Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

My mom always burnt lima beans .. I grew up thinking this was the way they were served. It says in my high school year book (1957) that I hate lima beans and I still do!
She could also use every pan in the house to hard boil an egg.

@huneybumper:
One of my old, regular catering clients had a grandma that insisted on bringing her "meatballs" to every event. Bob Evans sage sausage made into tiny balls and panfried until chewy/crunchy, and then into a crockpot with grape jelly, ketchup, and cinnamon redhot candies.
She was such a sweetheart, she said i could use her recipe on our catering menu if we liked! We left that one as their family secret (or shame)....

My Grammie was a fan of Jell-O based salads. When I say salad, I actually mean she'd put the wobbly cube of fruit-and-nut-studded lime green jello onto a bed of Boston lettuce, and then drizzle some sort of dressing made with mayo and beet juice (so it was a jolly shade of pink) over the top. GAG!!!!!!!!!!

Weirdest would be the way that my mother would make pancakes, or should I say pancake--instead of making multiple pancakes from the Aunt Jemina recipe, she would pour the whole bowl all at once in a large pan, and produce one large, inch-thick cake I was supposed to consume, as an only child, all by myself. Needless to say when I first went to McDonald's for breakfast I thought I had experienced a revelation of how light and fluffy pancakes could be, and going to Perkins was like heaven.

I don't think there's anything wrong with a jelly/ketchup meatball dish. With some rice...those were some of my most nutritious college dinners!

In all seriousness, it's really not bad. It's not exactly healthy, but it's better than a hot pocket.

I've said it elsewhere on these boards but: my mom made scrambled eggs in the microwave. She doesn't like eggs, so I'd guess she had no idea what she was doing but I was a teenager before I realized scramble eggs could taste good.

My Mom made something she called Rinktum Ditty. Basically it was sauted onions mixed with undiluted tomato soup, grated cheese and, I think, a mixed up egg or two. This was all heated in a saucepan and served over saltine crackers. The recipe can be found in some heritage cooking sites and claims to be related to Welsh Rarebit. I doubt it... Yuk!!!

My mom was normally an excellent cook but she got into an Adele Davis phase for a while. She put blackstrap molasses and brewer's yeast into perfectly good dishes. Yuck.

One day i was sick due to a flu, and my mother wanted to make me chicken soup

i guess we ran out of whole chicken in my house, cuz when i looked down at my soup, a chicken foot was sticking right out.

My mom and dad will only eat meat cooked well done. They say it's morally wrong to eat it otherwise. Does being dried out make the meat any more or less "dead"? I dunno. Then there's the cutting the meat immediately upon removing it from the oven. Mom will always say how juicy the meat is. I am beside her thinking "was," as the weiner dog races under the table to lick up what he can. The only one who benefits from mom's theory is the weiner dog.

I've had the grape jelly bbq sauce with lil smokies and, as I recall, it was delicious enough that this thread has me craving some.

My parent's specialties:

My dad was in law school when I started kindergarten, so he was responsible for my lunch, which was almost always eggs and weenies (sliced weenies cooked up in the pan, scramble in some eggs). I think I still like it, but haven't tried eating it since my sophomore year of college.

My mom used to make a mixture of browned ground beef and undiluted Cambell's Vegetarian Vegetable soup (with the alphabet noodles, of course), which was served over Minute Rice. This was strictly for the kids, and even then she might have only really made it for me. Certainly it wasn't a family dinner, and I don't remember eating it with my brother. Maybe part of my fondness is from the sense that it was food cooked specially for me. I loved it, and have made it a few times for myself since I've been grown.

In the jello family of foods, she is fond of this recipe called Pink Thing, or something like that. It's got strawberry jello and cottage cheese.

My parents also like to add diced hard boiled egg to mashed potatoes, which we all like, but eventually realized that it's an odd thing (and my dad adds mayo when no one's watching him).

My mother was a wonderful cook but she made braised calve's tongue with sweet and sour sauce and raisins......yuck.
She also made meatballs with cranberry sauce and ketchup- double yuck- although people did like it.
Oh and I always thought I hated pork because she cooked it until it was shoe leather (trichanosis, you know) and then braised it in a sweet and sour sauce called "Saucy Susan".

