Not again, Mom!

[woodford]

I know we have some pretty sophisticated palates here, so we must have all come from gourmet families, right?

My Mom made a mean roast brisket, a great beef stew, fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy that I still dream about, and biscuits and gravy to die for.

But she also served a dish she called "Spam Casserole." Layers of mashed potatoes, velveeta, and sliced spam in a baking dish, baked until the cheese melted. Good God.

The worst part was that my sister was a very picky eater, and Spam Casserole was one of the few foods that she absolutely loved, so we ended up eating it way more than I care to admit.

What crimes did your mother (or father) commit in the kitchen?

[denise_jer]

It wasn't so much that this was a horrible dish, but my mother would make this the night before, so we latch-key kids could pop it in the oven when we got home and it would be ready when she got home: Tuna Noodle Casserole. And of course, there would be leftovers for days! It was a biweekly occurrence.

I still can't stomach the thought of it. My sister and I dubbed it "Latch-Key Cuisine"!

Edited for spelling...

Edited January 8, 2004 by denise_jer (log)

[docsconz]

My mom was a great cook, and there is ery little that I can recall my not liking, however, I really couldn't stand her meatloaf. The funny thing was she made great meatballs.

[Carolyn Tillie]

My mom was a great cook, and there is ery little that I can recall my not liking, however, I really couldn't stand her meatloaf. The funny thing was she made great meatballs.

You are talking about MY Mother!

[bloviatrix]

My mother makes a fricasse once a year for the pre-Yom Kippur meal. I hate it. Everything has an unappealing gray color. She doesn't use any seasoning. Yuck. I stopped eating it well over 20 years ago, and I still cringe.

[docsconz]

My mom was a great cook, and there is ery little that I can recall my not liking, however, I really couldn't stand her meatloaf. The funny thing was she made great meatballs.

You are talking about MY Mother!

My long lost sister!

[hjshorter]

Mom was a pretty good cook, but one recipe was the bane of my existence: "Seafood" Casserole. It consisted of Campbell's Cream of Shrimp soup, tasteless frozen fish, teeny tiny frozen shrimp, and sherry, all baked with a sprinkling of parmesan cheese (the green can). Served over rice. The thought of it still makes me gag.

Thank God Cream of Shrimp was discontinued so that this abomination cannot be served to future generations of our family.

[Naomi]

We also had some great food at home and when we travelled my parents would encourage us to sample all kinds of exciting food. But I have a few less fond memories too! Some examples are:

1) I used to get soo tired of boiled potatoes... night after night. This is Ireland after all!

2)"Queen of puddings"... a sickly sweet mess of breadcrumbs and meringue.

3) Bright orange, sticky smoked haddock, boiled in milk.

4) Cauliflower cheese, with a thick sauce still tasting of raw flour.

[Jinmyo]

The meals I dreaded most were not pre-packaged Spam kinds of things because my mother did not make them. In fact, I had to win a dancing contest at school to get taken to a place that sold hot dogs (in England, early 1960s) and didn;t know that there was anything called Velveeta until the 1970s.

The worst things my mother made were guts.

Not offal.

Guts.

Presented as if they were just like any other kind of meat in a pasta sauce or as a roast.

"Sproings."

I wouldn't eat the sproings.

So I sat at the table long after the lights went out.

[LJC]

Mom is a great cook.

That said, occasional baked scrod was horrible.

She would often make fried flounder for dinner and we all loved it but the next day she would send my sister and me off to school with a fried flounder sandwich on pita with ketchup. If made fresh this can be a great sandwich but by the time lunch came around ours would be soggy and smelly. My sister and I would try to throw them out before any other kids could see or smell them.

[GG Mora]

"Broiled" bluefish steaks (from fish bought frozen at the grocer's...this in mid-60's Charlotte, NC). Even now, the smell of bluefish cooking activates my gag reflex.

[Varmint]

Worms. Yes, worms.

I was a baby, and Mom was holding me on her hip, making pork chops with her free hand. One of my brothers was being a pest, and distracted as she was, Mom poured what she thought was a glass of water on the pork chops to make a gravy or something to that effect. Ten minutes later, one of my other brothers came up to her crying, saying, "Someone stole my fishing worms." Mom took the lid off the pan, and "Surprise." Pork chops a la angleworms!

