Bad Home Cookin'

[NulloModo]

Hehe, wow, as much as I am pretty cold towards the fate of animals before they reach my plate, knowing the name of my dinner would be a bit much.... was your mom oblivious or did she just have a really dark sense of humor?

[Aileen]

I agree it made the situation worse, probably much worse, since I was an animal lover. I was about 10 years old at the time, too! My mom thought it was funny. I also think she was oblivious, but more that she thought it was funny. She was raised in a wealthy home (daughter of a doctor), and had always dreamed of being a farmer/rancher. She got a kick out of raising both animals and vegetables, she was very matter-of-fact about it all. She did the same with our first cow slaughtered for beef (his name was Sam, so it was "Sam" for dinner), but that was when I was in high school (and beef), so I usually managed to eat my dinner.

Edited February 21, 2005 by Aileen (log)

[Chris Amirault]

  Aileen said:

She got a kick out of raising both animals and vegetables, she was very matter-of-fact about it all.

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Now, naming the beet, I could deal with that.

[polack]

Allthough my Mother was an excellent cook, especially with what she had, I couldn't get the liver and onions down right. The gravy and mashed potatoes were excellent but the liver was a no-no with me.

Polack

[Lone Star]

  chrisamirault said:

  Aileen said:

When I would ask what was for dinner and my mom said, "Casey" (the name of the goat, obviously), I would immediately feel sick.

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Not to sound too PETA-y, but I think that knowing the name of dinner is... onerous.

Yeesh.

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Every year we go through the same thing when our kids get new hogs to raise for show. If it turns out something is wrong with one of them, we debate on whether to sell or have it butchered. It has only happened once, but we sold. I can only eat anonymous pigs.

[designchick88]

  Quote

My mother was an otherwise decent cook. She tended to get into a rut, and cook the same things over and over, and I was well into adulthood before I realized that I am not a picky eater; I just don't like having the same dish several times in a month.

This was my mom too. She had skills, particularly when it came to baking, but she worked full-time and often came home too tired to whip up something unique for dinner. It didn't help that my brother and I were actually pretty picky, and my dad had overly high expectations (my dad's mom was renowned for cooking a full three-course meal every night when Dad was growing up, complete with dessert. A tough act to follow, particularly for my feminist mom.) Now that both my brother and I are grown and, as she puts it, "the pressure is off" she has gotten into cooking and is quite adventurous.

As a kid in my house I ate a lot of spaghetti that came from the green and white box - I am not sure they still have it any more. Spaghetti noodles and a packet of seasoning powder you mixed with tomato paste to make marinara. Not so good.

The other standby staple meal was frozen fish fillets cooked in the toaster oven, with Kraft macaroni and cheese and nuked frozen broccoli. I loved it as a small child but got sick of it as I got older. The twisted thing is that now sometimes I get an undeniable craving for this meal, and I make it for myself when my husband's out of town.

My two least favorite Mom-dishes were:

Beef stew - this was not the hearty, creamy, meaty beef stew many people ate; this was an entirely different animal totally composed of tough stew-beef chunks, cooked onion and cooked celery in a watery broth. I hated it with a passion. Looking back, I realized we probably ate this when money was tight but my parents kept those kinds of details from the kids, so I complained about it heartily.

Vegetable lasagna - this was before ricotta was widely available or affordable, so Mom used cottage cheese as filling. Unspiced tomato sauce, cooked celery (to this day I cannot stand the taste of cooked celery in anything, it appeared in so many childhood dishes), maybe some zucchini if it was in season. Very little mozzarella as my mom jumped on the "low fat" bandwagon pretty early. Just vile. I actually thought I disliked lasagna until I had some at a friend's house, prepared by her mother who had lived in Italy for a time.

But I cut my mom a lot of slack - she was a young mom with two kids very close in age, had to work a full-time job, was in school herself and helping my dad finish his degrees. She always made us eat our vegetables, and tried to feed us balanced meals. I'm sure when I'm a mom there will be times I break out the fish sticks too, but I hope I give my kids the same foundation in nutrition my mom gave me. I have to give props where they're due. :)

[shiv]

  iheartoffal said:

For years and years I absolutely abhored steak.  Being only exposed to my mother's version of it, I assumed that all steak was a bone dry, tasteless, carbonized item not be enjoyed but endured. 

It was my grandmother's steak (and every other meat but poultry), but the experience was the same.

I grew up refusing to eat ANY beef, lamb, or pork because of this, and dammit, I feel like I've been cheated! I've only recently started eating these things again, and it's like a whole new world has opened up to me.

With the exception of carrots, celery, onions and potatoes, I don't recall ever having much in the way of fresh vegetables in the house, always frozen. We're Irish AND from New England, so boiling - and boiling, and boiling - was the cooking method of choice for pretty much everything.

Thinking back, the only food that I can remember being consistently excellent were the potatoes. Fried, mashed, baked or just boiled, they always hit the spot. Could just be that they were the only edible part of most meals...

