, there were a couple dishes of hers that made me mistakenly think at the time “I don’t like x.”
The first one I caught onto was chicken satay. We had it maybe once a month, and hoo boy! She’d bake the skewered chicken breast strips in a sheet pan with no salt and no source of moisture or covering. They were most-way to chicken jerkey by the time they came out. And then, for the sauce. It was whatever peanut butter we had on hand, mixed in a coffee cup with a tablespoon of powdered sugar and however much Tabasco sauce it took to get it thin enough to spread.
She’d then take the spoon, get the “satay sauce” on the back of it, and, one at a time, sludge up one side of each chicken strip.
I was shocked when I went to Trader Joe’s and the sample that day was naan “pizza” with satay sauce and feta- and it was actually good!
It could have been me (Velveeta cheese on frozen pizza). My mother died last year at age 89, and it’s a story that got repeated at her funeral, brought up by her grandchildren. Other than that, she was a pretty good cook, and a great baker.
I never ate my grandmother’s cooking. One was dead, and the other had a live-in maid who did all the household’s cooking. Mary (the maid) was pretty good cook. But she was mentally retarded (the result of childhood measles, iirc) and sometimes things came out oddly if she’d misunderstood something. The worst cooking miss I remember wasn’t actually food. She took a beautiful ornamental glass dish and put it in the oven to keep the food warm or something. It wasn’t heat-safe, and cracked spectacularly.
My mom is a decent cook, but overcooked everything. The dish that she loved and the rest of us hated was roast beef hash. Overcook the roast beef, then grind in into paste with potatoes, stir in the leftover gravy, and cook again until it is very very dead.
I don’t really remember my grandmother’s cooking. My mother was a good cook in general but her attempt at fried chicken was awful. Imagine chicken coated with paste, and you get the picture. She didn’t have a frying pan big enough to fry all the chicken at once. Instead of frying in batches, she’d dredge the chicken with flour and pile layers of chicken in the pot with a little oil in the bottom. The bottom layer would get fried on one side, but the rest got steamed only. Yeah, it was as bad as it sounds, but she “fried” chicken the same way every time.
She had a few other misses. One was her homemade pizza. She’d top it with raw fatty ground beef before cooking, so that the grease spread all over the top as it cooked. Her macaroni and cheese was less than stellar. To save money, she doubled all the ingredients except the cheese, often Velveeta. Overcooked elbow macaroni, white sauce with a little bland cheese melted in it, and nothing else. It was so bland you couldn’t tell there was cheese in it.
Cloves and allspice, at least in the recipe I use. And not greasy if made well. These days, pork is leaner, too. Labor intensive, I’ll grant; especially if you can’t find a butcher who will grind up the cut of meat you want and you have to grind it yourself. But not that bad considering the recipe make 6 pies.
I was lucky enough to grow up in a family of good to excellent cooks. The notable exception to this was the way my mother cooked beef liver. Dredged in flour and cornmeal, then fried until it resembled a chunk of a gray basketball.
I finally reasoned out that since chicken livers tasted good, maybe if you cooked the liver less… I tried it and it was actually good.
One time (thankfully only one time) my dad made something he called “Breaded Tomatoes” - canned tomatoes, white bread, and sugar cooked together and served warm. Nastiest stuff I have ever found on my plate; it looked and tasted like barf. I finally realized that it must have been something his mother must have made in the Depression from whatever was in the house.
The stuff I didn’t like from grandma was generally because I didn’t like the ingredient. I don’t know how good her okra was because, being okra, it is categorically bad no matter how well cooked. Same thing with other dishes. So I don’t know if she messed anything up.
My great aunt, on the other hand, had some awful holiday cookies. She’d bake hundreds of dry, crumbling Christmas cookies and disconcerting snacks made out of various things covered in melted chocolate bark. The latter always looked like novelty fake vomit from the practical joke store. She’d give them out and it was a competition to see if you could avoid getting stuck with a tin of them on the way out the door. “Hey, Miss Ruth! You forgot your cookies!” “Oh. Thank you.” As a little kid one year I discreetly emptied the tin with our name and filled it with commercial cookies from the various tables. Dad was slightly alarmed at the underhandedness of this, but was still glad not to be stuck with those godawful cookies.
My mom was, for the most part, a good cook. Her fried chicken was to die for. Her baked mac & cheese divine. But… there were 2 things she made that I absolutely could not take.
First off… you did not tell my mother you didn’t like something she made or turn it down. Ever. If she made it, you ate it and pretended it was the most wonderful thing ever. Her potato salad was something out of a nightmare.
It was boiled potatoes, mayo, green peppers and celery. With about a half can of black pepper dumped in it. I don’t care much for black pepper, and green peppers either for that matter. Forcing myself to eat that was… brrrrrr. Even thinking about it now gives me chills. But the final straw came when we were all camping, and had had a fish fry. Mom made her usual potato salad. And then we all ended up puking sick. I don’t know if it was food poisoning or stomach flu, but when that strong flavor of the potato salad came up… I was never able to eat it again. She would get mad and cuss me when I refused it, but it was worth it to me to never put it in my mouth again.
The other thing was her milk gravy. It had the consistency of paste, again, tons of black pepper, and a layer of grease coagulating on the top. That was one thing that I NEVER ate, told her I simply didn’t like milk gravy, and to be honest, I thought I didn’t, since hers was the only I’d ever eaten, and I assumed it was ALL like that. Since she’s passed away, I got adventurous and tried other milk gravies, and guess what? It was only hers I didn’t like. I’ve even learned to make it myself, and it’s yummy!
OMG I’d forgotten about that horror. In the 1950s, it was a regular part of school lunch. Every child was forced to eat everything they were served. Allergies schmallergies. The tomatoes with bread absolutely did look and taste like barf.
If we got whole stewed tomatoes, we could smash them on the underside of the table, where they would adhere long enough for a child to get out of the room. For the stewed tomato pieces with bread, all you could do was gag it down and develop a big helping of disrespect for adults and authority.
It didn’t matter how lean the pork started out. My grandmother added chicken fat to the filling. I don’t remember the exact amount but it was a lot. I think each pie had at least a cup of chicken fat in it - maybe two cups.
That said, it wasn’t bad. I liked my grandmother’s pork pie.
That explains the grease factor. I usually choose a fattier Boston butt to have ground, in order to have enough fat to keep it from being dry. But I’ve never heard of adding chicken fat before. If I found myself in the position of needing to add fat it would be lard (≡ pork fat).
Given the origin of the dish, it’s not impossible that the fattier version is more authentic. :dubious:
Blows my theory about it being a Depression-era make-do, at least partially. Or maybe not, considering that generational span would put the people who were kids in the Depression at the right age to be cooking school lunches in the 50s. :rolleyes:
But obviously it was not limited to my family (shudder).
These school lunches wouldn’t have been in Kansas or that vicinity, would they?