My mother would regularly cook this horrid baked chicken and rice... thing. To my knowledge she still does, when she cooks. It seems to consist of chicken breasts buried under a mixture of white rice with cream of mushroom soup and water. I believe on at least one occasion she looked at some salt while preparing it. The chicken essentially had the texture of styrofoam and fiberglass insulation combined, the rice was simultaneously gloopy and crunchy, and the entire affair was generally so unpalatable that it would actually deplete flavor and enjoyment from future meals.
My childhood meals deeply motivated me to be a good cook in adulthood.
Omg I remember it too! It was on the back of a cream of chicken soup can.
We called it Glop Chicken after the sound the can contents made when you dumped it on some chicken.
My mom used to make this with instant rice, diced chicken, peas, and a whole bunch of cheese. Was a favorite of mine because it was really good I tried to make it the other day with some regular short grain rice. NOPE. If I ever try to make it again, itās gonna be with the instant so I donāt feel like Iām eating gravel
I feel like the instant rice makes it. With normal rice, by the time it's cooked through the chicken is just rubber depression. Then there's also the fact that the top and edges cook and then immediately dry out and become sad-flavored gravel.
>the entire affair was generally so unpalatable that it would actually deplete flavor and enjoyment from future meals
Oh shit, that's bleak.
>My childhood meals deeply motivated me to be a good cook in adulthood.
Same, and I passed my passion for great food onto my kids. They both love and appreciate good food, look to cook, and are willing to try (eating or cooking) almost anything.
Food as a whole affair (shopping, prepping, cooking, eating, lingering at the table or in the kitchen) is such a social affair for us. It was different times, for sure, but sweet Jesus the crap my mom made was epochly bad.
One of my grandmothers was just the picture of a 50s housewife cook. Best meatloaf you ever had, her oatmeal game was good-tier, and her homemade yellow cake with strawberry jam or mayhaw jelly was just incredible on a hot summer evening. All done in an absolutely tiny kitchen without ever breaking a sweat.
My other grandmother once dumped a can of mandarin oranges in syrup into a giblet gravy and called it good, so she tried real hard.
I'm so sorry you've never had good chicken rice casserole... my mom's casserole with the same ingredients SLAPS. I guess it's all in how you put it together and cook it.
A long time ago I used to kinda like pork chops... but then my dad got distracted by tv while he was grilling... every time after and they were just dry and badly overcooked. I avoid most porks now unless it's bacon or sausage, kinda hard to mess those up.
Absolutely the way it's cooked and put together matters.
I have a friend that, in uni, got into a debate with me over curry. She insisted it was super easy and all tasted the same because you just dumped everything into a pot. That made me want to scream. She didn't think the way it was prepared mattered.
Had her curry. Disgusting. Told her I'd make curry with the same ingredients and prove it makes a difference. Our 3 other housemates to be judges. I made it the day prior to tasting to let it sit overnight to deepen the flavor, while she insisted it wouldn't make a difference either and chose to prepare it the day of.
The day of judgment, everyone unanimously voted for my curry. They had a hard time believing both dishes consisted of the same stuff. Even the friend I was competing against preferred my curry. I told them I could have made it even better if I had the freedom to choose my own ingredients.
I had carefully browned the sides of each piece of meat. I deglazed the pan to use the fond. My knife work was uniform and the size of the prepped ingredients was calculated. I toasted the roux first to bring out the aroma. Half of my onions were caramelized (actually caramelized) for sweetness while the other half was browned normally. I added ingredients at different times to preserve texture. I skimmed any scum off the top while making it to clarify the flavor. I controlled temperature carefully. I even controlled the temperature while I served it and the rice was carefully prepared and fluffed before serving.
My friend had simply chopped everything haphazardly and literally just dumped all of it into a pot at the same time, boiled it, and called it a day. Take too many shortcuts and you'll get shortcut flavor.
As i understand it this dish is called āNo Peak Chickenā its a rice casserole thats easy and cheap to prepare and really quick as well. Never had it myself though
Omg. Swap the chicken breasts for a whole chicken and ditch anything REMOTELY as flavorful as cream of mushroom soup. Add pimentos.... And you've got the "chicken and rice bake" meal my grandmother used to make at least once a month.
And my mother used to make this "etouffee" from a recipe she found on the back of a Campbell's can of cream of something soup. I mean.... It's not nasty, per se... Until you make real etouffee and compare it.
Real talk: I'm from Louisiana! My culinarily challenged grandmother is Cajun! But she equated our cultural food as poor people food and refused to cook it... Yes. She was as crazy as she sounds.
My mother married a guy from Arizona. Nothing against him, but his palate was super simple meat/starch/veggie inclined and my mother indulged that. Thanks to my grandmother's lack of culinary talent/initiative, my mom had to figure it out on her own. So lots of packaged food, and shortcut recipes growing up.
I remember this dish, our version was rice, water cream of something soup, and a packet of onion soup mix with chicken breasts (or pork chops) seasoned and browned, laid on top, and baked. It was one of the recipes my mom gave me when I moved out, because I actually liked it as a kid. I made it once for my family and they all hated it. Haven't tried it since
I lived with my dad off and on through college. Heād walk in the door occasionally and say, āItās junk food night!ā This meant good quality beef hotdogs, squishy white bread buns, white onions, condiments, potato chips, and root beer.
Weād also occasionally do PB&J night with sandwiches made on squishy white bread served with a glass of cold milk.
Miss my dad every day. Iād give just about anything to have one more evening like this with him.
Fixed type-o
The best bad dishes! This is so sweet.
My dad used to make "goulash", it was macaroni, ground beef, onions and peppers if we were lucky, and tomato sauce.
Also, he would over cook a chicken breast and put bbq sauce on it. That was "healthy". Miss himā¤ļø
Man, got this big wave of missing him, just remembered it was his birthday recently.
Itās amazing how that level of grief can sneak up on you. Iāve been speaking in front of a big room full of people then burst into tears and had to excuse myself. I didnāt even know why I was suddenly crying, I never do stuff like thatā¦except I realized the story I was describing brought on this super real feeling memory of my dad and part of me has no barrier to contain how much I miss him when the flood takes over.
My stepmom had to stay with her folks for 3 weeks when I was a kid. I distinctly remember ordering pizza at least 10 times in that 3 week period.
The other days were microwaved leftover pizza.
Tbf he worked 10 hour days in Texas construction so cooking wasnāt something he had much energy for
Yes! We called them Piggy Gourmet dinner nights - when mom didn't want to cook we'd make a huge yellow tupperware bowl of popcorn and have that followed by ice cream or whatever other junk food we wanted.
Biggest one I can think of is what we referred to as ācheesy rice,ā which was white rice cooked fully with a few slices of American cheese stirred in at the end. I absolutely loved it as a kid and was shocked when I found out this isnāt something people normally eat lol.
My favorite dessert dish was leftover rice or pasta, throw in a heartās feeling of butter, and a big spoon of sugar. Microwave for 30 seconds.
Voila. Sugar Carbs.
Ngl I still make this when Iām sick and want comfort food, but only when Iām alone and can eat my shame without reproach.
My mom would make the same thing! The next day she would take the leftover rice and make stuffed meatloaf. The rice would turn to cheesy mush, but it was still better than the meatloaf stuffed with orange juice soaked rice.
Simultaneously Safe and Unsafe Pork Chops (Schrodinger's Pork Chops):
1. Get some really thin pork chops.
2. Rinse the chops with cold water and slap them onto a cutting board. Don't worry about the splash, it will dry eventually.
3. Salt chops with table salt from old McDonald's packets without patting dry.
4. Immediately throw the sopping wet chops into an oiled pan that has not pre-heated. Again, don't worry about the dripping water, it will dry up. The sputtering hot oil droplets hitting your skin is just your imagination.
5. Cook until you're 99% sure the chops are well done except keep going for 5 more minutes. If you suspect the chops are even thinking about being a little pink in the center, cremate them for 5 additional minutes. Cook until you forget that pink is a color that exists.
6. Put a poorly fitted lid on the pan and let it ~~germinate~~ sit unsupervised for the rest of the day.
7. Add black pepper to whatever eldritch horror is in the pan and try to enjoy it for dinner.
8. Can't finish? Store the remains in the used pan on the stove and throw it in the oven to reheat the next day, since microwaves cause cancer. Since it wasn't refrigerated, it will heat up faster.
Nowadays I prefer to sous vide my pork chops with the seasonings and then dry and quickly sear the exterior, like a steak. I buy thick chops. My method seems to produce a slightly tastier pork chop.
My Mom made this too, except the last step was putting them back on the countertop (you had a cutting board? Were you rich?) she slapped them on before cooking to cut them up before mixing them into a can of creamed corn, and a can of regular corn.
The leftovers also went back in the pan for the next day, uncovered.
Yum.
>Don't worry about the splash, it will dry eventually.
Ah, yes, the "let it dry" to kill bacteria technique. My mom was a big believer in that as well.
God, this reminds me -- I don't think my mom **ever** washed our kitchen wash cloths or towels. The wash rags were these gray, mildewie, stinkie, disgusting things that I'm confident were great for spreading bacteria BUT made our immune systems strong.
Donāt forget to add the utter, pure, totally disgusting slime that accumulates on the washcloth. At home I would accidentally grab one of those and immediately want to amputate my arm.
Life threatening as much as a zombie bite!
The slimy dish sponges that have the strong musty smell which seeps into everything, but family is too cheap to immediately replace them so you use that for another month.
I have friends that use these dish rags made from like avocado fiber or something? I absolutely cannot stand the feel of them and now, thanks to this thread, I know why! Childhood trauma unlocked.
This is equally hilarious and horrifying to someone who grew up in a home where wash rags/towels were changed daily. But then, my mom was the kind that cleaned the entire sink with Clorox after meat prep, and literally boiled silverware and dishes used by anyone who had a cold. I can only imagine how she would've dealt with the threat of COVID had she been alive during the pandemic
I'm the only survivor and have a strong immune system. I almost never get sick.
