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What was the one meal your mother made when you were little that you absolutely hated?

My mom made hamburger with white gravy over toast. When I got old enough I made something for myself!

37 Comments:

My mother used to make rice and pasta for the same meal and cover with a beef stew and red beans...I used to hate it!

Creamed (canned) ham and onions. *shudder*

Stuffed green bell peppers. Bitter!!! I hated them. Doesn't matter what she stuffed them with. To this day I can't stand green bell pepper. I always use red, yellow, or orange.

When I think about my mother having to put dinner on the table for three picky little girls every night for nearly 16 years, I want to nominate her for sainthood. She no doubt dealt with our upturned noses on a regular basis, whereas Dad, who got the fun job of weekend breakfast, made off like a hero with French toast and chocolate chip pancakes, while my mother I'm sure threw up her hands in defeat. Maybe that's why we started getting pancakes for dinner, now that I think about it!

Anyway, I never liked pork chops, not because of any certain way my mom made them, I just never liked them. Sorry National Pork Board!

Meatloaf and chili - hated the smell and texture.

Boiled hot dogs on slices of whole wheat bread. Bleah!

Stuffed green bell peppers with soggy hamburger meat.

Salmon patties and creamed peas. Still don't like either to this day!

Trish

Ditto on the stuffed bell peppers. I would smell them in the oven when I came in the door so I would just go straight to my room. No dinner for me that night.

My mother's a great cook, but she somehow believed that calve's liver and onions made a healthy meal, and once a month we would be served just that. Ugh! To this day, it's one of the very few things I find revolting. (Other organs--kidneys, brains--and canned tuna or salmon more or less complete that list.)

My grandmother would make meatloaf and it was incredible. My mother would make the "same thing" and it was awful.

The dreaded Fiskeboller. Thankfully, she didn't care for Lutefisk!!

Super dry meatloaf (literally 99% lean ground beef mixed with raw chopped white onion, stuffed into a 9x5 loaf pan and baked until thoroughly dehydrated) that was made (semi)edible only when each slice was rehydrated with about a cup of ketchup...blech!

My mom once made us ham and cheese quiche. Although I love quiche now, I think my little palate was too immature back then. Unforunately, my brother said he didn't like it, and wouldn't eat it, and my mom got quite upset with him (my Dad had been out of town for a few days, so I think mom was quite frazzled-it was certainly out of character for her) so even though I didn't like it, I choked it down silently, as to not upset her! It took me months to tell her that I actually didn't like it! Thankfully, she never made it again. This memory really sticks out to me though, because most things my mom made were fantastic-she was a really solid home cook! Lucky me!

Linguine with clam sauce. Now, I could eat it every day, but back then I wouldn't touch it. Also, creamed chipped beef on toast, but I still haven't found an appreciation for that dish.

Something to this day my mother insists was Salisbury Steak. I have no idea what sort of evil person convinced her that:
        A) this was a legit recipe and
        B) it was a good thing to feed this to people that you care about.
This much I recall: horrible ground beef patty-type concoctions flattened (not just sorta) and browned (and when I say browned, I assure you I mean closer to black. And crispy. Think "burger chip"). The little buggers were then smothered in this gawdawful tomato slime...er, sauce.

I'm still afraid to ask what was in it. I'm fairly confident the color doesn't occur in nature. At best it was some unholy union of ketchup and good intentions that yielded a substance whose consistency was not unlike "GOOP" industrial hand cleaner. With a slightly watery separation. And I'm pretty sure we saw this at least once every couple weeks. *shudder*

Luckily, Mom got away from that many years ago. I'm even slowly bringing her over to "our side" of serious eaters.

Liver and bacon. The bacon was there to sweeten what she knew was a hated dish. Instead, it just put me off bacon.

I'm so glad we now know the truth about liver!

Spaghetti, I hated it when I was growing up, wouldn't eat it, would only move it around on my plate. Which is really funny because she makes a great sauce for it and I love it now. I guess I was just too young and didn't enjoy what she put into it.

My mom always made macaroni and tomoatoes, I hated tomoatoes as a child and I can barely stomach them now in their raw state. I remember if we didn't eat a respecable amount of food we sat at the table until we ate more. Raising 5 children I now understand, but at that point in time it was pure torture!
On the other side of things, I loved my moms homeade mac n cheese. I still crave it!

Tuna casserole with the necessary can of mushroom soup! YUK! Sorry, Mom. Cooking is the one area in which you do NOT excel. You do make a mean meatloaf, though, and you did an amazing job trying to recreate grandma's (dad's mom's) pasta sauce and sugar cookie recipes!

Sauerbraten!!!