[MicBacchus]

In some ways, my Mom was ahead of her time - homemade french fries and bread as opposed to frozen/store-bought. But, don't you know, because all my friends had the other kind, I wanted theirs instead of appreciating what she made.

Mostly she fixed very basic, uninspired foods tho: pot roast, pork roast, fried chicken, etc. She had one cookbook which I never saw her use.

BUT, I never thought twice about her spaghetti sauce - tomato sauce, Accent, garlic salt, and ground beef - it was okay because I didn't know better. Once I ate my future mother in law's sauce, however, a whole world opened up, and I began to experiment.

[Mooshmouse]

  iheartoffal said:

For years and years I absolutely abhored steak.  Being only exposed to my mother's version of it, I assumed that all steak was a bone dry, tasteless, carbonized item not be enjoyed but endured.

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Though my Mom is quite a good and adventurous cook, her one cardinal culinary sin was cooking all red meat until it closely resembled a charcoal briquette. God forbid that any pink was visible lest you contracted some sort of horrible gastrointestinal illness from eating what she deemed to be undercooked meat. And I thought this was only a Filipino phenomenon... I'm glad I'm not alone in my suffering.

  Lone Star said:

  chrisamirault said:

  Aileen said:

When I would ask what was for dinner and my mom said, "Casey" (the name of the goat, obviously), I would immediately feel sick.

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Not to sound too PETA-y, but I think that knowing the name of dinner is... onerous.

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Every year we go through the same thing when our kids get new hogs to raise for show. If it turns out something is wrong with one of them, we debate on whether to sell or have it butchered. It has only happened once, but we sold. I can only eat anonymous pigs.

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This reminds me of a story from my early childhood in the Philippines. A couple of months before my fourth birthday, someone brought a pig home. Naturally, I was ecstatic as I thought it was a new pet for me. I named it, fed it and played with it daily. The morning of my fourth birthday party, I asked what what we would be eating that evening. Of course you already know the answer to that question: roast suckling pig, otherwise known as lechon.

I was nothing short of horrified. When they told me that it was time to slaughter my pet pig, I ran upstairs and hid in my bedroom, head buried under a mountain of pillows so that I couldn't hear the squealing. Needless to say, I didn't partake of that culinary delicacy, and it took me a damn long time before I could even let a piece of spit-roasted pork ever touch my lips.

[SuzySushi]

My first post... glad to have discovered you guys!

My mother was a decent baker but a terrible cook. Her hamburgers were like hockey pucks. But her real piece de resistance was overcooked spaghetti topped with ketchup rather than pasta sauce.

When, years later, I happened to mention that everyone else uses pasta sauce -- not ketchup -- on spaghetti, she looked at me quizzically and asked, "But what do they do with the rest of the can?"

[carswell]

Take one box frozen brussels sprouts. Dump in sauce pan with 1/2 cup salted boiling water and 1 teaspoon margarine. Cover and cook 40 minutes. Serve.

The smell alone turns my stomach to this day.

[Mooshmouse]

  carswell said:

Take one box frozen brussels sprouts. Dump in sauce pan with 1/2 cup salted boiling water and 1 teaspoon margarine. Cover and cook 40 minutes. Serve.

The smell alone turns my stomach to this day.

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Dear God. I'm not a huge fan of fresh brussels sprouts to begin with, so the abject horror of this is virtually unspeakable for me.

[patti]

Someone's mention of rice krispies coated fried chicken in another thread reminded me of one of Mom's cooking disasters. She ordinarily made great crispy fried chicken, but decided to try a recipe calling for pancake batter as the coating. Ew. Pas bon! We couldn't even fake it to save her feelings.

[NulloModo]

Speaking of things first prepared awfully but then later becoming better:

As a child I positively hated okra and squash, because I only ever experienced them stewed for a long time water or broth. The taste of the okra was OK, but the slimeyness of stewed as a first preparation really turned me off.

Thankfully, when I was around 10, while visiting some family in AL, my aunt made deep fried okra and my grandmother prepared an incredible squash casserole (squash, sour cream, cheese, dried onions, your usual par for the course), totally turned me around on both vegetables, and I love both to this day.

[kriskitchen]

  chrisamirault said:

Welcome, kriskitchen, to eGullet!

Thanks! And with that warm welcome, I've worked up enough nerve to share one more (oh, but if mom ever knew...)

So...sometimes she experimented. I remember distinctly the Day of The Brown Rice. Somehow, the rice absorbed all the matter in the kitchen, becoming a mass so heavy it could have earned a spot on the table of elements. And she made us eat it. That was the rule: if it's there, it must be eaten until it's gone. That went for the brown rice, the endless array of leftovers that became sandwiches, stew, the onions that went on to breed at the bottom of the crisper drawer, the cheese that sprouted green along the edges (which was "fine, just fine" as long as you cut it off.) You get the picture.

It's a wonder we all survived. But then, we didn't have goat.

[jetsie]

My parents were both decent cooks, so we had nothing to complain about. The only bad food memories involve my mother's brief love affair with Salmon Wiggle, and my father's experimental phase, where he would make things for us like scrambled eggs with mouth-numbing amounts of dried spices and powdered garlic, which he'd color green or puce. Yeah, real funny, Dad.

