Raw zucchini? Maybe they call you Rubystreak because that’s what your drawers look like.
My mom was a decent cook; she could have been an excellent cook, but my dad wouldn’t let her season anything. He also refused to eat pasta, which he called “globs of starch”, which was unfortunate since my mom is of Italian descent.
There was one time, though…she made French Onion Soup, and I don’t know what kind of onions she used but once in our guts they generated foul gases on a scale usually associated with jet propulsion. That was at least twenty years ago, but to this day, any mention of French Onion Soup among our family now elicits much drollery.
Finnan Haddie. Smoked haddock poached in milk. I think it was the smell that put me off as a kid; I could never be brought to taste it, mainly because my father–a six-foot tall Mountie–wouldn’t touch it. My mother would enjoy the dish all to herself, as she still does, from time to time.
Mom used to make some really ghoulicious goulash. And something called “salmon fluff.”
Dad, though, Dad and the whole damn Swedish side of the family with their freaking lutefisk . . .
The spinach and liver were both pretty nasty, but lutefisk . . . I have no doubt what the daily special is for any lost souls who eat in the Hades Cafeteria. Outside of my dad’s family reunions, Hell is the only place where people consume this disgusting . . . well, I’m not sure what it is other than disgusting. Anyway, lutefisk is the most sickening thing on planet Earth and it has no business in the human–or even inhuman–mouth. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must go vomit.
The only real compaints I would have for my mothers cooking is that much of it was swimming in fat and grease. Her spaghetti sauce would have pools of orange grease. Her pork chop gravy tasted fantastic if you didn’t mind the puddles of fat. Meatloaf was served swimming in a pan of bubbling ooze. She finally discovered her food tasted just as good without all the fat.
And she thought chocolate chip cookies should be hard as a rock. We called them hockey pucks. Sometimes she made them even worse by adding walnuts. Yuk.
Both my parents are good cooks, mostly their culinary faults were one time things-like stuff that was burned, or wasn’t cooked right.
One time though, my dad got these hot dogs when my cousins came over. I don’t know WHERE he got them, but they tasted like hot dogs made with SOUR APPLES. They were absolutely disgusting. My cousins and I were told we had to finish them, so we held our noses and at them. HA!
Mum fed us (or tried to ) tripe in white sauce one night. Tryed to cut or chew you way through cooked tastless rubber? I ended up throwing it in the front garden. She also cooked us crumbed lambs brains once or twice. ( ‘I haven’t had it for a while and since I’m cooking…’)
However she is very good cook. Her Lemon delicous pudding is espically recommended.
Mom’s cooking wasn’t necessarily bad, but it was bland. She never salted anything. Ever. She never added anything else, except for maybe a dash of pepper.
She had a tendency to overcook things, too. Chicken breasts were dry and stringy and broccoli took on a shade of grey.
My mother was not much of a cook at all when I was growing up, although she’s improved greatly since I moved out (a million years ago). Now that I’ve got kids, I can sympathize with her coming home from work at 6 p.m. and having to cook something in a state of exhaustion, but understanding why it was awful doesn’t make the memory of the food any better.
I don’t think we ever had any vegetables that didn’t come from a can, the mashed potatoes were always instant, and her method of cooking meat was to put the meat near a heat source for about twice the amount of time necessary to cook it. Her meatloaf consisted of hamburger shaped into a loaf and cooked for an hour to an hour and a half at 350 degrees; when it was crusty, she put American cheese slices on top. She made pork chops with stuffing by wetting croutons, placing them in a pan, putting pork chops on top, and cooking the whole thing for an hour to an hour and a half at 350 degrees. She made fish by…well, you get the idea.
My mother taught me many, many good and useful things about life and how to live it. My mother-in-law taught me to cook.
My Mother was a decent cook, but the portion thing and seasoning was decided ahead of time. Your plate arrived and you had no options. If, by chance, a dead rat appeared on the plate, you had to eat it. Battles of will went on for hours past dinnertime. At present my brother inhales his food and leaves the table as quickly as possible, and knows it is a product of his childhood.
