Mothers cooking?

[Fat Bob]

What was your mothers cooking like - was it 100% great or did you get forced to eat some things you'd have rather not?

My mother is intelligent and has two degrees but along with her working in her career along with breeding five kids we got some pretty horrible food in my opinion.

She was an early proponent of slow cooking - foul smelling concoctions.

I still reel from the smell of casseroles and stews - I especially hated the butter beans floating on top.

Pudding if you were lucky was always crumbles - I can still hardly face them.

She also used oats in nearly everything. I ate 'cos it was free and I was hungry but crumbs it changed when I could cook for myself.

So guys and girls spill the beans and tell us your mothers delights and failures in the cookery department?

[Calaf]

My mother believed herself to be an excellent cook. Regulars were:

• Wall's sausages
  
• Bird's eye beefburgers
  
• Crinkle-cut frozen chips
  
• Yeoman instant mash
  
• Fishfingers
  
• Sunblest/Mother's pride
  
• Spam fritters
  
• Fray Bentos pies
  
• Vegetables boiled for 3 hours
  
• The dreaded grisly stew
  
• Bernard Matthews turkey roast
  
• Salads (a rarity) with no dressing
  
• Tinned fruit salad
  
• Processed cheese
  

Pasta, olive oil and garlic were "foreign muck". I grew up skinny, hating food. Had my first curry and rice (tin of Vesta) when I was 16 and a portal to a new dimension opened up. But the real turnaround was when I met my wife at 25.

[Tom B]

Scoring 100% in replies so far.
My mother used to serve smoked potatoes (make that burnt), mince and onions in gravy with baked beans in tomato sauce, dark brown fat soaked chips..... I could go on

[minesamojito]

My dad did all the cooking and did a great job feeding 4 big lads.
I was very fortunate, he was very progressive, we ate lots of homegrown organic veg and salads, along with "foreign" things like curry and spag bol, lots of great stews, and I was encouraged to get stuck in with the cooking at an early age, I remember making my first pizza, and a lasgna at a very young age. I remember him putting raisins and dessicated coconut in the curries which were simple but tasty. We also went fishing and shooting, so we'd have rabbit, trout and eels which we'd have to prepare ourselves.
He gets all the credit for my love of food.
Cheers
Marcus

[gazz_46]

50/50

My mum was a professional cook by day and bar tender / shattered mess by night,,, anything during the weekend was gr8 but midweek was a struggle;

findus crispy pancakes
chicklets
frozen mini pizza
smash
chips
bernard matthews had a great bearing on meal times too, chic / turkey drummers & my favourite pork & turkey bangers.......

just a few examples of 70s - 80s finer dinning

my gran however was old school and fantastic!
sadly both are no longer with us.........

[rivergirl]

Mar 1, 2012 8:33:03 GMT Calaf said:

My mother believed herself to be an excellent cook. Regulars were:

• Wall's sausages
  
• Bird's eye beefburgers
  
• Crinkle-cut frozen chips
  
• Yeoman instant mash
  
• Fishfingers
  
• Sunblest/Mother's pride
  
• Spam fritters
  
• Fray Bentos pies
  
• Vegetables boiled for 3 hours
  
• The dreaded grisly stew
  
• Bernard Matthews turkey roast
  
• Salads (a rarity) with no dressing
  
• Tinned fruit salad
  
• Processed cheese
  

Pasta, olive oil and garlic were "foreign muck". I grew up skinny, hating food. Had my first curry and rice (tin of Vesta) when I was 16 and a portal to a new dimension opened up. But the real turnaround was when I met my wife at 25.

We could be siblings !! Going to grandparents was a thing of joy. And friends and boyfriends were always warned to eat before they came !
Roasted chicken in a pan of water with half a pound of lard squished on top"......... I learnt to cook out of self preservation I think......

[Fat Bob]

I still have nightmares of boiled potatoes (never had butter on them) and boiled beef. We had no condiments other than salt, mustard and horseradish from the garden.
My father had been put of gravy during WWII and so we never had gravy.