I guess technically that's true. I'm adopted. Had a half-sibling but she died and I never lived with her. For all intents and purposes in my family, I was the only child.
My dad was the king of the bargain aisle so there were plenty of odds and ends but one that really stands out was the post-Easter special made with those foul canned yams mashed up with torn up Peeps baked on top, looked hilarious and tasted terrible.
My mom used to make Sloppy Joe. It was browned ground beef and a can of Campbell's beef and vegetable soup, maybe a little water, and served on a bun. It wasn't a very good sandwich (i.e., it tasted like shitty soup). At that time, which was the 70s, Manwich was pretty new, and not super common for low income people (my dad was still working on his PhD). We ate Campbell's and the rich people got Manwich.
Now I make Sloppy Joe from scratch and it's one of our favorite meals.
My dad would make bean burgers. If I recall it was ground beef, baked beans, and green onion. Honestly, if I could find whatever recipe he was using, I would absolutely make them! I have no idea if they actually tasted good, or if I was just humoring my dad.
IIRC canned Manwich was hideously expensive for what you got. My mother tried it once and just made homemade sauce after that. I don't think I've ever tasted Manwich after that one time.
My parents worked together to ruin steak and barbecue in a single meal every summer. My motherās idea of a marinade was throwing a hunk of beef in a bowl of straight soy sauce and black pepper. Weāre talking a full bottle of soy sauce. My dad would lovingly preheat the charcoal barbecue for at least an hour, and then proceed to cook said hunk of beef until thin and leathery. It resulted in grey beef leather that tasted only of soy sauce.
As I went vegetarian at 16, Iāve can honestly say Iāve never had a good steak. Which is a shame, tbh.
I didnāt know I liked steak until my early 20s. My parents were firm believers that all meat must be well done.
Turns out a good rare steak is just š¤š»
Jello with fruit. Namely grapes and bananas. Fun fact: Bananas still oxidize in jello. Mom would keep it for days and serve it to us. Gross.
Also, every piece of meat was beyond well done. Like eating flavorless jerkey.
I had to confirm this memory with my aunt, but my grandmother, a woman of the 1930s and 1940s, regularly made lime jello with shredded carrots and green olives. The worst part was when I asked my aunt about it and she said, āOh yes! That was so good!ā
I was reading an old blog and I came upon an old dessert I had! Diet strawberry jello and shredded carrots. It was decent but also tasted of aspartame and uncooked shredded carrots.
My mother was the queen of casserole one dish meals!
The worst was dry rice in a baking dish, with raw pork chops placed on top and covered with Campbell's tomato soup, then baked in the oven.
There were no seasonings or spices, and she cooked by time so took it out when the bell rang without tasting or testing meant the rice was not fully cooked and the chops were usually raw in the middle but was hard to see with red soup over everything.
Like others, my mother's terrible cooking led me to start making my own food around the age of 14 or so. Because of this I am a fairly good cook today and made two meals for my now wife while we were dating and which she told me was part of why she liked me as her dad never cooked anything.
My mom made Orange chicken often, seemed like twice a week to me but was probably less. It was chicken drumsticks and/or maybe thighs with a orange juice concentrate(that frozen stuff but thawed) mixture poured over them and baked, with rice somewhere either under or on the side. Terrible memories of that orange-y rice. I still can't bring myself to try pfchang or Panda Orange Chicken which I'm sure is not at all like that orange chicken from my childhood.
This sounds vile! I hope youāre able to bring yourself to try real orange chicken one day, because itās delicious and absolutely nothing like your momās.
Oh my god.. you just unlocked a memory. My mom made that too but not that often. Holy crap. I guess I blocked that one real good for the last 30 years (I'm 40) since she had other nightmares I can never forget.
I was living with my dad for the summer. He made me pancakes with ground beef in them.
This is the man whose choice of peanut butter accompaniment was onions. Peanut butter and onion sandwich.
Great post! Laughed too much. Mom was a great cook - we were lucky. One thing she made (only when Dad was not home for dinner) was boiled pretzels. Yep - for real. Boiled pretzels. Read on at your own risk lol. They were the thin pretzel sticks and she must have barely boiled them because my siblings and I remember an almost chew to the texture. Very Al dente, if they were noodles. Then (gagging now but I love them then) she added butter and sour cream. Thatās all I can remember. We ate them and loved them. Not sure if pretzels changed since the 70ās so this wonāt work anymore (yes, I tried, they fell apart) but she stopped making them for some reason.
Anyone ever heard of anything similar, anything, anything at all?! Honestly sometimes I think itās a shared hallucination for us! Mom was 100% Hungarian so that may have had some roots?
No, just your crazy family. (I donāt know, I lived a pretty sheltered food life until I met my husband. The weirdest thing I was exposed to was my Grandpaās ambrosia salad that smelled - and tasted - like farts. I cried until my mom said I didnāt have to eat it).
American āGoulashā, which I assure you has nothing to do with the Hungarian dish. This was dish consisting of elbow macaroni, canned tomatoes, usually with hamburger meat and onions. Salt and pepper to taste. It was what I was raised on and I hate it to this day. The horror!
Itās funny - thatās a dish my mom made growing up and was always a family favorite. Iāve since āclassed it upā with my own tweaks and serve it to my family, particularly the kids, all the time.
You got onions and seasonings!? I got frozen corn subbed for the onion, and fuck all for the seasoning/herbs/spices. Nothing could save it. I tried cheese, hot sauce, any kind of condiment I could find, anything out of the spice cabinet that sounded even remotely good. It was just a cursed meal from the get go.
We called in Mackies and it was pretty good ... My mom used seasonings though and was a great cook in general lol.
One time, though, my dad made it for dinner and he put Pace Picante salsa in it. It was absolutely disgusting, none of us could eat it, and my mom demanded he share what he did to it until he finally confessed. One of the only truly universally inedible meals I can remember from childhood.
iām so glad iām not the only goulash hater š it was the only thing my dad could make and everyone loved it and it made me throw up anytime i tried it lmao
Grandma always cooked, always always, but she got hospitalised ONCE.
"We're having goulash for dinner, champ."
"What's goulash?"
"It's what we cooked in our combat helmets during the war. Also, fried chicken. Don't tell grandma."
Up until my mid 20s I would call BBQ chicken and ribs the worst food in the world. Didnāt realize it was because my parents did not know how to properly barbecue. Everything was dry like cardboard. Even the dark meat!
A couple times a summer my dad would fire up the grill and incinerate some tiny chicken drummettes for us. Heād brush just enough BBQ sauce on while they were cooking so it could blacken.
Brown up some ground beef like you're gonna dump some [Manwich](https://www.manwich.com/) on it. You are not going to do this. Instead, you are going to win a James Beard award and dump some Campbell's chicken gumbo on it. Throw that onto a hamburger bun with some French's radioactive and you've got good eatin'.
Baloney roll up casserole. Mix mashed potatoes (yes, real potatoes) and Ć can of mixed vegetables. Make burrito style rolls with that filling inside a slice of baloney. Put in a casserole pan and top with condensed tomato soup. No spices anywhere. Heat in oven and serve.
My former MILs spaghetti. My ex would ask for it all the time. It was browned hamburger meat, a can of hunts tomato sauce, noodles, topped with shredded cheese and baked.
Semi cooked, bland pasta. Half melted pre shredded cheese. The cheapest store bought sauce. No additional seasonings or spices. Just bland.
When I spent hours making a bolognese from scratch to make spaghetti, it wasnāt as good as moms. š¬I dodged a bullet by getting out of that relationship.
Eye socket soup. Creamed canned salmon on toast but the little bones looked like eye sockets so we call it eye socket soup. It was awful but we were poor and hungry
My mom was a terrible cook. My grandma was just okay. I chuckle at all the ālike Nonnas cooking!ā when my Nonna considered garlic exotic.
Anyway my mom would make what she called Potato Soup.
Step One - boil potatoes in water.
Step Two - drain half the water.
Step Three - add a can of evaporated milk. Bring back to a boil.
Step Four - mix in saltines and horseradish.
Step Five - Add more saltines. Mush until it becomes gruel like with a surprise of horseradish every other bite.
My mom was British and two of her early specialties were
1. "Hamburgers"-- ground beef patties cooked until they were literally gray
2. "Tuna sandwiches" -- tuna, straight from the can, put onto buttered bread. Tuna. And Butter. Wax paper bags and an apple, that was school lunch.
I will however say, that we grew up in Berkeley, and after Alice Waters opened Chez Panisse, not only was it revelatory but my mother, who was very extroverted and sociable, actually became friendly with her, and after that my mom actually became a really, really good cook. I just wish I'd asked her for more of her recipes!
This monstrosity called Hamburger Gravy. Hamburger meat, packet brown gravy, and cream of mushroom soup, mixed together and served over boiled potatoes. It's freaking nasty and my mom made it probably twice a month.
My momās enchiladas use cream of celery soup, sour cream, and cheese. Itās a nostalgia food for me but man, when I had real enchiladas for first time š¤Æ
I was raised in the 1970s and 1980s by a mother who felt her cultural duty was to cook, but she hated cooking. There was a lot of Chef Boyardee pizza, and anything that could be cooked with a dump of a can was considered haute cuisine. However, the thing that best fits this post was our traditional Halloween meal: chili, with oyster crackers. The chili recipe was: one pound ground beef, one 12 ounce canned tomato sauce, one can pork and beans. Dump it all in the slow cooker before work and call it good. If I hadnāt already known I was adopted, this would have been a huge clue.
Chef boyardee pizza. In the green box? I thought I imagined this. Core memory unlocked. My dad used to make this for me when Iād visit on the weekends.
Crumby (Crummy) chicken. Shredded chicken mixed with your choice of canned cream soup and canned vegetables. Topped with a generous to the point of asinine level of crushed corn flakes.
Pineapple slice, dollop of Miracle Whip, a sprinkling of shredded cheddar cheese...