[slkinsey]

So I sat at the table long after the lights went out.

Sounds like your parents had a similar philosophy to mine. What's really fun is not eating it again for breakfast the next morning. I was always able to outlast my parents, though. Stubborn kid, I was.

The hard thing for me was the fact that there is really only one food I absolutely won't eat, and that's squash. I don't know why, but the smell of baked, pureed squash still, to this day, makes me want to hurl. Unfortunately, both my parents are from the South. Squash is a major staple of the Southern diet. We had squash something like 4-5 times a week (which shouldn't imply that my mother cooked squash 4-5 times a week -- she is the Queen of Leftovers). The seemingly neverending river of squash in all varieties combined with my parent's ironclad "eat a bite of everything" rule made for some difficult dinners at the Kinsey household. Luckily, we had an extremely subtle and surprisingly omniverous bull terrier.

[docsconz]

Worms. Yes, worms.

I was a baby, and Mom was holding me on her hip, making pork chops with her free hand. One of my brothers was being a pest, and distracted as she was, Mom poured what she thought was a glass of water on the pork chops to make a gravy or something to that effect. Ten minutes later, one of my other brothers came up to her crying, saying, "Someone stole my fishing worms." Mom took the lid off the pan, and "Surprise." Pork chops a la angleworms!

did it become a staple?

[hollywood]

My Mom made a mean roast brisket, a great beef stew, fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy that I still dream about, and biscuits and gravy to die for.

My mother was pretty good considering she was selftaught as a cook. She made (still does, I guess) great scrambled eggs. But whenever she made a pot roast (pretty deadly in itself), we had leftovers which were usually the roast meat cut up to make a flavorless unchewable stew. I can't guess how many times we did the mouth to napkin to toilet routine on that one.

[Carolyn Tillie]

Mom, trying to be "creative" grilled Kielbasa and then placed them within a tray of cornbread.

Doesn't soung that bad?

It was.

[Lady T]

My mom, God be good to her, simply didn't have it -- whatever constitutes "it" -- when it came to pasta. She never grasped the necessity of a good big volume of boiling water, never salted what boiling water there was, and never could get the timing (only until it's done, Mama!) quite right.

"Dead in the water" never had a more apt usage.

It never really mattered what kind of sauce or other ingredients graced the poor, sad, sodden, stuck-together mess of starch after that; I do remember, though, that Dad poured the Chianti with an unusually heavy hand when we got what he jokingly called the "Red Menace" sauce -- jarred, thick, red, and vaguely tomato-related.

I never make ragu bolognese at home anymore -- the resonance is just too awful.

[hjshorter]

One other thing - mom was diagnosed with high blood pressure in the 70's, when it was standard to eliminate salt from the hypertensive's diet. She never cooked with salt again - never even puts it on the table. All of her baked goods, everything she makes, is unsalted. Bleah. Growing up it with it was bad, now that I only eat her food occasionally it's worse.

All despite the fact that she isn't sensitive to salt and it has made no difference in her blood pressure over the years.

[adoxograph]

Lady T - your mom and my mom must have learned pasta in the same place. Although, if your mom drained her pasta, she may have been a step ahead of mine. :)

Mom's culinary skills were amusing - she was great at any food for entertaining (canapes, desserts, elaborate entrees) but had real issues with everyday meals. Chicken, regardless of size, was baked, unseasoned for about 2 and a half hours. Medium rare beef only existed deep in the heart of a roast, or in restaurants.

Worst, though, was mini pizzas. Of course we were always clambering for pizza as kids, so this was one Friday night at home solution:

Half an english muffin was topped with raw ground beef, tomato sauce or tomato paste as the cupboard allowed, and a slice of (shudder) american cheese. It was then tossed into the broiler until a certain degree of cooking had occurred which may or may not have burnt the cheese but left the ground beef raw or, indeed, frozen.

Why this continued to be served I have no idea, but it was better than being hungry. Maybe.

Still, she was the one who taught us how to eat artichokes, so I'm willing to forgive.

[lamb]

One of my mom's staple dishes was beef stew. My brothers and I called it gunpowder - because it exploded in your stomach after ingesting.

