My mom is an excellent cook, and managed to make things good even when money was tight in my family.
But her scrambled eggs. My god, they were awful. Not her fault though. My dad’s mother made them in this awful fashion where the egg:milk ratio was 1:1. It resulted in pale yellow flavorless lumps. Since dad liked them that way, that’s how they were made in our family.
Finally I just told my mom one day that I hated her scrambled eggs, and she told me the whole story and made them the way they SHOULD be made. Yum.
We call all peppers capsicums - red, green, orange - for some reason. Sweet or Bell peppers over the puddle I think. I was trying to be bilingual with my slash, not meaning the hot capsicums.
But I am sure my fear of the police spray is more related to remembering the constant flavour than what the actual spray could do to me
My mum was a good cook, except when it came to vegies.
She was from the school of thought that distrusted vegies were ever properly cooked. Things would sit on the stove top for another hour, ‘just in case’ they weren’t cooked through properly. It’s a wonder we didn’t all die of scurvy, given that no nutrient would’ve survived mum’s boiling.
She got a microwave the year before I moved out, and I suddenly found a love for vegies. Thank god for that microwave, as now there’s not a sloppy vegie in sight at mum’s.
Oh, God. Frozen brussels sprouts. You think they’re bad fresh? They’re little lumps of HELL when they’ve been frozen and heated in the microwave. Blech. Actually, the frozen vegetable period in my younger days was pretty awful. Now we make them all fresh. Yum!
Liver - broiled (it makes me shudder just to think of it now) until it was the consistency, color, texture and firmness of the sole of a leather shoe.
Breaded Veal Patties - also broiled. But for, like, 30 minutes until they were done to a consistency where you could pound nails with the damned things.
Dear ole Mum! How she can cook! No, really she is fantastic in the kitchie (we won’t talk about Dad’s forays. the man is helpless). Mom is an excellent cook and I am priviledged to have been reared around her kitchen (i’m a prertty decent kitchen tech myself) but she has this one dish that has always puzzled me.
The Green Stuff It has no “official” title, most everyone who sits at Mom’s table cannot describe it but there it is! A congealed lime green looking concoction that seems to mock the very festivity that we’ve all sat down to enjoy. I mean this stuff is like the veritable turd in the bowl of punch. An offensive presentation of turgid glop that literally no one has ever requested or missed! And yet my Mom insists on preparing and offering this stuff regularly.
Not on every cookout but if it’s a “Big Meal” like Christmas or Thanksgiving rest assured The Green Stuff will be there for all to consume.
Mom refers to it as “congealed salad.” Now I ask you, what sort of unspeakable horror would those two words conjure in your culinary mind? CONGEALED SALAD!!! Horrors, Mom, we’re getting you down the hospie now dammit!!! And yet there it is in all of its quivering glory. A testament to the darker recesses of a wonderful cook’s (and Mom’s) mind.
We eat it out of respect. I still feel that Mom must be getting a giggle out of it. Tastes as bad as it looks.
When I was a kid (in the 70s) canned vegetables were significantly cheaper than frozen, at least where we lived in Oklahoma. I have noticed in my adult life, though, that frozen vegetables are priced fairly evenly with canned, so I never go the canned route except for beets. Mmm, canned beets. I buy fresh whenever possible, except again for beets. Mmm, canned beets.
And I think one of the points of the powdered milk (thank God my mom hated the stuff, so we always had fresh) is that it is easier to store, so if you’ve got a houseful of people drinking milk like there’s no tomorrow, it’s easier to keep them supplied if you can just whip up a batch of powdered. If you only shop once a week you wouldn’t have enough fridge space to keep nothing but fresh milk, and if you buy fresh milk as needed you’d have to go to the store every day (I’m using my aunt’s family as an example - a whole passle of kids).
Also, powdered is still less expensive than fresh, even today. You can get a box of powdered milk that will make 5 gallons for $10.29, vs 5 gallons of fresh skim milk at $16.45. (I’m using the prices on the stuff that’s in my fridge & pantry right now)
I buy powdered milk for making bread. Sometimes I use a scoop of powdered milk in my coffee, which isn’t bad, but I once tried mixing up a batch and drinking it. Blech! I really feel for all of you that had to drink it as kids!
Oh, and my mom’s Macaroni & Cheese was vile. Sticky, crunchy clumps of elbow macaroni glued together with cheddar cheese. Almost no flavor, and she always always always served it with something she called “Scalloped tomatoes” which was a big can of whole tomatoes, slightly smushed, with chunks of white bread, salt & pepper, baked in the oven. Blorg!
Her meatloaf was also pretty vile when hot. My mom was a creative cook, so she like dto add things to recipes. Her meatloaf had weird chunks of unidentifiable stuff in it, and she used lots of barbecue sauce and (I think) cinnamon in it. It was edible cold on sandwiches with ketchup, but I could never choke it down while it was hot.
Zucchini parmesan. Basically it was the same as chicken or veal parmesan except with zucchini. The worst part is that they would use a home-grown zucchini that got lost in the garden and grew until it was about 6 inches in diameter - the skin would be thick and tough but the inside would be all slimy - ugh. We had many battles of will whenever she made it until my parents came up with the rule that you didn’t have to eat it but you couldn’t have anything else - I learned then that it wouldn’t hurt to skip a meal every so often.