@smile--my mom also used bisquick, but as a crust for chicken pot pie. And as for creamed beef on toast-- my dad had other names for it. One utterance of it at the dinner table ended the dish forever at our house.

In the early 70's when I was in elementary school, health craze can to effect and my mother used to take carrots and water and blend them in a oysterizer and make me drink that crap along with sppon full of cod liver oil every single morning, man I don't know how I survived the 70's. Also my mother knows I HATE liver so she was always putting it in recipes would not tell me there is liver in it. I would eat it and taste that gross taste and spit it out and she had this wicked grin and giggle with delight. Again I just don't know how I survived the 70's.

My Mom didn't make anything truly weird, but she did go on what we would call "food kicks." She would make something that "hit her spot" and then she would proceed to make that dish about every second night until the family went into open revolt. One year we had shrimp salad, the white trash version, probably 88 nights of the 90 nights of summer. Some nights it was the main course, other nights it was a side dish.

White Trash Shrimp Salad
1/2 head iceberg lettuce, chopped
1/2 large red onion, finely diced
1 can tiny shrimp
1 rib celery, finely chopped
salt and pepper to taste
enough mayonnaise to bind the whole thing together and create a pool of runny white stuff in the bottom of the bowl.

I didn't eat shrimp salad again for 20 years after that summer.

My parents were clever, renaming yucky food or creating secret sauces that made our vegetables taste good. My personal favorite was Italian Cookies. Lord, we were excited whenever we got Italian Cookies. They were these round breaded things that came from the oven. We'd dip them in ketchup, yum! I think I was a teenager before the breading slipped off and I was was left holding a sliced zucchini round in my hand. The Horror! Zucchini!

Pretty bad was when my Mom sent me to school with a "spaghetti sandwich." Of course we always had the pasta mixed up in the sauce so she just took the cold mixture and put it between two slices of white bread and sliced it in half. We didn't have much money so I'm sure that was the main factor but imagine my horror having to eat this in front of my elementary school classmates who had regular sandwiches and Twinkies and other childhood delicacies.

Then there was the macaroni and cheese from the box but with the added wonder ingredient: A can of peas!!!!

My favorite weird but delicious parental preparation was home made french toast for dinner, topped with a few spoonfuls of sugar. (Granulated, not powdered.) The accompaniment was usually tuna sandwiches.

Oddly, I ate frozen toaster french toast for breakfast with syrup, but dinner french toast was always from scratch and always had sugar on top. I still make french toast this way whenever I'm feeling under the weather, it's fantastic with cinnamon sugar. Although I no longer follow it up with a tuna sandwich. :-)

Ok this was something my Grandma did. She somehow confused canned vegetables with condensed soup and would add a can of water when "cooking" them, and served them in a soup tureen with a slotted spoon I loved it, firstly because I would try to guess what vegetable lay in the depths based on the color. Grey green could be peas or green beans, Grey yellow corn or wax beans. Grey orange was always crinkle cut carrot slices. 2ndly because for some reason I thought it tasted soo much better than icky fresh vegetables. I think this was the genesis of my guilty pleasure of eating canned vegetables with a spoon straight from the can.

Oh I almost forgot!! YES to milk on jello,we had that alot,my dad was kind of poor and his desserts as a youngster was whatever you could put milk on ie; bread/sugar, rice/sugar etc. We even put jelly on 4 corners of toast in a bowl with hot milk over it. We loved all dads crazy deserts.

Mom's cooking was pretty solid most of the time, but the wacky one was an aunt of mine who we'd see once a year. Said aunt was the master of the jello mold, and we'd show up for a dinner where she'd have a dozen or so guests and kids and this huge spread of food, and we'd line up in the buffet and there would be these interesting dishes that looked so wonderful until you scooped into them and put them on your plate and then you'd realize that these were all just different shapes and colors and configurations of jello molds that all tasted exactly alike. And I disliked jello, so that didn't help.

Said aunt also believed that cold milk was bad for children, so she'd leave the milk carton on the counter for a half-hour or so before she would serve it, and it would be room temp when we got it. I have no idea how many times that milk carton went from refrigerated to room temp before it was all consumed, but I've got to tell you that it was simply yukky when I was drinking it warm. After a while I smartened up and would ask for something other than milk, which was also odd, because at home, milk was the only option during meals. We seldom had any pop or juice or any kind at home.