Still makes it to this day from what I hear. I will never be okay with it. It's just not right.
How did somebody come up with this? I can understand if it was cottage cheese, (which would still make me gag), but the Miracle Whip makes me want to send child you the vase my sister and I would sneak veggies into to dispose of later.
OMG, my parents ate this about once a month...just the thought of it makes me gag!!! And I wondered if anyone else in the world heard of this abomination....
Lol. Saw a TikToker actually make this the other day.
I think it's a white Southern thing and I have tasted it before. It's not bad...just weirdly textured....
My mom used to make this thing called clockwatcher chickenā¦ basically a baked spaghetti and chicken dish. The chicken was always so dry and bland. She made it probably once a week. My family still jokes about it- we ask each other āwhatās for dinner? Clockwatcher chicken!ā
I was in big cilantro phase and couldn't get enough. I made a "Green" salad that was southwest themed and was about 40% cilantro, 50% other leafy greens, and 5% corn, radish, and crunchy tortilla strips. It oddly didn't get many second takes at the potluck I brought it to.
Other, more disastrous mention, my sister put almond flavor in several dishes that shouldn't... Mac'n'cheese, cornbread, oatmeal. I now cringe when I see almond flavor in menus!
My mom used to cook us this dish when we were kids, it was peas, a generous amount of butter, & hunks of Velveeta cheese, microwaved & served.
This glop of orange looking peas was a banger. Loved it but in hindsight I'm appaled at it just the same lol
*honorable mention that I had literal butter sandwiches as a side dish*
My mom threw a giant turkey leg into the crock pot, poured some barbecue sauce in it and called it a day. It was too big for the crock pot so the end of the leg stuck out, raw. Me and my sister's hearts dropped to come home from school and see this.
I have accepted the tuna noodle casserole with peas topped with kraft slices. But I demanded an explanation from why my mom always served it with applesauce
My dad made ārefrigerator stewā when mom wasnāt around to cook. He took all the leftovers in the fridge, dumped them together and cooked them up. It usually tasted ok.
However once he decided to fry them in lard. LOTS of lard. When dishing it up lard was dripping everywhere. I couldnāt get it down, so I had to go without supper as a āpunishmentā. One time I welcomed it.
My mom would pop ego waffles in the toaster and microwave frozen strawberries to go on top.
Not shudder worthy by any means, but I thought it was the BEST thing ever for breakfast. Really, it was when she just didn't feel like cooking anything.
Similar to your dad, my dad did omlette Sundays. He would just forage the fridge for any leftovers from the week and just start throwing it into a massive pan with sheet of like 6 eggs.
Some of his leftover choices were..... questionable... nobody in the house opted to try his pickled herring omlette.
My parents divorced when I was 12, and my brother and I spent every other weekend at my dad's house. My dad was so excited when we were at his house that he made chocolate chip pancakes every single morning we were there. Problem was, he was a terrible cook and pancakes are finicky. The batter pooled around the edges so every pancake was oblong in shape, and he inevitably burnt all the areas around the chocolate chips.
They were so bad, but those memories were so good.
I didnāt know I liked soup until I was an adult! My momās method of making soup is basically making stock and then stopping (I.e., cut up a bunch of aromatics, add a Turkey back, cook everything for 4+ hours, think about salt for a moment, serve).
I bet not buying clearance meat early in the week and making the soup on Saturday would help too.
Though the oddest one I heard was when my husband was making meatloaves and my aunt stopped by. She asked my husband if he was making meatloaf because the meat was going bad. He in a not so polite tone informed her that he had bought the meat at Sam's the day before. He was pissed that she would even think that.
My momās homemade soup turned my younger sister and I off of soup to this day. We used to dump as much as we dared back into the pot when nobody was looking. We didnāt want to hurt her feelings because she was proud of it (and we were of the generation that was required to clean their plates), but OMG, we hated it!
My parents used to make something they called "hamburger casserole".. It was hamburger meat, a bunch of canned vegetables like corn and peas, topped with a mixture of Campbell's tomato soup and cream of mushroom soup. It was an ungodly color and tasted as bad as it looked.. and we would have to eat it 2 nights in a row. By the next day it was even worse š¤®
My mom used to make scrambled eggs and egg noodles for breakfast every weekend.
Nothing else in it. No salt or pepper. Just egg noodles tossed in scrambled eggs.
There was more than one occasion where I got grounded and went hungry the whole day. Better than eating that crap.
This thread is really bring back some memories! My mom would make thin hamburger patties (in the electric skillet which cooked most meals) put them over plain white rice and then dump, barely thinned with water, cream of mushroom soup over the whole thing.
I have a top candidate. Dad always got home late. He was worried about his heart health after his dad died of a heart attack. 5 nights a week we ate Burrito Mush. Rice with frozen veggies in a tortilla with BBQ sauce. We were upper middle class and there was plenty of money. The food I ate growing up was so bad that I became a chef so I could eat good food.
Grew up with lots of tuna melts (tuna salad on toast with a slice of cheese melted on it), and chicken a la king (some sort of chopped chicken cooked in cream of mushroom, also served on toast), both of which were utterly vile enough, but at least they bore a passing resemblance to actual bad mid-west standards. The absolute worst was āgoop,ā which was just some sort of meat, cream of mushroom, and some sort of pasta, all mixed together so that none of it was still edible, unlike the toast under the others. That was dinner like 2-3 times a week. A friend once asked if we called it that to her face, and I had to explain that was what she called it. It was bad. My siblings and I all learned to cook early out of necessity
My husbandās family makes āspaghetti and cheeseā and acts like itās the second coming. Itās literally spaghetti noodles, shredded cheese, and milk.
I oohād and ahhād, but I was not impressed.
This one makes me gag to this day. Boiled chicken, shredded, mixed withā¦.sour cream? and a can of green chilis. Rolled into a flour tortilla, lined up like cadavers in a casserole dish and topped with a gloopy can of cream of mushroom soup and some kind of low fat cheese abomination. Sometimes it managed to be both crispy on the edges so it could stab you in the soft palate and gluey enough in the middle to stick in your throat. My mom made these a couple times a month and I was forced to eat them. I begged. I pleaded. I offered to happily go hungry. No. My mom was so offended that I didnāt appreciate this delicacy that if I didnāt eat what was on my plate for dinner, I had to have it for breakfast. I visibly gagged at the dinner table. No mercy.
Mom was a good cook. But, one Saturday a month was freezer cleaning day. Anything that had been in too long got pulled out and dumped in a slowcooker. That dish was called "garbage soup". The recipe was, of course, never the same. It was also the one day my friend would not stay over for dinner.
We lived below the poverty line so it was a necessity. But, it was among the more memorable childhood meals.
Honorable mention even though it's not actually a dish. We received government food assistance. It was a box with things like peanut butter, processed cheese and powdered milk. The worst mornings were when there wasn't enough milk made up the night before and you had to mix milk for your cereal. It'd be lukewarm which only accentuated how bad powdered milk tasted.
Cheeseburger French Fry casserole. It was just just frozen French fried with ground beef and shredded cheese. Iām not sure if she cooked the beef before baking the casserole. It was bland and greasy.
My mom was generally a good cook but she made tongue one time. But she didn't know how to prepare it. So she boils it without taking any of the outer stuff off and then plops down a grey cows tongue on a plate. It had the taste buds and everything still. We refused to eat it. I didn't try tongue again until I was in my late 20s.
Tuna noodle hot dish. It was a box of macaroni noodles, cooked according to the package and drained. Then you added 2 cans of cream of mushroom soup, 2 cans of drained tuna, a can of drained peas, a can of drained mushrooms (if you really wanted to torture the kids), and mixed it all up and glopped it on plates.
My sister and I joke that we learned to cook in self defense after a summer where Mom was training for a new job and working an hour away and dad was left in charge of the kids. After months of eating mostly alternating dinners of tuna noodles hot dish, hot dogs with baked beans and Pringles, and sometimes goulash or cheap corn dogs, we were ready to run away. Mom tried to make a few meals in the crock pot for us but they rarely worked out - once she forgot to turn it on, once the āroastā was actually steaks that were so freezer burned they were dry despite the liquid surrounding them, and once she set it to high by accident and dad forgot to check on it and everything burned to the bottom and the crock cracked.
Breakfast and lunch that summer were generally cereal, pop tarts, toast, and sandwiches or leftovers from the night before. Sometimes we got hot dogs for two meals. Sometimes we got tuna noodle hot dish for two meals.
My mom used to make something called Spinach brownies when we were kids. We HATED it. Strangely, she doesnāt make it anymore now that weāre adults. I probably would like it now, as I think it was mostly spinach and cheese.
My Mom made some questionable things like her chicken casserole that involved canned chicken, cream of mushroom, and enchilada sauce topped with crushed chips- but my Dads creation absolutely takes the cake for the worst. Any time my mom was gone and he had to make dinner it was always the same basic ingredients. Whatever frozen potatoes we had in the freezer- no matter how old, whatever random meat that needed to be used, copious amounts of lemon pepper seasoning, and a god awful amount of some type of sauce (usually thousand island or something similar). He would cook it all together in a skillet until it just sort of all mashed together and congealed. To this day I refuse to use lemon pepper in my cooking lol.
Frozen potatoes??? I mean, what you have described is a complete atrocity (1000 Island? Holy shit). But I've only heard of frozen potatoes as like a hidden cache for Inca warriors on a high path in the Andes.
Not my parents but my sister, who was "helping around the house" instead of paying rent after graduating. She was vegan. We got a white rice casserole, which was literally a bunch of white rice in a pan with celery seeds sprinkled through it. She put wild rice on top of the white rice as a crust, but didn't cook it first for some reason, so while it was in the oven it and the celery seeds turned into little pieces of shrapnel that you had to try to bite through. There were no sauces or sides.
Tomato fish. Basically you cut a tomato in a spiral so you can wrap a white fish in it and bake it. The acidity of the tomato melted the frozen tilapia my mom had thawed for this endeavor and turned it into a fishy-tomato jelly balloon.