Liver with onions and beets are two foods that I could never get past my nose without a ralph reaction. I don’t care how you cook them, they still evoke a hurl reaction. Lima beans are another. My sister used to pick the limas out of her food and hide them on the ledge of the table leaf works. After she’d moved out, Dad found years of petrified vegetables in the table mechanism.
My mother. She’s just so damn festive sometimes.
We’d have a pink, heart shaped cake for Valentine’s Day.
Egg shaped meatloaf for Easter.
Red, white and blue pancakes on the 4th.
The morning of St. Patty’s day we were greeted with biscuits and sausage gravy, tinted kelly green with food coloring. Tasted perfectly normal according to my brothers, but I couldn’t bring myself to take a bite. Blech!!
Other than that, mom was a pretty good cook. My husband, on the other hand, comes up with some pretty strange concoctions. Never know exactly was it is, but I’m pretty well assured that it has a little something from every bottle in the fridge. Worschteshire, ketchup, soy sauce, and let’s not forget the Tabasco!!! Spaghetti isn’t supposed to be spicy hot… not in my book anyways.
Sorry, but An italian sausage sandwich with onion and peppers is one of the greatest foods known to man, I’m still looking for a restauraunt in my neighborhood that sells a good sausage sandwich.
my mother is a wonderful cook, but money was pretty tight when i was little and monday was leftover night.
since we eat a traditional roast dinner sundays, monday would consist of all the mingy bits of dark chicken meat, coated in the jelly which accumulates after a night in the fridge, plus brussel sprouts, carrots and peas, and this is the kicker,
COATED in egg mix and turned into a quiche with homemade rock hard pastry.
leftovers quiche is DISGUSTING.
my dad is also a great cook (he makes the food at the weekends, soup on saturday afternoon, burgers or sausages sat evening, full roast on sunday) but has a somewhat limited repertoire.
he can do a mean steak diane or shepherd’s pie (he insists on calling it “Desperate Dan’s cow pie”) but was stuck last xmas when my mother asked him to make a turkey casserole with the left overs.
my boyfriend was over for his first dinner with the family, and dad had opened a bottle of wine. red wine. dad believes in adding alcohol to every cooked dish.
do you know what happens when you add red wine to turkey casserole ?
you get purple turkey pie. BRIGHT PURPLE TURKEY. not very appetising to look at.
tasted alright, but i made him serve it by candlelight so as not to put irishfella off.
didn’t really work.
thankfully irishfella puts up with my family’s foibles.
Leftovers quiche?
I’m boggling here. That’s one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever heard.
My mum and dad are quite good cooks, so I can’t think of any disastrous meals except for mum’s pizzas. They were a bought pizza base covered with a vast mound of ratatouille and a tiny bit of cheese on top. Very soggy. And every time I tried to mention that it might be a nice idea to have the toppings baked on top of the sauce instead of stewed as part of the sauce she’d always say “Bought pizzas have hardly any toppings. I like to make it with lots of lovely vegetables” which a) wasn’t the point as I never mentioned store-bought pizzas and b) pizza toppings aren’t meant to be stewed. Never mind. She just had a blind spot with pizzas.
I do it with fritatta myself, but there’s no better way to deal with disparate meat/starch/veggie leftovers than to bung them into a pan with eggs and cheese.
Testify brother Wolfie! (as long as you use way too much Grey Poupon country mustard, mmm, mmmm) I have to make 'em at home because no one does 'em right, God’s own sammitch!, and drink a Maretti with it/them.
Poor mousey!!!
) tripe in white sauce one night. Tryed to cut or chew you way through cooked tastless rubber? I ended up throwing it in the front garden. She also cooked us crumbed lambs brains once or twice. ( ‘I haven’t had it for a while and since I’m cooking…’)