As far as I know my mom never served them to us, but sometimes for a snack she would eat Doritos and mayonnaise sandwiches! If you like Doritos, they ARE tasty though!

Omg, I love doritos and mayonnaise sandwiches! My friend turned me on to them when we were in middle school, we would eat them every time we went to her house... with pickles!

@robincat: When I was a kid, I would have killed for a spaghetti sandwich. My mom never went for it. But in college, I had my way...and I loved it!

All the food my mom made seemed normal at the time, but most if it I couldn't imagine eating nowadays - very comfort food-y and a bit retro. But it was all pretty much delicious. No vegetables though, really.

My Grandmother made some weird stuff when I was a kid. I remember she prepared little meatballs cooked with grape jelly every Christmas. It was odd but surprisingly good. Meat seasoned with the tangy sweet flavor of grapes. She dressed them up with fancy toothpicks and served them as appetizers. I'm still not sure exactly what other ingredients were involved, but they were funkalicious.

Of course, Grandma was a nut, so there's no telling what we were eating back then. All I know is my Dad and older brother eventually quit eating her food altogether, and told me to do the same. At that young age, I wasn't yet aware she was a nut. I just thought she was super cool. I remember playing "alligator" which involved her chasing me around the house with scissors, and not understanding why my parents were getting upset over it. I thought all Grandmothers did that.

My mother is a good cook, but not always the sharpest tool in the shed. I absolutely love her homemade cream of broccoli soup, but will never forget the time she actually served it to us knowing it was full of splinters. Yes splinters. She always chopped the broccoli up in the food processor and she misplaced the piece that you use to poke the food down with, so she improvised and used a wooden spoon. You get the picture... well when questioned why we were expected to eat it, she said the wood was chopped up fine enough to "process without damage, and broccoli was expensive".

My mom was a hippy and health food nut, and is actually a pretty good cook despite this. She flat refused to allow Hamburger Helper into our house regardless of my constant begging. Finally, she created her own version of the stuff. She took a frozen hamburger patty, and thwapped it into the cast iron skillet. As it thawed/browned she'd scrape off the cooked part to get it to "crumble." Then, she made a small amount of roux in the same pan (meat pushed off to the side) and flavored it with worchestershire sauce, cumin, and curry powder, and added milk to make a gravy. She mixed it all together with cooked egg noodles, and voila! (My husband can't get enough of the stuff!) Not exactly weird, but things like Jell-o, Spam, and condensed soups were strictly off limits in my childhood...which is perhaps pretty weird in it's own right.

What was up with the milk-on-Jello? My mom served that specialty to us frequently. I remember my milk turning pink from the red jello. I thought jello withOUT milk was "dry" jello.

Mom's other memorable oddity was something she called "ham salad". She'd grind hunks of ham through a meat grinder (hand-cranked), then add pickle relish and bind with mayo. I remember actually liking it, but I think it was the saltiness that appealed. Course my brothers and sister and I were desperately thirsty for the rest of the day after eating it.

And peas were always grey from overcooking.

And her thawed blocks of frozen haddock always, always, always had bones in it. In fact...(those of you older than 50 might appreciate this...)...right before Lent started we got our throats blessed on the feast of St Blase, who according to saintly lore miraculously saved someone from choking. I figured it was great wisdom on the part of the Church to bless us all before we ate my mom's bony fish every Friday. I was sure I was going to choke to death on those danged bones. To this day I am nervous about eating fish!

Oh...I almost forgot. (Sorry for all the weird food hangups) She also never completely cooked the white of a fried egg. It was always mucousy, and I always gagged. I was an adult before I realized that if you flipped the stupid thing over, it would finish cooking.

Looking back now, my mom was great at having us try different things...but some of those tries were not as successful as others. I remember her telling us that tofu was like "Japanese marshmallows." The worst one was when she sliced up an eggplant into thin strips, pan-fried them, and tried to tell us the result was french fries. I vividly remember the first bite I took of those "fries."

Let's not talk about the reason that stuffed green peppers are my nemesis now.