The only other bad thing was “Spam Casserole” - cubes of spam, Mac and Cheese, and peas all mixed together. I really didn’t mind it until the dog got fed some that was left over and then went for a car ride with us. About halfway home she puked it up all over my lap and it looked the same coming back up as it did going down. I could never stand to look at it again.
Now the absolute worst thing I’ve even seen was made by my grandmother - kochanina (took me forever to find the right spelling). The best way to sum it up is “pork jello” - it was bits of pork (typically pigs feet) suspended in some sort of clear jelly with garlic and other things. I can barely stand to LOOK at it let alone get close enough to eat it. Apparently my grandparents, father, and uncle see it as a delicacy but luckily I was never forced to eat it because my mother couldn’t even get near it. I almost puke thinking about it. :eek:
My mother is an excellant cook, as are all her siblings. She’s one of 11, and 4 of her brothers became chefs. However, there were certain things that just didn’t please a child’s palate. I’m lucky - I’m the youngest (of 5) so by the time I was eating solids they had pretty much given up on the food battles, but there was the time my sister was made to sit at the table until bedtime if she didn’t eat her liver. Then she had to get up and have it for breakfast the next morning. There was also the incident of the smelt. Smelt are a small fish. My mother brought home a big bag of fresh smelt and expected us to eat them. As one, we children all revolted. The smelt ended up being tossed behind the carriage house for the stray cats to eat. Bleech. I was lucky in that, if I didn’t like what was prepared, I was free to make a sandwich or a bowl of cereal.
As far as powdered milk - she tried that once. It didn’t go over at all well. The 5 of us could polish off a gallon of milk at one meal, so that was a big expense, but she never really complained.
SylverOne, I’m with you! My mom was actually a pretty good cook, but she got very excited about holidays. I always took milk to school in my thermos and knew that depending on the holiday, it would be some strange color (pink for Valentine’s, green for St. Paddy’s Day).
The one atrocious thing she made was bologna roll-ups: a slice of cold Oscar Mayer bologna lavishly spread with cream cheese and rolled up, then speared with a frilly toothpick. Blech.
My grandfather used to do that-make my dad and his sisters eat the food they didn’t eat for dinner for breakfast.
My dad made himself a tuna melt today for lunch with tuna salad and melted provolone cheese. (I think it was provolone, could have been swiss). It smelled like ass and baked catfood.
My dear mother, a wonderful cook, who can prepare countless southern Italian meals without the aid of a written recipie, who whips up tasty facsimilies of traditional Tex-Mex dishes, and who bravely prepares asian-style dishes of excellent flavor, albeit poor authenticity, cannot, for the life of her, make the batter stick to Chicken-Fried Steak. Many times she tried, and many times she failed. Miserably. And to much ridicule. About three years ago, she swore never to attempt it again. My family is determined to make her keep her word.
My most hideous meal of childhood: “Busht Burgers” - these were fried tuna burgers - overcooked, dry, and nasty. Luckily we only had to eat them on occasional Fridays during Lent. My mom was generally an “ok” cook - not inspired (except for her lasagne), but usually edible, but she really came up with some odd things during Lent. I guess feeding us ice cream sammiches using homemade waffles made up for “Busht Burgers,” though.
My mom’s spaghetti sauce. She would take a pound of ground beef, brown it, and then rinse it in a colandar until all traces of grease were gone. She’d then return it to the skillet, add Hunt’s Tomato Sauce (plain sauce, no seasonings or vegetables added), and heat until warm. Served with spaghetti noodles and bagels that were split open, covered in butter and garlic salt and broiled in the oven. And my mom wondered why my dad only ate the noodles and my brother and I added copious amounts of garlic salt and parmesan cheese to our plates of spaghetti before eating. And she didn’t get this recipe from her mother–my grandmother makes excellent spaghetti sauce, complete with garlic and vegetables in it.
I am not sure I can remember my mom actually cooking anything other than marinara sauce, which she made about once a month. I grew up making myself frozen dinners or eating breakfast cereal or sandwiches for dinner.
I ate either at the counter in the kitchen (it had tall stools) or in my room, my mom ate in her room, at whatever time we wanted to. I think she ate mostly cold cuts and frozen dinners as well. I wasn’t allowed to touch “her stuff” in the fridge so I generally didn’t even know what was in there. The only times we ate together were Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter.
I’ll give her credit, though, for her marinara sauce. It’s good.
It’s calf’s lungs, finely cut and doused with gallons of vinegar and spices and stuff…
Apparently some people really enjoy it and it allegedly cures hangovers (I seriously doubt that I would like to eat THAT after a night of serious partying)
Any more questions? Here’s a picture (albeit very small, but you’ll be glad, trust me) if you really dare.
Remember the mother in Better Off Dead, whose culinary concoctions would move of their own volition?
My mother is an excellent cook, and my only quibbles with things she made were when I was a kid and didn’t have an expansive palate. Ratatouille was the grossest thing on earth to me then, but now I want her recipe.
Apparently, you grew up in some bizzare parallel version of my house. We also had zucchini parmesan just the way you describe (although in the interest of health, my mother never fried the zucch first) but I used to love the stuff. I would grow them special for the dish. I aimed for one fruit to feed four to six.
My grandmother also cooks a garlic flavored meat jello. She uses calves feet rather than pig and it’s called petcha or p’tcha. I always assumed that it was an onomatopoeic word, as that’s the sound any normal person makes upon encountering the vile brew. My mother loves it.