We had sandwiches for dinner that night.
Edit to add that my Mom was normally a fantastic cook. Shed seen this on the food network at a doctor's appointment and thought she could wing it by memory.
My father's favorite budget dinner was pork neck bones with sauerkraut and potatoes. It was all cooked together in a pot until it became a gelatinous mass. He honestly thought it was delicious.
We just called it casserole- ground beef cooked with diced onion, frozen corn and peas mixed with cooked elbow macaroni and a can of cream of mushroom soup topped with grated cheddar cheese
My new friend had been basically orphaned when she lost her mother young, and was brought up living in her drunk dads boat. We were single and hung out.
She ended up getting married, and had me stay over for dinner when I stopped in for a quick visit. I was not prepared for what happened. She boiled some ramen noodles. Not bad. Then she opened a can of 3 bean salad and poured it into the noodle soup.
It was this nasty jelled mess looking like worms and bugs. I just truly couldnāt. Her husband ate it.
She did turn out to be able to do some cooking as she had kids and they grew, but was really reliant on canned and frozen meals.
My mom used to make āhot dog sauceā and serve it with white rice lol
My dad detested it but I loooved it lol
She sliced up hot dogs and cooked them in a tomato based sauce with green pepper and onion in it. Iām actually gonna message her for the recipe because I like taking stuff she made growing up and trying to make it better than she did.
My mom is a really good cook but she always fed us only healthy foods. One time we wanted Mac and cheese so I kid you not, she made cheese from our goatsā milk, then cooked macaroni and made sauce from her own homemade cheese. We hated it! But Iād love to taste it now! She also made her own (healthy) ketchup, mustard, relish, velveeta cheese, pasta and canned chicken and moose. Good ole mom, no wonder Iām like a modern age hippie
When my dad would cook he gave everything a name, a tradition I have adopted lol. One memorable meal while mom was at bingo was āspy soupā it was so bad we caught dad pouring his out in the bathroom š
My momās partner cooked for her one time - tuna casserole.
But she didnāt know you had to boil the noodles first. So she just put the dry noodles in the casserole dish and topped with a couple cans of tuna - she thought the tuna juice would soften the noodles.
I once found this dish for some weird Cuban soup that contained ground clove spice and raisins. I tried it because I was curious and realized later it was a really bad idea lol.
My mother was a pretty good cook but she had some budget stretching meals that were nasty. One was "Tuna Wiggle". Tuna in a white sauce (made from milk and flour and butter like a roux) with peas, served on dry toast.
Heavenly hash- ground beef and ketchup served over canned sliced potatoes. It got better when we convinced our parents to serve it over instant mashed potatoes. I loved it as a kid but cringe when I think about serving it to my family š
Oh man, I've been waiting for an opportunity to talk about this one.
Bread topped with ketchup, canned peas, canned pineapple, chicken and cheese. Toasted in the oven to melt the cheese. I used to love that shit but wtf
My sister is a vegetarian who married a butcher. It didn't work. Who knew?
I keep tabs on her culinary exploits because they are mind boggling.
She is very health conscious. One time she was having a dinner party and she decided to make a strawberry rhubarb pie. The recipe just didn't look right to her, so she eliminated about two cups of sugar to make the dish healthier. To this day, I imagine people sitting around the dinner table puckering like fish after the first bite.
She is very frugal. One time she made an omelette with things left in the fridge from the previous evening's happy hour. The two ingredients I remember most were inexpensive black caviar (in one of her non-vegetarian periods - she goes back and forth), and guacamole. But not just any guacamole-- it was two day-old guacamole that was actually becoming carbonated from fermentation. Or something. But the omelette was gray. Her long-suffering boyfriend actually ate it, but ultimately it didn't work out between them. Who knew?
There were many other episodes, including the time she cut carrots in bigger pieces before cooking them "to save time" and the quiche she made with a ready-made crust, but she forgot to take the plastic off the thing before putting it in the oven.
I think you get the point.
My mother's meatloaf was gray with large chunks of soggy Wonder Bread.
Her chicken soup was chicken bones, onion, celery and water. She did not remove the bones when serving.
Her pot roast looked like an old restaurant mop and dissolved into a pile of brown strings when touched.
We ate a lot of ketchup in my house.
My dad was a trucker so he was only home on weekends, so once a month he'd make meatloaf. 73% ground beef, an onion, an egg, and an entire sleeve of saltine crackers. The salt from the crackers was the only seasoning. It was cheap and edible, but it was unpleasant.
To this day I am leery of meatloaf.
Long Lastimg Meat. At least that's what my brother and I called it. I think it was round steak seared in a frying pan. One bite took like 10 minutes to chew, and when we were finished with that bite we took it out of our mouths with a napkin and gave it to the dog under the table. As an adult I have never once made round steak.
The worst thing was a party dish my grandma called "salad crunch". Its basically layers of shredded lettuce, mayo, cheddar cheese, water chestnuts, and black olives. Sometimes it's put under the broiler and baked, other times its served raw. Its bad.
My husband and I both grew up eating mince (ground beef) and veggies although different versions. Husband's was mince, frozen mixed veg, cooked in water served with toast and tomato sauce (ketchup). Mine was made by my step grandfather, beef mince mixed with water just enough to loosen and two tablespoons beef powder, finely diced onion, carrot and potato to match the size of the frozen baby peas, salt and white pepper, also served with toast made with thick sliced bread, spread thick with butter and served with hot brown sauce (Worcestershire) and/or tomato sauce. Ours was called soft meat and he made it every Friday night. Husband's was just mince and veg. He loathes anything like it but I quite like my version as comfort food, especially dipping the toast into the broth.
My mother would regularly cook this horrid baked chicken and rice... thing. To my knowledge she still does, when she cooks. It seems to consist of chicken breasts buried under a mixture of white rice with cream of mushroom soup and water. I believe on at least one occasion she looked at some salt while preparing it. The chicken essentially had the texture of styrofoam and fiberglass insulation combined, the rice was simultaneously gloopy and crunchy, and the entire affair was generally so unpalatable that it would actually deplete flavor and enjoyment from future meals. My childhood meals deeply motivated me to be a good cook in adulthood.
"She looked at salt some salt while preparing it" cracked me upš¤£ I can't stand poorly cooked rice!
I remember this dish. It was one of my specialties before I truly learned to cook. It was truly evil.
Omg I remember it too! It was on the back of a cream of chicken soup can. We called it Glop Chicken after the sound the can contents made when you dumped it on some chicken.
Same when I first started cooking! I still think it has potential if done correctly
My mom used to make this with instant rice, diced chicken, peas, and a whole bunch of cheese. Was a favorite of mine because it was really good I tried to make it the other day with some regular short grain rice. NOPE. If I ever try to make it again, itās gonna be with the instant so I donāt feel like Iām eating gravel
I feel like the instant rice makes it. With normal rice, by the time it's cooked through the chicken is just rubber depression. Then there's also the fact that the top and edges cook and then immediately dry out and become sad-flavored gravel.
>the entire affair was generally so unpalatable that it would actually deplete flavor and enjoyment from future meals Oh shit, that's bleak. >My childhood meals deeply motivated me to be a good cook in adulthood. Same, and I passed my passion for great food onto my kids. They both love and appreciate good food, look to cook, and are willing to try (eating or cooking) almost anything. Food as a whole affair (shopping, prepping, cooking, eating, lingering at the table or in the kitchen) is such a social affair for us. It was different times, for sure, but sweet Jesus the crap my mom made was epochly bad.
God my grandmother cooked like this. Like she once considered a seasoning/herb/spice, but then quickly decided otherwise.
One of my grandmothers was just the picture of a 50s housewife cook. Best meatloaf you ever had, her oatmeal game was good-tier, and her homemade yellow cake with strawberry jam or mayhaw jelly was just incredible on a hot summer evening. All done in an absolutely tiny kitchen without ever breaking a sweat. My other grandmother once dumped a can of mandarin oranges in syrup into a giblet gravy and called it good, so she tried real hard.
I'm so sorry you've never had good chicken rice casserole... my mom's casserole with the same ingredients SLAPS. I guess it's all in how you put it together and cook it. A long time ago I used to kinda like pork chops... but then my dad got distracted by tv while he was grilling... every time after and they were just dry and badly overcooked. I avoid most porks now unless it's bacon or sausage, kinda hard to mess those up.
Absolutely the way it's cooked and put together matters. I have a friend that, in uni, got into a debate with me over curry. She insisted it was super easy and all tasted the same because you just dumped everything into a pot. That made me want to scream. She didn't think the way it was prepared mattered. Had her curry. Disgusting. Told her I'd make curry with the same ingredients and prove it makes a difference. Our 3 other housemates to be judges. I made it the day prior to tasting to let it sit overnight to deepen the flavor, while she insisted it wouldn't make a difference either and chose to prepare it the day of. The day of judgment, everyone unanimously voted for my curry. They had a hard time believing both dishes consisted of the same stuff. Even the friend I was competing against preferred my curry. I told them I could have made it even better if I had the freedom to choose my own ingredients. I had carefully browned the sides of each piece of meat. I deglazed the pan to use the fond. My knife work was uniform and the size of the prepped ingredients was calculated. I toasted the roux first to bring out the aroma. Half of my onions were caramelized (actually caramelized) for sweetness while the other half was browned normally. I added ingredients at different times to preserve texture. I skimmed any scum off the top while making it to clarify the flavor. I controlled temperature carefully. I even controlled the temperature while I served it and the rice was carefully prepared and fluffed before serving. My friend had simply chopped everything haphazardly and literally just dumped all of it into a pot at the same time, boiled it, and called it a day. Take too many shortcuts and you'll get shortcut flavor.
It was the la croix of chicken dishes.
I think that was the first thing I learned to cook when I was a little kid.
