# Things your family ate that aren't common? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 10, 2014, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-your-family-ate-that-arent-common/685777 "2014-04-10T03:58:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![harmonicamoon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/65b543/32.png) [@harmonicamoon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/harmonicamoon)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-your-family-ate-that-arent-common/685777/1 "2014-04-10T03:58:24Z")
Growing up, my family ate fried chicken gizzards. You could buy them by the pound in the market. No bones and they were probably cheap. And they were delicious! Do they still sell them? What uncommon foods did you eat while growing up? ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-your-family-ate-that-arent-common/685777/2 "2014-04-10T04:02:51Z")
We ate baked cornbread (northern style) with butter and syrup. Also, rice as a side dish with sugar and cinnamon. Yuck. ---
**Author:** ![Rick\_Kitchen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rick_kitchen/32/522_2.png) [@Rick\_Kitchen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Kitchen)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-your-family-ate-that-arent-common/685777/3 "2014-04-10T04:36:35Z")
I love rice with sugar and cinnamon. Besides, it’s not much different from rice pudding, which is a thing. Both sides of my family come from Oklahoma, so Southern cooking was definitely a thing, but we didn’t really eat anything strange. Black eyed peas on New Year’s Day (although my mother loves them and eats them all the time), Mustard greens, okra (which I love). My Grandmother used to make mashed potato cake (which was chocolate) and vinegar pie (which was like a pecan pie without the pecans). ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-your-family-ate-that-arent-common/685777/4 "2014-04-10T04:40:07Z")
My mother used to make Tongue, and occasionally Brains… ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Pig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c57346/32.png) [@Little\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Pig)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-your-family-ate-that-arent-common/685777/5 "2014-04-10T05:14:52Z")
Casserole recipes from the back of Campbell soup cans. I guess those would now be considered uncommon though we still do an annual Campbell Tater Topped Casserole bake-off at the local saloon. [Knock yourself out.](http://www.campbellskitchen.com/recipes/tater-topped-casserole-50382) Oh, and Mum used to make me [Pigs in a Blanket occasionally.](http://www.buzzfeed.com/rachelysanders/pigs-in-a-blanket-recipes) I thought that was Haute cuisine. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-your-family-ate-that-arent-common/685777/6 "2014-04-10T05:22:34Z")
> [@Rick\_Kitchen](#): > > I love rice with sugar and cinnamon. Besides, it’s not much different from rice pudding, which is a thing. This was a side dish, though! Like here is your pork chop, here is your sugary rice! I stand by my yuck. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![sitchensis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sitchensis/32/4892_2.png) [@sitchensis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sitchensis)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-your-family-ate-that-arent-common/685777/7 "2014-04-10T05:23:27Z")
sheep’s brains and eggs ---
**Author:** ![OttoDaFe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ottodafe/32/356_2.png) [@OttoDaFe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OttoDaFe)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-your-family-ate-that-arent-common/685777/8 "2014-04-10T05:35:33Z")
It was some time after I started school that I realized that it was possible to have a birthday with something other than . . . prune cake. (For those who are back from the vomitorium, it was actually a spice cake that happened to have prunes in it. And it was quite good, in part because it was always covered with a mocha frosting. It was my mother’s recipe, but nobody knows where it came from — her sister had no knowledge of it. But it was and is a family tradition, and my sister does a killer reproduction on request.) ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 5:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-your-family-ate-that-arent-common/685777/9 "2014-04-10T05:55:19Z")
Green tomato pie. My dad was from Missouri, and made my immigrant mom learn how to make it. ---
**Author:** ![kk\_fusion](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kk_fusion/32/15276_2.png) [@kk\_fusion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kk_fusion)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 9:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-your-family-ate-that-arent-common/685777/10 "2014-04-10T09:34:24Z")
> [@harmonicamoon](#): > > Growing up, my family ate fried chicken gizzards. You could buy them by the pound in the market. No bones and they were probably cheap. And they were delicious! Do they still sell them? Saw these in Africa. Wrapped around a stick for about a dime each. They were cured to death though and tasted only salty. You can buy them frozen in a food store, at least in Europe. > [@](#): > > What uncommon foods did you eat while growing up? Beans with sausage and dried fruit. A dish from the Sarre area, where grandma was from. ---