My mother served creamed salmon with canned peas over toast. This was definitely a "day before payday" meal. I detested it (I hate canned peas to this day). My roomie in university introduced me to the chicken with the Russian dressing, apricot jam, and onion soup on top. I actually liked it then, but I suspect I would find it too sweet now. Tomato aspic (lemon jello, tomato juice, radishes, green onions, maybe celery too?) was my mother's jello salad - she still makes it occasionally to the absolute horror of my husband, who had bad experiences at boarding school with Jello-based meals, along with French Toast tuna sandwiches, and Peanut Butter soup (oy that makes my skin crawl just to think about).

My mom has been dieting since 1963. Growing up, we used to regularly have a dish made with skinless chicken breasts, marinated and baked in a mixture of diet orange soda and soy sauce. Mom also has a pathological fear of chicken that is remotely moist, so this was always cooked to absolute desert-dryness.

someone mentioned ice cream on waffles...yeah we had that alot!!! but i always thought everyone ate them that way. so delicious...... reading about dad's putting milk on everything i remembered my dad would make these biscuit-y cinnamon rolls on weekends and he always served them to us kids in a bowl of milk. it was really awesome actually! also i hated scrambled eggs so he would dump a bunch of leftover pasta into the eggs and then they were delicious!!!

my father in law though...my husband tells of his inventions, the one that sticks in my head is the popped popcorn scrambled in with his eggs! :)

My dad had some theory about hamburgers and they always ended up almost as round as a meatball--all I wanted was the flat patty like they had at McDonalds. My mother made this horrible, gray meat (cube steak? flank steak?) that took 15 minutes to chew in order to swallow. I usually put as much as I could in my mouth, went to get more milk and spit it out while in the kitchen. I think that is partially the reason I no longer eat meat!

Sorry Machellebelle....

Spam = Spiced Ham. Not only meat, but pork.

There seem to be a lot of ketchup-as-main-offender items here, I have one to add from my family:

Place four saltines on a plate. Divide one slice high-quality ("no Kraft singles!") American cheese into quarters, placing one piece on each cracker. Top each cheese cracker with a healthy dollop of ketchup.

We used to get this as an after-school snack; apparently my dad and his brothers were raised on it. Strangely all the men of the family--uncles and male cousins--still eat this regularly, and the women can't stand it!

They are also huge fans of ketchup on spaghetti. How can something so offensive have so much popularity across the country??

My Mom was a good cook, but was known to local hunters as the woman who would cook anything at least once. My worst food memory ? probably bearmeat, it was sweet, strong, greasy, and musky all at the same time. Oh and of non-game selections it has to be the pressure cooked beef tongue. That was bad. I really can't say what it tasted like. One look and no way was I eatin' that. And it stunk! Hard!

@Nightowl - My family had/has peanut buttered english muffins with goulash so eating it with chili doesn't seem as far of a stretch.

My family makes their BLTs with the traditional bacon, lettuce and tomato and mayo...where we veer from "normal" is that we add peanut butter too. In fact, I put peanut butter on my BLTs now too. I get some odd looks from waitresses let me tell you.

My mom's best friend raised ostriches. Not many kids can say they had Rocky Mountain OSTRICH Oysters growing up. *yipes*

My mother was a wonderful cook, but she had a lot of hungry mouths to feed and she had to make a little go a long way. One dish we had often was something she called "Shipwreck". I have no idea how it got the name, but it was browned ground beef and onion, with a can or two of tomato soup and cubed potatoes tossed in. She then baked it for at least an hour (so the potatoes would not be crunchy) and then at the last minute, she would top it with slices of American cheese. I loved it as a kid, but my husband and daughter are not so fond of it.

My mom never made Jell-O Salad or those meatballs with the grape jelly sauce. Never heard of it until I went online.

She also made an avocado dish in the summer that I didn't like until I grew up - she opened a couple of cans of those tiny salad shrimp, made a shrimp salad with it and some celery and mayo and stuffed a half of avocado with it. At that time, I hated mayonnaise and avocados so I never would eat it. Now I would. At the time I thought it was very strange as no one elses' mom made anything like it. She made it just for luncheons she made in the backyard with her friends.