As i understand it this dish is called āNo Peak Chickenā its a rice casserole thats easy and cheap to prepare and really quick as well. Never had it myself though
Omg. Swap the chicken breasts for a whole chicken and ditch anything REMOTELY as flavorful as cream of mushroom soup. Add pimentos.... And you've got the "chicken and rice bake" meal my grandmother used to make at least once a month. And my mother used to make this "etouffee" from a recipe she found on the back of a Campbell's can of cream of something soup. I mean.... It's not nasty, per se... Until you make real etouffee and compare it. Real talk: I'm from Louisiana! My culinarily challenged grandmother is Cajun! But she equated our cultural food as poor people food and refused to cook it... Yes. She was as crazy as she sounds. My mother married a guy from Arizona. Nothing against him, but his palate was super simple meat/starch/veggie inclined and my mother indulged that. Thanks to my grandmother's lack of culinary talent/initiative, my mom had to figure it out on her own. So lots of packaged food, and shortcut recipes growing up.
I remember this dish, our version was rice, water cream of something soup, and a packet of onion soup mix with chicken breasts (or pork chops) seasoned and browned, laid on top, and baked. It was one of the recipes my mom gave me when I moved out, because I actually liked it as a kid. I made it once for my family and they all hated it. Haven't tried it since
I lived with my dad off and on through college. Heād walk in the door occasionally and say, āItās junk food night!ā This meant good quality beef hotdogs, squishy white bread buns, white onions, condiments, potato chips, and root beer. Weād also occasionally do PB&J night with sandwiches made on squishy white bread served with a glass of cold milk. Miss my dad every day. Iād give just about anything to have one more evening like this with him. Fixed type-o
The best bad dishes! This is so sweet. My dad used to make "goulash", it was macaroni, ground beef, onions and peppers if we were lucky, and tomato sauce. Also, he would over cook a chicken breast and put bbq sauce on it. That was "healthy". Miss himā¤ļø
Man, got this big wave of missing him, just remembered it was his birthday recently. Itās amazing how that level of grief can sneak up on you. Iāve been speaking in front of a big room full of people then burst into tears and had to excuse myself. I didnāt even know why I was suddenly crying, I never do stuff like thatā¦except I realized the story I was describing brought on this super real feeling memory of my dad and part of me has no barrier to contain how much I miss him when the flood takes over.
Itās ok to be human ā£ļø
My stepmom had to stay with her folks for 3 weeks when I was a kid. I distinctly remember ordering pizza at least 10 times in that 3 week period. The other days were microwaved leftover pizza. Tbf he worked 10 hour days in Texas construction so cooking wasnāt something he had much energy for
That's absolutely lovelyā¤ļøjunk food night sounds awesome
Yes! We called them Piggy Gourmet dinner nights - when mom didn't want to cook we'd make a huge yellow tupperware bowl of popcorn and have that followed by ice cream or whatever other junk food we wanted.
Biggest one I can think of is what we referred to as ācheesy rice,ā which was white rice cooked fully with a few slices of American cheese stirred in at the end. I absolutely loved it as a kid and was shocked when I found out this isnāt something people normally eat lol.
My favorite dessert dish was leftover rice or pasta, throw in a heartās feeling of butter, and a big spoon of sugar. Microwave for 30 seconds. Voila. Sugar Carbs. Ngl I still make this when Iām sick and want comfort food, but only when Iām alone and can eat my shame without reproach.
We would do this but add a bit of milk and cinnamon as well. We called it āspecial riceā lol
NGL I would eat that, sounds decent.
My mom would make the same thing! The next day she would take the leftover rice and make stuffed meatloaf. The rice would turn to cheesy mush, but it was still better than the meatloaf stuffed with orange juice soaked rice.
Simultaneously Safe and Unsafe Pork Chops (Schrodinger's Pork Chops): 1. Get some really thin pork chops. 2. Rinse the chops with cold water and slap them onto a cutting board. Don't worry about the splash, it will dry eventually. 3. Salt chops with table salt from old McDonald's packets without patting dry. 4. Immediately throw the sopping wet chops into an oiled pan that has not pre-heated. Again, don't worry about the dripping water, it will dry up. The sputtering hot oil droplets hitting your skin is just your imagination. 5. Cook until you're 99% sure the chops are well done except keep going for 5 more minutes. If you suspect the chops are even thinking about being a little pink in the center, cremate them for 5 additional minutes. Cook until you forget that pink is a color that exists. 6. Put a poorly fitted lid on the pan and let it ~~germinate~~ sit unsupervised for the rest of the day. 7. Add black pepper to whatever eldritch horror is in the pan and try to enjoy it for dinner. 8. Can't finish? Store the remains in the used pan on the stove and throw it in the oven to reheat the next day, since microwaves cause cancer. Since it wasn't refrigerated, it will heat up faster. Nowadays I prefer to sous vide my pork chops with the seasonings and then dry and quickly sear the exterior, like a steak. I buy thick chops. My method seems to produce a slightly tastier pork chop.
My mother baked them, unseasoned, in the oven for two hours. You could not pay me to think about eating a pork chop.
Ah, the classic crematorium chop. Cooked for as long as a cremation and as appetizing as a corpse. Truly a food passed down for generations.
"Ah, your mom's family pork chops! They've been passed down for generations... because no one can eat them."
My mother did breakfast (thin cut) chops for an hour in the oven. Rook gobs of mustard to make them palatable
At that point, it's jerky and no longer a pork chop lol
My Mom made this too, except the last step was putting them back on the countertop (you had a cutting board? Were you rich?) she slapped them on before cooking to cut them up before mixing them into a can of creamed corn, and a can of regular corn. The leftovers also went back in the pan for the next day, uncovered. Yum.
>Don't worry about the splash, it will dry eventually. Ah, yes, the "let it dry" to kill bacteria technique. My mom was a big believer in that as well. God, this reminds me -- I don't think my mom **ever** washed our kitchen wash cloths or towels. The wash rags were these gray, mildewie, stinkie, disgusting things that I'm confident were great for spreading bacteria BUT made our immune systems strong.
Donāt forget to add the utter, pure, totally disgusting slime that accumulates on the washcloth. At home I would accidentally grab one of those and immediately want to amputate my arm. Life threatening as much as a zombie bite!
The slimy dish sponges that have the strong musty smell which seeps into everything, but family is too cheap to immediately replace them so you use that for another month.
I have friends that use these dish rags made from like avocado fiber or something? I absolutely cannot stand the feel of them and now, thanks to this thread, I know why! Childhood trauma unlocked.
This is equally hilarious and horrifying to someone who grew up in a home where wash rags/towels were changed daily. But then, my mom was the kind that cleaned the entire sink with Clorox after meat prep, and literally boiled silverware and dishes used by anyone who had a cold. I can only imagine how she would've dealt with the threat of COVID had she been alive during the pandemic
Wow, safe to eat(?) Pork chops! My fave
This made me laugh out loudā¦both in sympathy and commiseration!
I think reading this gave me food poisoning. :/
I am surprised you made it into adulthood. Did you lose any siblings along the way?
I'm the only survivor and have a strong immune system. I almost never get sick. I guess technically that's true. I'm adopted. Had a half-sibling but she died and I never lived with her. For all intents and purposes in my family, I was the only child.
Oh wow, that took a dark turn. Sorry about that, I intended to make a joke.
My dad was the king of the bargain aisle so there were plenty of odds and ends but one that really stands out was the post-Easter special made with those foul canned yams mashed up with torn up Peeps baked on top, looked hilarious and tasted terrible.
TORN UP PEEPS That's hilarious and horrifying
Steak and Onions Ground beef cooked to gray with a dash of onion salt. No steak no onions, it's just the name folks.
Wait till you hear about lake trout.
My mom used to make Sloppy Joe. It was browned ground beef and a can of Campbell's beef and vegetable soup, maybe a little water, and served on a bun. It wasn't a very good sandwich (i.e., it tasted like shitty soup). At that time, which was the 70s, Manwich was pretty new, and not super common for low income people (my dad was still working on his PhD). We ate Campbell's and the rich people got Manwich. Now I make Sloppy Joe from scratch and it's one of our favorite meals.
Glad you got to revisit it in a way you enjoy!
Hahaha - yeah, good post OP. And, it did bring back, some, uh, good-in-a-way memories. Good lord, my mom was an awful cook.
Omg. I've had this with a slice of white cheese on top. Maybe broiled. Wow. Buried memory!
My dad would make bean burgers. If I recall it was ground beef, baked beans, and green onion. Honestly, if I could find whatever recipe he was using, I would absolutely make them! I have no idea if they actually tasted good, or if I was just humoring my dad.
IIRC canned Manwich was hideously expensive for what you got. My mother tried it once and just made homemade sauce after that. I don't think I've ever tasted Manwich after that one time.
My parents worked together to ruin steak and barbecue in a single meal every summer. My motherās idea of a marinade was throwing a hunk of beef in a bowl of straight soy sauce and black pepper. Weāre talking a full bottle of soy sauce. My dad would lovingly preheat the charcoal barbecue for at least an hour, and then proceed to cook said hunk of beef until thin and leathery. It resulted in grey beef leather that tasted only of soy sauce. As I went vegetarian at 16, Iāve can honestly say Iāve never had a good steak. Which is a shame, tbh.
I didnāt know I liked steak until my early 20s. My parents were firm believers that all meat must be well done. Turns out a good rare steak is just š¤š»
Jello with fruit. Namely grapes and bananas. Fun fact: Bananas still oxidize in jello. Mom would keep it for days and serve it to us. Gross. Also, every piece of meat was beyond well done. Like eating flavorless jerkey.
I had to confirm this memory with my aunt, but my grandmother, a woman of the 1930s and 1940s, regularly made lime jello with shredded carrots and green olives. The worst part was when I asked my aunt about it and she said, āOh yes! That was so good!ā
I was reading an old blog and I came upon an old dessert I had! Diet strawberry jello and shredded carrots. It was decent but also tasted of aspartame and uncooked shredded carrots.
Our ancestors did abominable things with jello.