**Author:** ![FairyChatMom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fairychatmom/32/21906_2.png) [@FairyChatMom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FairyChatMom)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 10:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-your-family-ate-that-arent-common/685777/11 "2014-04-10T10:27:53Z")
My mom “invented” a dish we affectionately called “slop.” It was spaghetti sauce on rice. Born of leftovers, we all actually really liked it, so she’d make it for us occasionally. She also made creamed ground beef on toast - I think it was a much less salty version of creamed chipped beef, and a cheap, filling meal back when ground beef was cheap. As I think back, the food I ate as a kid was pretty boring and benign - mostly because my mom was figuring it out as she went along. Her mother never allowed her to cook, so she had to learn on her own. Interestingly, my mom went on the have a very successful catering business in her 60s and 70s - she only just quit doing it shortly before turning 80. ---
**Author:** ![CairoCarol](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cairocarol/32/3825_2.png) [@CairoCarol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CairoCarol)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 10:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-your-family-ate-that-arent-common/685777/12 "2014-04-10T10:38:43Z")
Nothing my family ate would be considered “uncommon” today - dated and representative of a shameful era in American cuisine, certainly, but not exactly uncommon. But my mother did make one dish that apparently, for that time and place, was quite exotic: tacos! (This was in upstate New York, Missouri, and Maryland in the 60s and early 70s.) I assume she picked up the dish from her older sister, who lived in Albuquerque NM for a long time. There was one other way in which our family was apparently odd: we did not have bread at every meal. It seemed like whenever I ate over at a friend’s house, a standard part of the meal would be a plate of Wonder Bread or something similar, and a stick of margarine. I remember thinking that was strange, because it didn’t happen at home, but perhaps we were the weird ones? ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 11:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-your-family-ate-that-arent-common/685777/13 "2014-04-10T11:04:22Z")
Sliced beef tongue, in two inches of aspic. With horseradish as a condiment. …and we liked it. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 11:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-your-family-ate-that-arent-common/685777/14 "2014-04-10T11:06:16Z")
And here I thought I was odd because we always stirred yellow mustard into our baked beans. ---
**Author:** ![KinkiNipponTourist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e9bcb4/32.png) [@KinkiNipponTourist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KinkiNipponTourist)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 11:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-your-family-ate-that-arent-common/685777/15 "2014-04-10T11:25:27Z")
My mother made this disgusting dish of pork chops baked in milk. NAST. We would all quietly weep inside whenever it appeared on the table. ---
**Author:** ![Missy2U](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3bc359/32.png) [@Missy2U](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Missy2U)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-your-family-ate-that-arent-common/685777/16 "2014-04-10T13:24:08Z")
Only thing I can think of is flank steak marinated overnight in Wishbone French Dressing then grilled on the charcoal grill. Serve with dressing as gravy. Mine is the only family that I’ve ever known of that had that. Still do It’s one of our favorite meals. ---
**Author:** ![Sicks\_Ate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/258eb7/32.png) [@Sicks\_Ate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sicks_Ate)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-your-family-ate-that-arent-common/685777/17 "2014-04-10T13:32:53Z")
Mackerel patties, the poor man’s salmon croquette. ---
**Author:** ![freckafree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/freckafree/32/3050_2.png) [@freckafree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/freckafree)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-your-family-ate-that-arent-common/685777/18 "2014-04-10T13:39:36Z")
> [@CairoCarol](#): > > There was one other way in which our family was apparently odd: we did not have bread at every meal. It seemed like whenever I ate over at a friend’s house, a standard part of the meal would be a plate of Wonder Bread or something similar, and a stick of margarine. I remember thinking that was strange, because it didn’t happen at home, but perhaps we were the weird ones? My husband’s family did that, and I found it very odd. Not only was it odd, but it’s damned near impossible to spread fresh-from-the-fridge margarine on Wonder bread without ending up with wads of torn bread with chunks of margarine on them. ---
**Author:** ![MsWhatsit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/eb8c5e/32.png) [@MsWhatsit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsWhatsit)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-your-family-ate-that-arent-common/685777/19 "2014-04-10T13:42:22Z")
My favorite comfort food as a kid was soft-boiled eggs mashed up with saltine crackers. I’ve never run into anyone else who had this, or who isn’t violently repulsed by the sound of it. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-your-family-ate-that-arent-common/685777/20 "2014-04-10T13:47:43Z")
> [@beowulff](#): > > My mother used to make Tongue, and occasionally Brains… > [@sitchensis](#): > > sheep’s brains and eggs …doublechecking timestamps on thread. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-your-family-ate-that-arent-common/685777.md?page=2)