When I would walk up the driveway after school and smell that wretched stuff wafting from the kitchen, I wanted to turn tail and run!! As you may have guessed, I'm still not a fan...

My mom's signature dish was chicken and rice and peaches: you'd make a mess o' rice, put it on the bottom of a roasting pan, then cover it with browned, paprika-sprinkled chicken and cling peach halves; bake until done. To me it was the apogee of class as a kid--now I find it bland and uninteresting.

But as to what I actually hated as a kid? Liver and meatloaf. Especially liver; the taste of it my mouth made me nauseous. I've since learned that meatloaf doesn't need to taste like my mom's meatloaf--and I make a wicked one, myself--but I've never gotten past the liver thing.

I never liked chicken paprikash. I can't abide liver but we were never really made to eat it. My mom was an awesome cook, and I actually liked salmon patties with creamed peas. Mmmm.

The weekly liver & onions dinner which I had to eat every bite no matter how long it took!

What is it with the liver and onions? I believe it was thought to add "iron" to the diet, but, oh my, it was cooked to the consistency of an old shoe and it just tasted evil. Another staple in my mother's rotation was corned beef and cabbage -- in Boston, it was referred to as a "boiled dinner," which was accurate. Still can't stand the smell of boiled cabbage (which used to waft out of every Blarney Stone in NYC when you walked by).

lima beans - bleh! they're still the only veg I won't eat.

My mother rarely used any sort of spice, salt or pepper on our food. My worst food memory is of the times when she fixed unseasoned fried (tough) liver. No Thanks! Not even today.

I used to hate stir fry on rice. Now I love rice and stir fry and make it for myself all the time. So easy and tasty.

My mother was a pretty good cook-- because she had to be! My grandmother could have figured out a way to screw up Eggo waffles. Unfortunately, I was raised by my grandmother.

Nana had a conglomeration she called eggplant caserole that was created using chunks of raw, peeled eggplant with crumbled saltines, chopped walnuts, grated cheddar cheese and heaven knows what else to create a white sauce with the consistancy of muscilage. Then this mess was baked to within an inch of it's life.

Once plated, it was an assault to the senses. A grayish mass with flecks of yellow under a canopy of very brown crumbs with a black edge would first turn your stomach through your eyes. The next stomach churner was the smell, a combination of hot yogurt and body odor. If you could get it past your nose the texture in the mouth was very similar to something which had already been eaten. The flavor was not unlike something that had already been eaten, either. That combination of salty, slimy, bitter, burnt and crunchy all with a lactic acid hit from the cheddar would really do me in. At least it tasted the same coming up as it did going down. Ooof.

Just thinking about it is causing a fine bead of perspiration to appear on my forehead.

Very impressive, Calichef: that is truly the most disgusting description of food I've ever read. You have my sympathies.

I hated liver too. My mom would say, "It's just beef!" but it smelled and tasted horrible. I didn't like meatloaf either.

But I was lucky--my mom was and is a fantastic cook and baker. She is just adventurous enough to keep everyone pleased, which is an enormous feat.

Pot roast with macaroni. It was my chosen "veto." We only got one.

@ Califchef- I am in tears. Not out of sympathy but from laughter. That is one of the funniest, nastiest food descriptions I've ever read.

I hated my mom's goulash. I won't eat anyone's verison of it to this day.

Wouldn't touch liver either. Dad forced me to try it one time and that was enough to keep me away for the rest of my life.

Sweet and Sour meatballs - as a child, the idea that hamburger, so beloved in spaghetti and meatballs should be sweet and sugary seemed SO SO wrong.
Occasionally my mother also made what she called 'cheese dreams' - toast, melted cheese slice (a la kraft) with a piece of bacon on top. so full of vitamins! To this day I'm still convinced its her secret idea of a perfect supper.
She also made quiche with soupy pastry, and lamb with mint sauce that I thought smelled funny. But the worst by far were the meatballs.

B
Hand to Mouth Making Stock of the Situation
A blog for penniless gourmets

Salmon croquettes - I have no idea whatsoever why such a good cook like my mum would be so proud of something so thoroughly awful!

Yes! Ham steaks (or minute steaks) with mac and cheese from a box. I despised those dinners. That's probably why I stopped eating red meat at the age of 12.

Chili. Love it now, but found it revolting as a kid. Especially my mother's version with too many tomatoes and kidney beans.

Stuffed peppers. Soggy, slimy, bitter. Bleck. Although, I was willing to eat part of the hamburger/rice filling that wasn't touching the peppers.

Round steak. Cooked to well-done in a frying pan with only salt and pepper. I used to chew it up and spit it into my napkin. Until I got caught. Then the long lecture about how EXPENSIVE meat is! Round steak??? Expensive? Well, money was tight in those days, but still...

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