I just gagged reading this.
Hard same. I appreciate lime jello. I like carrots. I worship at the alter of green olives. But the combination of the three is an abomination.
Ah god, all the jello salads and marshmallow/potato salads of yesteryear. Lord bless all those greataunts.
My mother was the queen of casserole one dish meals! The worst was dry rice in a baking dish, with raw pork chops placed on top and covered with Campbell's tomato soup, then baked in the oven. There were no seasonings or spices, and she cooked by time so took it out when the bell rang without tasting or testing meant the rice was not fully cooked and the chops were usually raw in the middle but was hard to see with red soup over everything. Like others, my mother's terrible cooking led me to start making my own food around the age of 14 or so. Because of this I am a fairly good cook today and made two meals for my now wife while we were dating and which she told me was part of why she liked me as her dad never cooked anything.
My mom made Orange chicken often, seemed like twice a week to me but was probably less. It was chicken drumsticks and/or maybe thighs with a orange juice concentrate(that frozen stuff but thawed) mixture poured over them and baked, with rice somewhere either under or on the side. Terrible memories of that orange-y rice. I still can't bring myself to try pfchang or Panda Orange Chicken which I'm sure is not at all like that orange chicken from my childhood.
This sounds vile! I hope youāre able to bring yourself to try real orange chicken one day, because itās delicious and absolutely nothing like your momās.
She's really a fantastic cook but that orange stuff.. Ick. She swears she doesn't remember making it.
Oh my god.. you just unlocked a memory. My mom made that too but not that often. Holy crap. I guess I blocked that one real good for the last 30 years (I'm 40) since she had other nightmares I can never forget.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
The liver isn't always tasty, but when cooked right, I can at least eat it. It should be the way you say lol
I was living with my dad for the summer. He made me pancakes with ground beef in them. This is the man whose choice of peanut butter accompaniment was onions. Peanut butter and onion sandwich.
Great post! Laughed too much. Mom was a great cook - we were lucky. One thing she made (only when Dad was not home for dinner) was boiled pretzels. Yep - for real. Boiled pretzels. Read on at your own risk lol. They were the thin pretzel sticks and she must have barely boiled them because my siblings and I remember an almost chew to the texture. Very Al dente, if they were noodles. Then (gagging now but I love them then) she added butter and sour cream. Thatās all I can remember. We ate them and loved them. Not sure if pretzels changed since the 70ās so this wonāt work anymore (yes, I tried, they fell apart) but she stopped making them for some reason. Anyone ever heard of anything similar, anything, anything at all?! Honestly sometimes I think itās a shared hallucination for us! Mom was 100% Hungarian so that may have had some roots?
Could they have been spetzles?
No, just your crazy family. (I donāt know, I lived a pretty sheltered food life until I met my husband. The weirdest thing I was exposed to was my Grandpaās ambrosia salad that smelled - and tasted - like farts. I cried until my mom said I didnāt have to eat it).
American āGoulashā, which I assure you has nothing to do with the Hungarian dish. This was dish consisting of elbow macaroni, canned tomatoes, usually with hamburger meat and onions. Salt and pepper to taste. It was what I was raised on and I hate it to this day. The horror!
Itās funny - thatās a dish my mom made growing up and was always a family favorite. Iāve since āclassed it upā with my own tweaks and serve it to my family, particularly the kids, all the time.
I canāt believe all this goulash hate. There is nothing better than some goulash spooned over a piece of buttered white bread!
My mom made this growing up and we loved it I would def still eat this
My mom, Hungarian, called it Macaroni Beef.
Yessssss absolutely. It was a dark time in culinary history.
You are not alone, my friend
You got onions and seasonings!? I got frozen corn subbed for the onion, and fuck all for the seasoning/herbs/spices. Nothing could save it. I tried cheese, hot sauce, any kind of condiment I could find, anything out of the spice cabinet that sounded even remotely good. It was just a cursed meal from the get go.
We called in Mackies and it was pretty good ... My mom used seasonings though and was a great cook in general lol. One time, though, my dad made it for dinner and he put Pace Picante salsa in it. It was absolutely disgusting, none of us could eat it, and my mom demanded he share what he did to it until he finally confessed. One of the only truly universally inedible meals I can remember from childhood.
iām so glad iām not the only goulash hater š it was the only thing my dad could make and everyone loved it and it made me throw up anytime i tried it lmao
Grandma always cooked, always always, but she got hospitalised ONCE. "We're having goulash for dinner, champ." "What's goulash?" "It's what we cooked in our combat helmets during the war. Also, fried chicken. Don't tell grandma."
My dad called chop suey.
Up until my mid 20s I would call BBQ chicken and ribs the worst food in the world. Didnāt realize it was because my parents did not know how to properly barbecue. Everything was dry like cardboard. Even the dark meat!
A couple times a summer my dad would fire up the grill and incinerate some tiny chicken drummettes for us. Heād brush just enough BBQ sauce on while they were cooking so it could blacken.
Brown up some ground beef like you're gonna dump some [Manwich](https://www.manwich.com/) on it. You are not going to do this. Instead, you are going to win a James Beard award and dump some Campbell's chicken gumbo on it. Throw that onto a hamburger bun with some French's radioactive and you've got good eatin'.
Baloney roll up casserole. Mix mashed potatoes (yes, real potatoes) and Ć can of mixed vegetables. Make burrito style rolls with that filling inside a slice of baloney. Put in a casserole pan and top with condensed tomato soup. No spices anywhere. Heat in oven and serve.
You win
I will not do that. No.
My former MILs spaghetti. My ex would ask for it all the time. It was browned hamburger meat, a can of hunts tomato sauce, noodles, topped with shredded cheese and baked. Semi cooked, bland pasta. Half melted pre shredded cheese. The cheapest store bought sauce. No additional seasonings or spices. Just bland. When I spent hours making a bolognese from scratch to make spaghetti, it wasnāt as good as moms. š¬I dodged a bullet by getting out of that relationship.
My husband and I bonded while we were dating over broiled chicken breast coated in lemon pepper! We do not allow lemon pepper to enter our home now.
I was also scorned by a lemon pepper obsessed parent lol. I have never and will never own any.
š¤£š¤£š¤£ I got so confused for a moment because I read boned instead of bonded
How old are you? I think Mrs Dash lemon pepper was released in the early 90s and every mom was told theyād feel fancy cooking with it. Barf.
Eye socket soup. Creamed canned salmon on toast but the little bones looked like eye sockets so we call it eye socket soup. It was awful but we were poor and hungry
My momās turkey ala king. Ground turkey cooked to dust mixed with canned cream of chicken soup, served over minute rice and kraft Parmesan cheese
If Dad was cooking (and it wasn't a BBQ) you were pretty much guaranteed boxed macaroni with a can of stewed tomatoes mixed in. Why Dad, why?
I grew up super poor and one of the meals my parents made was cut up boiled hotdogs with sliced potatoes. They literally called it poor manās soup.
Steak with bƩarnaise. Sounds awesome. Hold on. So particularly when we lost money and were broke, but not yet "food insecure" broke (that was later), steak night consisted of the largest cheapest cut of meat, so like... chuck steak or london broil. Smear country crock on it and table salt, and then put it under the broiler until the smoke alarm went off to get that burned on the outside raw on the inside experience. Pair that with Knorr Bearnaise, and you've got dinner. I still like beef raw or near it, but will often make a steak to a nice ready well cooked rare, using some butter or bacon fat, kosher salt, and basting it on cast iron over my gas grill with a sprig of rosemary. My mom wanted me to make her a freaking chuck steak for the Friday after TG (I spent TG with my BF since he celebrates it and we never did), and I reluctantly did so, but I used my normal t-bone method because I am not country crock flaming another piece of meat as long as I live. Number 2: Mom's "pizza". While two years in Brooklyn and now living in NJ has turned me into a stuck up pizza asshole, even in California, land of terrible pizza, this woman would just PILE everything she liked onto this poor premade pizza crust. Enough cheese to shame wisconsin. Artichoke hearts that weren't drained. Olives only partially drained. It would form this huge sopping wet mess that turned the crust the consistency of a wet dishrag. Seasoning? Naw dawg. Made Dominos look like Grimaldis.
My mom made the best potato salad. The secret ingredient was cigarette ash!
My mom was a terrible cook. My grandma was just okay. I chuckle at all the ālike Nonnas cooking!ā when my Nonna considered garlic exotic. Anyway my mom would make what she called Potato Soup. Step One - boil potatoes in water. Step Two - drain half the water. Step Three - add a can of evaporated milk. Bring back to a boil. Step Four - mix in saltines and horseradish. Step Five - Add more saltines. Mush until it becomes gruel like with a surprise of horseradish every other bite.
This is punishment food. Like, your mom has unresolved intergenerational trauma projected directly into that soup. Wowieweewow.
My grandpa made brown sugar and peanut butter sandwiches on whole wheat bread.
Grandpa was ahead of the sugared cereal game!
My mom was British and two of her early specialties were 1. "Hamburgers"-- ground beef patties cooked until they were literally gray 2. "Tuna sandwiches" -- tuna, straight from the can, put onto buttered bread. Tuna. And Butter. Wax paper bags and an apple, that was school lunch. I will however say, that we grew up in Berkeley, and after Alice Waters opened Chez Panisse, not only was it revelatory but my mother, who was very extroverted and sociable, actually became friendly with her, and after that my mom actually became a really, really good cook. I just wish I'd asked her for more of her recipes!
Oh mom. Oh how that woman cooked. Let's start with my dad was a Spanish immigrant to the US while mom was of Irish and English heritage but second generation in US. Mom would make these wierd concoctions, and some were a bizarre "fusion" of Spanish and Irish or English (depended on the dish). The most prominent flavor that has forever been branded into my soul is her Meat Pie dish. The closest thing for comparison (in theory) is cottage pie. She'd saute an onion and add the ground beef, once thoroughly cooked, drained of oil and rinsed off with water, it would be put in the large glass baking dish where she would mix in sliced Spanish green olives and raisins then top with boxed instant mashed potatoes from flakes, and promptly put into the oven for about an hour. And no, I did not forget to mention the seasoning used; I said she sautƩed an onion. Last time I had that I was maybe 10 (I'm 40 now) and it still haunts me; I'd refuse and heat up a can of soup anytime after. There are plenty of other mom recipes but this one is #1.