When we saw here pulling out her pressure cooker we knew we were in trouble.

I never really stuck around while she was preparing it (was probably out somehwere else trying to drum up a dinner invitation -pretty assertive for a 10 year old!) so I don't know what she did to it to muck it up. The gravy in the stew was horrendous. Even the dog wouldn't eat it.

Otherwise, she really was a pretty good meat and potatoes type cook.

Italian dishes were another story . We lived in a neighborhood in Brooklyn, NY that had many different ethnic cultures. Mom had many Italian friends and I think she fancied herself an Italian by association. Not only did she pronounce Italian dishes badly, she prepared them even worse.

To this day she still prepares her spaghetti sauce the same way. It makes my kids gag. They make many trips into the bathroom. Mom doesn't notice.

My kids have no problem telling me if I make something they don't like. If hubby doesn't like it either, it goes off the menu. If he likes it, we have it when they're not around. No sense making something for someone if they don't like it, right?

[denise_jer]

My mother was pretty good considering she was selftaught as a cook. She made (still does, I guess) great scrambled eggs. But whenever she made a pot roast (pretty deadly in itself), we had leftovers which were usually the roast meat cut up to make a flavorless unchewable stew. I can't guess how many times we did the mouth to napkin to toilet routine on that one.

[PopsicleToze]

Mom wasn't so bad of a cook, although she did only have just a few recipes that we either had every week or every other week. Vegetables were usually canned because fresh were "so expensive." However, Dad wins the worst cook award. If he had to cook dinner, we just cringed. A specialty was leftover rice, sausage and eggs just cooked together and flopped on a plate. To show how bad his cooking was, shen he made this we were pleased. However, his favorite was egg gravy. It was God-awful. He made a roux (high heat so the flour would burn quickly) then added water to make a little gravy. Salt and pepper it then add a few beaten eggs. He would serve his "scrambled eggs in burnt flour gravy" over rice or biscuits. Us kids would just choose to starve until Mom came home -- with Dad angry with us because we couldn't eat the crap.

[bloviatrix]

One other thing - mom was diagnosed with high blood pressure in the 70's, when it was standard to eliminate salt from the hypertensive's diet. She never cooked with salt again - never even puts it on the table. All of her baked goods, everything she makes, is unsalted. Bleah. Growing up it with it was bad, now that I only eat her food occasionally it's worse.

All despite the fact that she isn't sensitive to salt and it has made no difference in her blood pressure over the years.

In the '70s my mom decided to eliminate salt from cooking as well. Even though no one had high pressure, she figured she was taking "preventative" measures. Sometime in the '80s she decided to minimize the number of egg yolks to reduce cholesterol - despite no one having a cholesterol problem. Her noodle kugels stopped binding. And the textures of cakes were off.

[wlg]

Mom was an old-school New England cook. We had baked beans (and franks) every Saturday night. She used the recipe from Durgin Park, or doctored up the B&M version. (I only recently received an explanation that in early days, Sabbath was on Saturdays, and no work was to be done in the house, including cooking. Consequently, people would bring their bean pots to the local bakery ovens to cook during the day, and retrieve them for supper.) But I digress. Years of pressure-cooked vegetables and single cloves of garlic in an entire dish were fine, however, when faced with...

Goober beef.

In one of those home-making magazines that used to have a tear-out recipe section, one month's feature was a month of recipes with hamburger. Mom, in an effort to broaden her culinary perspectives, found a recipe that included hamburger and peanut butter. In theory, this included two elements that children would love; but in practise, browned hamburger in some sort of gray-brown peanut butter gravy was simply ghastly. I was lucky - I was sick in bed at the time and managed to slip most of mine to the helpful family beagle.

After both my parents had passed away, and the siblings and I were packing up the house, we found the recipe section. Mom had saved it, but put a big black X through the goober beef recipe.

[Naomi]

Actually, I cannot stand in judgement of my parents cooking.... As a teenager I inflicted some culinary horrors on my little brother. On our nanny's evenings off I used to cook for him and me. I was always experimenting and often my attempts were assigned to the bin. Still though, the brother claims to have eaten some awful things rather than facing my teenage wrath.