In the “What’s the strangest thing you’ve heard of that has been tranformed into ‘milk’?” thread, @engineer_comp_geek mentions that he refers to his wife’s almond milk as “nut juice”.
In our family, we have always referred to (Uncle) Ben’s long grain and wild rice as “bug rice”. Because the kids used to say it looked like it had bugs in it.
So, what weird names do you all have for ordinary food items?
Oh you mean stuff like calling hot dogs “tube steak”? Or bologna “Kentucky round steak”?
Probably not all that weird.
Yeah, but I’m looking more for names that you’ve come up with, not ones that are generally known or used by lots of people. Like a family in-joke or something like that.
You mean my Mama didn’t make those names up? 
My mother did tell me that in her childhood home when they made potato pancakes (Catholic Slovak, not Jewish), they would tear leftover pancakes into small pieces and re-fry them til very crispy (yum!). They called that dish “leap larches.” She had no idea how they came up with that name.
First day of (college) class, I said “I’m your worst nightmare, I used to be a camp counselor, so we’re going to introduce ourselves, annnd… what’s your favorite food?”
It always got discussions going, especially if someone said Pineapple on Pizza… but I broke out laughing when a large, wild woman announced
“I just love… Wiener Juice!”
She meant she’d drink the salty water left in the package after you take the last wiener out.
But all semester, someone would bring it up.
I remember a guy I used to work for years ago telling me a story about how whenever they had a family reunion, someone would always bring a jello salad, which came to be known as “the green shit”.
They were going through a cafeteria line one time, he had his four year old daughter up on his shoulders, and they had some jello salad in the dessert area. She innocently asked the guy behind the counter “What’s in the green shit?”
Growing up, we always referred to the small spiny lobsters we all dived for as “bugs”.
Yes! In our family, someone always has to bring “the banana shit”.
Whenever my mom made London broil, my stepdad said we were having “brown Hubba-Bubba”. For those who don’t know, Hubba-Bubba is a brand of chewing gum.
Oh, I forgot about those hash brown patties you get from McDonalds or the grocery freezer section. We call those “grease sponges”.
When I worked at McDonalds forever ago, seemed like nobody knew how to pronounce “fajita”. We called that menu item “chicken vaginas”. The Big Breakfast was “Big Breastusess”. Breakfast burritos contained “poodle vomit”.
For holiday dinners, my mother always bought a box of par-baked dinner rolls she had to stick in the oven to brown. She would always ask my two younger brothers (aged around 3 and 4) if they wanted a “dough” with their dinner, and the name stuck. So far as I know, they still call dinner rolls “doughs” 60 years after the fact.
In my house, the name for a quesadilla is “Wagon wheels”. Largely inspired by this ancient piece of my animated childhood!
This isn’t mine, but my wife’s, and it requires a little background.
One: we live in Luxembourg.
Two: there is a home-goods store in Luxembourg called “Kichechef.” This is pronounced, roughly, “KEE-sha chef.”
Three: whenever there’s a holiday market in Luxembourg, one of the most popular food items is called “gromperekichelcher.” This crazy-looking word is made out of two parts. Grompere (“GROM-puh-ruh”) means “potatoes.” Kichelcher (“KEE-shul-shur”) means “little biscuit.” Put these together, and you litterally get “potatoes in small biscuit form,” which refers to a deep-fried potato fritter, similar to a Swiss Rösti or a small handheld hashbrown.
Four: While they are very, very popular here…
… the name is also notoriously hard to pronounce for newcomers. You can hear it several times, spoken by different people, in the above video.
My kids acquired Luxembourgish fluency quite rapidly after arrival. They have no problem with it. I lagged behind, but I came in with some half-remembered German so I was able to wrap my mouth around the bouncing R’s.
Five: my wife, however, even after almost a decade, still can’t pronounce it.
Conclusion: in my wife’s honor, in our household, these potato fritters are called “grumpy Kichechef.”
When my son was a child he called scrambled eggs “fluffy eggs”, and that stuck in our family.
My late wife didn’t like corned beef hash. She said it looked like dog food. So “dog food” became our name for it.
Duncan eggs: nothing Scottish, just eggs with yolks runny enough for dunking toast into
Sure, we have a few of those:
“Vegiballs” - spaghetti with vegetarian meatballs.
“Kritz-kritz” - a type of macaroni and cheese with feta cheese, called that because of its crunchiness.
“Rudy soup” - chicken soup with julienned carrots and zucchini, called that because “julienned” sounds a bit like “Giuliani”.
“Smooshed potatoes” or “Pac-Man potatoes” - baby potatoes that are boiled, flattened (to about 1 cm thick) and baked in the oven. The latter name is because they usually form a Pac-Man-like shape when smooshed.
When I was very small broccoli was known as “trees”.
My son’s a vegetarian (pescatarian, technically), so my wife has come up with some decent meatless meat dishes. I’ve already mentioned “Vegiballs”; to that, you can add “Ragu alla Fauxlognese” (pronounced “fo-lo-NEZ”).
Is there a kid’s camp in the country that doesn’t call the fruit punch/Kool Aid/ Hi-C they serve “bug juice”?
“Dippy egg” 'round these parts.
Also, my young’un could not pronounce oatmeal, came out oat-e-mole.
30 years later it is still oat-e-mole.
mmm