I don't think she made anything else that I considered weird. She did overcook frozen brussel sprouts though. She would start the boiling process around 4 pm every time. Then about every half hour or so she would re-heat them, boil them for a few minutes and then she would turn it off. She was waiting for my dad to come off the bus. BUT he didn't get on that bus until 5:15 every day and it took over an hour with traffic to get to Brooklyn from Manhattan. Why would she start the brussel sprouts at 4:30? I would start them last. Make sure the meat was ready by 6:45, the grain or pasta by 7:00 and start the veg around then. She had 4 burners. What was the problem? Those brussel sprouts were always grey and tasteless. I would feed them to the dog! Now I make fresh brussel sprouts, I roast them OR I parboil and then dry them off and pan-fry them until crispy. They are wonderful but i hated brussel sprouts all my life until I found that you could roast them. Now I love them. Her fault I hated them for so long.

My dad would eat PB, Cheese and Mayo sandwiches...gag
Also- when he would diet, his fav meal would be a huge bowl of white rice with a can of tuna on top.

Growing up I hated asparagus, lima beans and peas because my mom cooked and served them in hot milk with butter and pepper. It makes me about gag just thinking about it. I still can't stand limas. She also made a pot roast that we called 'Stringy Beef'. She was a great baker though. My dad used to feed us his famous Baloney Cups which were fried slices of baloney that would curl up in the pan. Then he'd dump a mixture of Minute rice and wax beans into the 'cup' and call it dinner.

My grandma on my dad's side is a very insane lady. One year we were off to her house in Hartford, CT all the way from Proctorsville, VT, for thanksgiving dinner. We got there a 1/2 hour before she said food would be ready, and the turkey was raw on the counter. RAW. no spices, or marinade, just a turkey.

My dad said, " Mom, I thought you said we would eat for 12:30." she said "O yes, that's when we eat!"

What do you plan on doing with the turkey?? he asked . Oh, we're going to nuke it with our new microwave!! she announced, and proceded to shove the whole thing in the microwave.

needless to say, my mom always made sure she fed us to bursting before we went to that house. I'm just glad i was to young to remember. **shudder**

My mom, the woman of true comfort food! She taught me how to cook. Luckily she didn't learn anything from my Grandmother. In fact she went to "cooking school" before she got married (missed the last class cause she was on her honeymoon). I have that cookbook from the 1940's. She made the best meatloaf (a recipe I follow to this day) that is awesome. Strange cooking - I thought I invented peanut butter and butter sandwiches. You should have seen my mom's face the day I asked her to make it for me. Mom always asked what we wanted for lunch (back in the day when we went home for lunch during school). I also ate Peanut butter and lettuce sandwiches (I had a weird palette). Peanut butter and bacon was a staple in our house. To this day one of my favorite sandwiches. The weirdest thing I ever took to school for lunch (which was a rare occasion) was cold baked beans. The kids ribbed me all afternoon about it but I loved every morsel. My mom made baked beans from scratch, soaked the beans over night (always on the back porch in her "special" baked bean pot). She used a leftover ham bone and I really don't know what else. Sad to say a recipe I never learned from her. Not much was ever written down just passed on.

Stuff I hated - sausage and peppers. She cooked it to death and the peppers were slimy. Not really a weird preperation my dad loved it. It really wasn't Italian either.

Leftovers were usually really good. Mom could make a meal for 6 out of a whole lot of nothing. Typical question when I got home from school was "What's for dinner?". And the reply was "food". I would ask "what kind of food?". She would say "good food.". All leftovers had a name like Slumgullion or her version of Choy Mein (a can of LaChoy veggies and what ever was leftover) with chinese noodles on top. Then there was always Worchestershire sauce, it went into everything.

She was Irish and Dad Italian but she was taught Italian food from my aunt. Fantastic sauce, lasagna, meatballs, manicotti, and every Tuesday (except in the summer when it was too hot) we had "macaroni" for dinner. Before anyone called it pasta and Mom made gravy (not sauce). Try this one - seriously sear pork chops (boneless or bone in) in the pot with some olive oil, remove and then start your tomato sauce. Add chops and simmer till thickened and pork chops are tender. That's my favorite sauce and meat.

Oh, gotta go and make a shopping list, I want that sauce and pork chops with rigatoni.