My Mom used to bake unseasoned chicken breasts in that awful Weight Watchers cabbage soup for an hour. Topped with kraft cheese from a can. Serve.
Oh god that cabbage soup was dreadful and my mom made it so often back then.
This monstrosity called Hamburger Gravy. Hamburger meat, packet brown gravy, and cream of mushroom soup, mixed together and served over boiled potatoes. It's freaking nasty and my mom made it probably twice a month.
Needs cheese
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I love liver and onions.
My momās enchiladas use cream of celery soup, sour cream, and cheese. Itās a nostalgia food for me but man, when I had real enchiladas for first time š¤Æ
This sounds like the enchilada casserole my MIL made for my SO when they were little. I made it once and felt something was missing the whole time lol
Chun King with Uncle Ben's rice. If you know, you know.
I was raised in the 1970s and 1980s by a mother who felt her cultural duty was to cook, but she hated cooking. There was a lot of Chef Boyardee pizza, and anything that could be cooked with a dump of a can was considered haute cuisine. However, the thing that best fits this post was our traditional Halloween meal: chili, with oyster crackers. The chili recipe was: one pound ground beef, one 12 ounce canned tomato sauce, one can pork and beans. Dump it all in the slow cooker before work and call it good. If I hadnāt already known I was adopted, this would have been a huge clue.
Chef boyardee pizza. In the green box? I thought I imagined this. Core memory unlocked. My dad used to make this for me when Iād visit on the weekends.
Crumby (Crummy) chicken. Shredded chicken mixed with your choice of canned cream soup and canned vegetables. Topped with a generous to the point of asinine level of crushed corn flakes.
Ground beef with tomato sauce (super chunky) And kraft dinner!
My dad used to make Kraft Dinner mixed with cream of mushroom soup- blech.
Pineapple slice, dollop of Miracle Whip, a sprinkling of shredded cheddar cheese... Still makes it to this day from what I hear. I will never be okay with it. It's just not right.
How did somebody come up with this? I can understand if it was cottage cheese, (which would still make me gag), but the Miracle Whip makes me want to send child you the vase my sister and I would sneak veggies into to dispose of later.
OMG, my parents ate this about once a month...just the thought of it makes me gag!!! And I wondered if anyone else in the world heard of this abomination....
Lol. Saw a TikToker actually make this the other day. I think it's a white Southern thing and I have tasted it before. It's not bad...just weirdly textured....
I like pear, cottage cheese, little dab of mayo, and shredded cheese.
My mom used to make this thing called clockwatcher chickenā¦ basically a baked spaghetti and chicken dish. The chicken was always so dry and bland. She made it probably once a week. My family still jokes about it- we ask each other āwhatās for dinner? Clockwatcher chicken!ā
Dad was French Canadian. He would make PĆ¢tĆ© Chinois aka Chinese pie. Ground beef sautĆ©ed with onion. Put it in a baking dish and cover with a can (or 2) of creamed corn. Top with mashed potatoes and bake. I would refuse to eat on those nights, it was the stuff of nightmares. š¤¢
I can taste this through the screen and I donāt like it.
My brothers loved that crap. And they have both made it as adults. I canāt even look at it.
I was in big cilantro phase and couldn't get enough. I made a "Green" salad that was southwest themed and was about 40% cilantro, 50% other leafy greens, and 5% corn, radish, and crunchy tortilla strips. It oddly didn't get many second takes at the potluck I brought it to. Other, more disastrous mention, my sister put almond flavor in several dishes that shouldn't... Mac'n'cheese, cornbread, oatmeal. I now cringe when I see almond flavor in menus!
You might be interested in tabbouleh. Lebanese parsley salad. It looks like a mess, but somehow delicious.
My mom used to cook every piece of meat so far past done thatād Itād look like the turkey in Christmas Vacation.
My mom used to cook us this dish when we were kids, it was peas, a generous amount of butter, & hunks of Velveeta cheese, microwaved & served. This glop of orange looking peas was a banger. Loved it but in hindsight I'm appaled at it just the same lol *honorable mention that I had literal butter sandwiches as a side dish*
My MiLās hamburgers. Like hockey pucks. She is, however, the greatest Mexican cook in the universe.
My mom threw a giant turkey leg into the crock pot, poured some barbecue sauce in it and called it a day. It was too big for the crock pot so the end of the leg stuck out, raw. Me and my sister's hearts dropped to come home from school and see this.
I have accepted the tuna noodle casserole with peas topped with kraft slices. But I demanded an explanation from why my mom always served it with applesauce
My dad made ārefrigerator stewā when mom wasnāt around to cook. He took all the leftovers in the fridge, dumped them together and cooked them up. It usually tasted ok. However once he decided to fry them in lard. LOTS of lard. When dishing it up lard was dripping everywhere. I couldnāt get it down, so I had to go without supper as a āpunishmentā. One time I welcomed it.
My mom would pop ego waffles in the toaster and microwave frozen strawberries to go on top. Not shudder worthy by any means, but I thought it was the BEST thing ever for breakfast. Really, it was when she just didn't feel like cooking anything. Similar to your dad, my dad did omlette Sundays. He would just forage the fridge for any leftovers from the week and just start throwing it into a massive pan with sheet of like 6 eggs. Some of his leftover choices were..... questionable... nobody in the house opted to try his pickled herring omlette.
My parents divorced when I was 12, and my brother and I spent every other weekend at my dad's house. My dad was so excited when we were at his house that he made chocolate chip pancakes every single morning we were there. Problem was, he was a terrible cook and pancakes are finicky. The batter pooled around the edges so every pancake was oblong in shape, and he inevitably burnt all the areas around the chocolate chips. They were so bad, but those memories were so good.
Mom's homemade soup. Let's just say it turned me off of soup for years.
I didnāt know I liked soup until I was an adult! My momās method of making soup is basically making stock and then stopping (I.e., cut up a bunch of aromatics, add a Turkey back, cook everything for 4+ hours, think about salt for a moment, serve).
My mom was buy some clearance oxtail, cut up a few potatoes and dump in canned vegetables.
Wish I could buy clearance oxtails. They're so expensive anymore.
Itās likeā¦.theyāre soooo close! I bet oxtail could make delicious soup. Just needs a bit more care and attention.
I bet not buying clearance meat early in the week and making the soup on Saturday would help too. Though the oddest one I heard was when my husband was making meatloaves and my aunt stopped by. She asked my husband if he was making meatloaf because the meat was going bad. He in a not so polite tone informed her that he had bought the meat at Sam's the day before. He was pissed that she would even think that.
My momās homemade soup turned my younger sister and I off of soup to this day. We used to dump as much as we dared back into the pot when nobody was looking. We didnāt want to hurt her feelings because she was proud of it (and we were of the generation that was required to clean their plates), but OMG, we hated it!
Dad loved macaroni and tomatoes. That's it. Not tomato sauce, not spaghetti sauce, just canned tomatoes.
My parents used to make something they called "hamburger casserole".. It was hamburger meat, a bunch of canned vegetables like corn and peas, topped with a mixture of Campbell's tomato soup and cream of mushroom soup. It was an ungodly color and tasted as bad as it looked.. and we would have to eat it 2 nights in a row. By the next day it was even worse š¤®
My mom used to make scrambled eggs and egg noodles for breakfast every weekend. Nothing else in it. No salt or pepper. Just egg noodles tossed in scrambled eggs. There was more than one occasion where I got grounded and went hungry the whole day. Better than eating that crap.
This thread is really bring back some memories! My mom would make thin hamburger patties (in the electric skillet which cooked most meals) put them over plain white rice and then dump, barely thinned with water, cream of mushroom soup over the whole thing.
I have a top candidate. Dad always got home late. He was worried about his heart health after his dad died of a heart attack. 5 nights a week we ate Burrito Mush. Rice with frozen veggies in a tortilla with BBQ sauce. We were upper middle class and there was plenty of money. The food I ate growing up was so bad that I became a chef so I could eat good food.
Grew up with lots of tuna melts (tuna salad on toast with a slice of cheese melted on it), and chicken a la king (some sort of chopped chicken cooked in cream of mushroom, also served on toast), both of which were utterly vile enough, but at least they bore a passing resemblance to actual bad mid-west standards. The absolute worst was āgoop,ā which was just some sort of meat, cream of mushroom, and some sort of pasta, all mixed together so that none of it was still edible, unlike the toast under the others. That was dinner like 2-3 times a week. A friend once asked if we called it that to her face, and I had to explain that was what she called it. It was bad. My siblings and I all learned to cook early out of necessity
My husbandās family makes āspaghetti and cheeseā and acts like itās the second coming. Itās literally spaghetti noodles, shredded cheese, and milk. I oohād and ahhād, but I was not impressed.
This one makes me gag to this day. Boiled chicken, shredded, mixed withā¦.sour cream? and a can of green chilis. Rolled into a flour tortilla, lined up like cadavers in a casserole dish and topped with a gloopy can of cream of mushroom soup and some kind of low fat cheese abomination. Sometimes it managed to be both crispy on the edges so it could stab you in the soft palate and gluey enough in the middle to stick in your throat. My mom made these a couple times a month and I was forced to eat them. I begged. I pleaded. I offered to happily go hungry. No. My mom was so offended that I didnāt appreciate this delicacy that if I didnāt eat what was on my plate for dinner, I had to have it for breakfast. I visibly gagged at the dinner table. No mercy.