Saturday luch was always a Melton Mobray pork pie which was OK apart from the jelly.

My father is still called the "organic bucket" as he has always ate the mold of the top of home-made jam and would eat mouldy oranges and any other dodgy food along with orange stainer mushrooms.

He happily eats orange covered mouldy cheese and until recently got supplies of unpasteurized milk.

He spends ages getting the last bit of jam out of a pot and devised the best way to get the last bit of liquid out of a bottle - put it on it's side.

[Calaf]

Bob, get him some Casu Marzu (a Pecorino from Sardinia) to test his limits.

[rivergirl]

Well this is weird here we all are def foodies and yet we all seem to have the same horror stories of our youth!

[Fat Bob]

I'd never heard of Casu Marzu - I am sure he would wolf it down with some crusty bread and a bottle of Amarone (my favourite wine which he enjoys). He leaves Camembert outside for a week or two until it goes orange before he eats it. I have banned him from maturing Pont L'Eveque further.

I have seen him eat Brie with maggots in it. His motto is "Better flavour money saver". I doubt if he can taste much at all.

I remember he took as back to school in Lincoln and we went for lunch in the first Indian Restaurant I had ever been in, on the bridge, this was 1966 - I don't remember what I ate I was just amazed that a man could go so red and sweat so much.

I used to be embarassed to have an eccentric father who ties his trousers up with bailer twine - poor old sod is slowing down now he is 80.

He bought a James Cadet off me and put on his 1940's motorcycle coat. (He'd tried to give it to me but it was so stiff and heavy I couldn't move or stand in it). So he sets off to work 30 miles away and the security guard at the gates that normally saluted him refused to let him in until he had took his helmet off.

He still wears some shorts that are pre WWII and I have never ever seen him take his vest off even on the beach in 110 degrees.

His Lotus Cortina burst into flames and burned out - now he has an MX5 - it's dark green beware...

[Calaf]

Bob, sounds like the kind of man I would find it easy to respect. I was joking about the Casu but it may be something he would like. It's an unpasteurized sheep's milk Pecorino that is over-ripened and then infected with cheese fly larvae. Allowed to decompose the cheese becomes filled with thousands of maggots creating a pungent oozy mess. Served with very thin Sardinian bread and copious wine but it's advisable to tap out the maggots first.

Common myth has it the cheese is illegal. It isn't but the Sardinians do like to play on their bandit heritage.

[Paul]

I guess I'm one of the anomalies on here. My grand-mother's and mother's cooking are some of the best memories of my life (with one exception - see below).

I guess I grew up before "instant foods" so everything was prepared from fresh ingredients but some of them would not be eaten today (unless you eat at the Fat Duck). Rabbit, ox hearts, oxtail, tongue, pig's trotters, various type of tripe, intense stews that were slow cooked for many hours. I do an oxtail, Guinness, pearl barley and pickled walnut stew which is cooked in the low oven of the AGA for 24 hours and always reminds me of my grandmother's cooking.

A Saturday afternoon treat of fresh crab and watercress for my mum and I was always look forward to by me. Big family teas on Sunday were always finished with trifle and sponge cake. And my Dad was also a pretty good cook. I guess I inherited a cooking gene as I also love to cook (pretty well IMHO) and so do my children

The one sad exception was the first time my mother cooked a curry from a recipe in a magazine in 1963/4. The recipe called for 2 teaspoons of curry powder. My mother mis-read it and used two tablespoons! My father, and I, wouldn't eat curry again as we thought this is what it tasted like. My next curry was 4 or 5 years later at an Indian restaurant when I was pleasantly surprised.

[cannyfradock]

I always enjoyed my parents cooking, but i always used to look forward to Mondays potato and corned beef rissoles, made up from all the left over veggies from the Sunday roast and....corned beef. All packed together in flat round patties then dusted in flour and fried......I still make them now.

Terry