[emmalish]

Oh, so many of these posts are causing long-suppressed memories to re-surface.

Ours was a very "meat & potatoes" household. Vegetables usually consisted of corn, peas and/or carrots, sometimes fresh, sometimes frozen, sometimes canned, always cooked to death. On special occasions like Christmas, we would have exotic veggies like cauliflower & brussel sprouts, boiled to a bitter mush. Salads were always iceberg lettuce, sliced cucumber and sliced tomatoes, smothered in ranch dressing, except for special occasions when we had shredded cabbage and carrots suspended in lime jello.

I always thought I hated veggies. Until I moved out and began cooking for myself. Now I'm a vegetarian.

Every once in a while my mom would get creative and try to do something other than the basic meat & potatoes. In her defence, she made a killer scalloped potatoes and cabbage rolls to die for. But more often she would make one of the ever-popular canned-soup concoctions. Ground beef, canned peas, and canned tomato soup (optimistically called "Hungarian Goulash"), usually served over mashed potatoes (huh?). Chicken breast cooked with canned cream of mushroom soup, served over egg noodles. Kraft Dinner, made gourmet by adding cream of celery soup. Spaghetti was made not with pasta sauce, but (yup) cream of tomato soup.

edited because I was apparently very sleepy when I posted this

Edited February 22, 2005 by emmalish (log)

[ratgirlny]

My mother was a great cook for the most part, but after she went back to school, sometimes standards slid when she had a late afternoon class. I remember that we had a French exchange student staying with us when I was 14, and once afternoon my mother called me and asked me to make dinner. She had left behind a box of Hamburger Helper. The French teen stood there and watched in horror as I browned the burger, dumped a box full of dehydrated potato slices on top, dumped in milk, and finally shook in some radioactive powdered cheese. "What is that?" she asked, her eyes wide. "DINNER! " I exclaimed. She did not eat much that night.

I actually liked Hamburger Helper when I was 14. What I hated was when we would go to other people's houses, and they would serve us kids hot dogs while the adults got steaks.

[lesfen]

My mom was a great cook, and she did a lot with a very limited budget and a large family, but her idea of Italian food has almost ruined it for me. She made them all... spaghetti, ravioli, lasagna, etc.... from scratch, but she always put green peppers in her sauce. Ugh. When the man of the house asks if I "wanna go get some Italian", I have to talk myself down... "Your mother is not making it. There will not be any green peppers in there, unless you ask for them."

Mmmm... cube steak. I never minded the cubed steak, and I still make them for my family. My local market actally makes cubed pork! Tasty!

[SuzySushi]

Oh, yeah, and my mom had no conception of plating foods to make them look moreattractive. She was famous for her all-white meals of broiled fillet of sole, mashed potatoes, and overcooked cauliflower!

[oneidaone]

Tuna Helper.

Shake 'n Bake (both chicken and pork)

Chef Boy R Dee box pizza mix

Green Giant frozen veggies with the butter bag

Buddig meats -those horrible thin pieces of old particle board all smelled and looked the same

Swanson Frozen dinners

Oddly enough we were some of the first people to eat things like Kiwi fruits

[Miguelito]

Love my Mom, especially for raising raise four boys born within 5 1/2 years of each other. Love her ability to put filling and reasonably nutricious food on the table every night.

Not so enthused about her sweet and sour pork -- cubes of pork cooked to a tire-like consistency swimming in some sort of goo made from canned pineapple chunks.

Coming in a close second -- pepper steak. Sliced flank steak maninated in soy sauce mixed with Lipton Onion Soup, cooked for a very long time with slices of green pepper. The whole thing kind of melded together until the meat and the peppers were darn near indistinguishable.

Also gaining honorable mention status -- creamed hamburger. Served over rice, devoid of flavor. Fit for prisoners and/or conscripts -- maybe.

[oneidaone]

Oh, I forgot and was just reminded - "hamburger gravy" as above white gravy with ground

beef only ours was served over mashed potatoes.......colorless meal to be sure and

flavorless as well. I do recall though that my mother made a killer whole duck stuffed with

dried fruits that was so unbelievably delicious!!!!! She'd make one just for me at Christmas!

That and she made some good fried shrimp, can't remember if they started out frozen

but she'd make a big pile of them and I loved every one of them. a hui ho

[emmalish]

"Hamburger gravy" just reminded me of my mom's meatballs in mushroom gravy (actually just canned cream of mushroom soup), served over mashed potatoes. Actually, this was one of my favourites when I was a kid...

[battlepanda]

This thread reminds me of my uncle. He was an obsessive-compulsive tightwad who figured out the "perfect" food in terms of low cost and adequate nutrition. He would make his own noodles from flour, which is really cheap, then boil it and boil it with chopped cabbage and carrots and whatever minced-up cut of meat that was cheap that day. This made a sort of gluey, noodle-y gruel. He then took a slice of Kraft Singles and melted it over the top. For calcium, natch.

I thought it was delicious, at the time!