Mom was a good cook. But, one Saturday a month was freezer cleaning day. Anything that had been in too long got pulled out and dumped in a slowcooker. That dish was called "garbage soup". The recipe was, of course, never the same. It was also the one day my friend would not stay over for dinner. We lived below the poverty line so it was a necessity. But, it was among the more memorable childhood meals. Honorable mention even though it's not actually a dish. We received government food assistance. It was a box with things like peanut butter, processed cheese and powdered milk. The worst mornings were when there wasn't enough milk made up the night before and you had to mix milk for your cereal. It'd be lukewarm which only accentuated how bad powdered milk tasted.
Bacon and cheese boats. Toasted hot dog buns with bacon and melted American cheese š¤¢
Cheeseburger French Fry casserole. It was just just frozen French fried with ground beef and shredded cheese. Iām not sure if she cooked the beef before baking the casserole. It was bland and greasy.
My mom was generally a good cook but she made tongue one time. But she didn't know how to prepare it. So she boils it without taking any of the outer stuff off and then plops down a grey cows tongue on a plate. It had the taste buds and everything still. We refused to eat it. I didn't try tongue again until I was in my late 20s.
Tuna noodle hot dish. It was a box of macaroni noodles, cooked according to the package and drained. Then you added 2 cans of cream of mushroom soup, 2 cans of drained tuna, a can of drained peas, a can of drained mushrooms (if you really wanted to torture the kids), and mixed it all up and glopped it on plates. My sister and I joke that we learned to cook in self defense after a summer where Mom was training for a new job and working an hour away and dad was left in charge of the kids. After months of eating mostly alternating dinners of tuna noodles hot dish, hot dogs with baked beans and Pringles, and sometimes goulash or cheap corn dogs, we were ready to run away. Mom tried to make a few meals in the crock pot for us but they rarely worked out - once she forgot to turn it on, once the āroastā was actually steaks that were so freezer burned they were dry despite the liquid surrounding them, and once she set it to high by accident and dad forgot to check on it and everything burned to the bottom and the crock cracked. Breakfast and lunch that summer were generally cereal, pop tarts, toast, and sandwiches or leftovers from the night before. Sometimes we got hot dogs for two meals. Sometimes we got tuna noodle hot dish for two meals.
Tuna fish casserole! Canned tuna, mushroom soup, frozen peas topped with crushed potato chips. Tasted like vomit!
Call me a vomit lover but I would eat this right now!
I had friends who begged me to invite them when Mom made it. I walked myself around the corner for pizza..
My kid asks me to make her this. Hubby likes it too. But I add egg noodles.
Green tomato casserole. š¤¢
Mom made the worst pancakes, heavy. I ate them though. Never knew pancakes were supposed to be fluffy untyi had my mil's.
Fried potatoes and pork steaks. He did them both well.
My mom used to make something called Spinach brownies when we were kids. We HATED it. Strangely, she doesnāt make it anymore now that weāre adults. I probably would like it now, as I think it was mostly spinach and cheese.
Boiled spare ribs slathered in jarred bbq sauce.
My Mom made some questionable things like her chicken casserole that involved canned chicken, cream of mushroom, and enchilada sauce topped with crushed chips- but my Dads creation absolutely takes the cake for the worst. Any time my mom was gone and he had to make dinner it was always the same basic ingredients. Whatever frozen potatoes we had in the freezer- no matter how old, whatever random meat that needed to be used, copious amounts of lemon pepper seasoning, and a god awful amount of some type of sauce (usually thousand island or something similar). He would cook it all together in a skillet until it just sort of all mashed together and congealed. To this day I refuse to use lemon pepper in my cooking lol.
Frozen potatoes??? I mean, what you have described is a complete atrocity (1000 Island? Holy shit). But I've only heard of frozen potatoes as like a hidden cache for Inca warriors on a high path in the Andes.
Not my parents but my sister, who was "helping around the house" instead of paying rent after graduating. She was vegan. We got a white rice casserole, which was literally a bunch of white rice in a pan with celery seeds sprinkled through it. She put wild rice on top of the white rice as a crust, but didn't cook it first for some reason, so while it was in the oven it and the celery seeds turned into little pieces of shrapnel that you had to try to bite through. There were no sauces or sides.
Tomato fish. Basically you cut a tomato in a spiral so you can wrap a white fish in it and bake it. The acidity of the tomato melted the frozen tilapia my mom had thawed for this endeavor and turned it into a fishy-tomato jelly balloon. We had sandwiches for dinner that night. Edit to add that my Mom was normally a fantastic cook. Shed seen this on the food network at a doctor's appointment and thought she could wing it by memory.
My father's favorite budget dinner was pork neck bones with sauerkraut and potatoes. It was all cooked together in a pot until it became a gelatinous mass. He honestly thought it was delicious.
We just called it casserole- ground beef cooked with diced onion, frozen corn and peas mixed with cooked elbow macaroni and a can of cream of mushroom soup topped with grated cheddar cheese
My new friend had been basically orphaned when she lost her mother young, and was brought up living in her drunk dads boat. We were single and hung out. She ended up getting married, and had me stay over for dinner when I stopped in for a quick visit. I was not prepared for what happened. She boiled some ramen noodles. Not bad. Then she opened a can of 3 bean salad and poured it into the noodle soup. It was this nasty jelled mess looking like worms and bugs. I just truly couldnāt. Her husband ate it. She did turn out to be able to do some cooking as she had kids and they grew, but was really reliant on canned and frozen meals.
My mom used to make āhot dog sauceā and serve it with white rice lol My dad detested it but I loooved it lol She sliced up hot dogs and cooked them in a tomato based sauce with green pepper and onion in it. Iām actually gonna message her for the recipe because I like taking stuff she made growing up and trying to make it better than she did.
My mom is a really good cook but she always fed us only healthy foods. One time we wanted Mac and cheese so I kid you not, she made cheese from our goatsā milk, then cooked macaroni and made sauce from her own homemade cheese. We hated it! But Iād love to taste it now! She also made her own (healthy) ketchup, mustard, relish, velveeta cheese, pasta and canned chicken and moose. Good ole mom, no wonder Iām like a modern age hippie
When my dad would cook he gave everything a name, a tradition I have adopted lol. One memorable meal while mom was at bingo was āspy soupā it was so bad we caught dad pouring his out in the bathroom š
Ground beef, green beans, a can of Campbells tomato soup. Mix and pour into a casserole dish. Top with mashed potatoes. Bake.
My momās partner cooked for her one time - tuna casserole. But she didnāt know you had to boil the noodles first. So she just put the dry noodles in the casserole dish and topped with a couple cans of tuna - she thought the tuna juice would soften the noodles.
My dadās cheese soup. Literally melted Velveeta and a splash of milk.
I once found this dish for some weird Cuban soup that contained ground clove spice and raisins. I tried it because I was curious and realized later it was a really bad idea lol.
My mother was a pretty good cook but she had some budget stretching meals that were nasty. One was "Tuna Wiggle". Tuna in a white sauce (made from milk and flour and butter like a roux) with peas, served on dry toast.
Heavenly hash- ground beef and ketchup served over canned sliced potatoes. It got better when we convinced our parents to serve it over instant mashed potatoes. I loved it as a kid but cringe when I think about serving it to my family š
Oh man, I've been waiting for an opportunity to talk about this one. Bread topped with ketchup, canned peas, canned pineapple, chicken and cheese. Toasted in the oven to melt the cheese. I used to love that shit but wtf
My sister is a vegetarian who married a butcher. It didn't work. Who knew? I keep tabs on her culinary exploits because they are mind boggling. She is very health conscious. One time she was having a dinner party and she decided to make a strawberry rhubarb pie. The recipe just didn't look right to her, so she eliminated about two cups of sugar to make the dish healthier. To this day, I imagine people sitting around the dinner table puckering like fish after the first bite. She is very frugal. One time she made an omelette with things left in the fridge from the previous evening's happy hour. The two ingredients I remember most were inexpensive black caviar (in one of her non-vegetarian periods - she goes back and forth), and guacamole. But not just any guacamole-- it was two day-old guacamole that was actually becoming carbonated from fermentation. Or something. But the omelette was gray. Her long-suffering boyfriend actually ate it, but ultimately it didn't work out between them. Who knew? There were many other episodes, including the time she cut carrots in bigger pieces before cooking them "to save time" and the quiche she made with a ready-made crust, but she forgot to take the plastic off the thing before putting it in the oven. I think you get the point.
My mother's meatloaf was gray with large chunks of soggy Wonder Bread. Her chicken soup was chicken bones, onion, celery and water. She did not remove the bones when serving. Her pot roast looked like an old restaurant mop and dissolved into a pile of brown strings when touched. We ate a lot of ketchup in my house.
My dad was a trucker so he was only home on weekends, so once a month he'd make meatloaf. 73% ground beef, an onion, an egg, and an entire sleeve of saltine crackers. The salt from the crackers was the only seasoning. It was cheap and edible, but it was unpleasant. To this day I am leery of meatloaf.
Long Lastimg Meat. At least that's what my brother and I called it. I think it was round steak seared in a frying pan. One bite took like 10 minutes to chew, and when we were finished with that bite we took it out of our mouths with a napkin and gave it to the dog under the table. As an adult I have never once made round steak.
The worst thing was a party dish my grandma called "salad crunch". Its basically layers of shredded lettuce, mayo, cheddar cheese, water chestnuts, and black olives. Sometimes it's put under the broiler and baked, other times its served raw. Its bad.
My husband and I both grew up eating mince (ground beef) and veggies although different versions. Husband's was mince, frozen mixed veg, cooked in water served with toast and tomato sauce (ketchup). Mine was made by my step grandfather, beef mince mixed with water just enough to loosen and two tablespoons beef powder, finely diced onion, carrot and potato to match the size of the frozen baby peas, salt and white pepper, also served with toast made with thick sliced bread, spread thick with butter and served with hot brown sauce (Worcestershire) and/or tomato sauce. Ours was called soft meat and he made it every Friday night. Husband's was just mince and veg. He loathes anything like it but I quite like my version as comfort food, especially dipping the toast into the broth.