Your Mom's Worst Meals...

[lynxstch]

My Mother made awesome meatloaf, I still use her recipe till this day. The ONLY 2 meals I would ever refuse to eat that she cooked, were liver and onions, and something called Pasta Fagioli (sp?)..it looked and tasted disgusting and to this day those are pretty much the only 2 foods I won't eat, lol

 

[Kellydelly]

Chinese pie (her bland version of shepard's pie with mashed potatoes, canned corn and unseasoned ground beef)
Liver (chicken or calves, disgusting)
La Choy chop suey from a can (I guess that nasty recipe is La Choy's fault!)
Salmon patties (gag me)

The only thing she made that I really enjoyed and looked forward to was stuffed cabbage, simple but I liked it for some reason.

 

[Gumbo4x4]

Meat pies. She'd make them by the gross & either freeze the extra, or take them to family reunions where the old Scots would drool over them.

The meat filling was "okay", but the crust so dry you'd have to douse it in Worcestershire sauce just to gag it down. Even as an adult, she tries to force them on me. I finally just had to tell her I never wanted to eat one ever again. DW feels the same.

 

[Wishing on a star]

My mother was a pretty good cook.
From the South.
Basic foods... But usually very, very, good.
OMG, her hot cornbread from a big cast iron skillet!!!!

There are a few things that I make that are what she cooked for our family when I was growing up.

The one thing that we didn't like that she did was liver-n-onions.
More a preference, and many kids, or people, just don't like liver.
Not that she was a bad cook.

She did do the thing where you add rice to the meatloaf when this was being used for stuffed peppers.
OMG people. the rice does NOT get done that way.
Just say no!!!

 

[Wishing on a star]

Hey, a couple of you mentioned Hash.

A beef and potato Hash, with onion and seasonings, is one of the things that my Mom made (in her huge cast iron skillet) that my son and my husband ask for!

That hash with tomato sauce sounds like sloppy-joe.
Ewwww!!!!

 

[aprilchem]

My mom was another one who only served meat well done. EVERYTHING was cooked to death, and I had no idea that you could do it any other way. Still to this day she won't eat meat at my house because I use a meat thermometer, and she feels like my meat is "undercooked".

 

[Luv2Run]

My mom used to use Chicken Tonight, and I remember one meal in particular (this was circa 1993) she used the jar of sweet n' sour Chicken Tonight on chicken thighs and served it with macaroni and cheese. I don't know what it was, but I did NOT like it and wound up throwing it up. I have refused to ever purchase or consume Chicken Tonight ever since.

She also made tuna casserole out of Kraft mac n' cheese, canned tuna, and peas. I once fed it to my dog, and found a pile of uneaten peas in her bowl about 10 minutes later. Clever girl.

 

[apirateslifeforme]

My mother somehow became an excellent cook. We have no idea how, as my grandmother wasn't the best...

Lately Mom and I have been reminiscing about Gram's tuna casserole, which my grandfather LOVED. A can of tuna, can of peas, and can of cream of mushroom soup mixed together, then layered in a loaf pan with Ruffles potato chips. Basically tuna-mushroom-potato chip slop It was disgusting.

Grandpa also liked his veg boiled to mush. Literally. I never had broccoli that actually looked like broccoli until I was an adult. It was more like green mashed potatoes. Steaks had to be shoe-leather-tough well done. Gravy had to be served so Grandpa could drown his entire meal in it.

My mother-in-law is also an excellent cook, but her children won't let her forget how she cooked pork chops while they were growing up. She was always taught that pork had to be very well done, so she boiled them before baking (in Shake-and-Bake). Thankfully, she has not made those for me.

 

[LBIJim]

OP back...thanks for replying. It should make us wonder what our kids are saying about OUR cooking.

My mother made great Polish foods: pierogis, stuffed cabbage, kielbasa and sauerkraut, etc. It's "American" foods that were the problem. And as for other ethnic foods, Chinese was the LaChoy stuff. Two cans (naturally) taped together, one with the slimy mucilagenous vegetable slop, the other with the greasy crispy noodles. Or they had frozen bags of Chung King that you boiled, cut open, and poured onto the plate.

Pizza was the Chef Boy R Dee boxed mix. No added mozarella, just the grated parmesean that came with it. There used to be another brand, too. Appian Way?

She did make a great spaghetti sauce, however. But my father liked the spaghetti boiled into mushiness.

 

[izzy]

My mother is a wonderful cook. She can make a coconut cream pie from scratch with no recipe, for heaven's sake!! However, there is one thing that she cannot make that we all tease her about - her cole slaw! My brother had moved away for a few years, and when he came back, Mom had him over for dinner one night. She had made her delicious bbq and her horrible cole slaw to go on it. My brother took one bite and said "I see some things still haven't changed." One night her cole slaw was particularly good and my dad complimented her on it. She got bent really out of shape because she had used the Marzetti's cole slaw dressing from a jar, and she just wanted to see if anyone had noticed. Yep, it was noticed, and not for the reason that she thought!

 

[anniemae]

Minute steaks. don't even know what they are, but that is what she called them. They were tough and full of grizzle. She served it with spinach and for some reason would dump vinegar and oil on the spinach and I hated it. I hated the sting of the vinegar. Finally one day I tasted the spinach without the vinegar and I was like, "this isn't so bad!"

 

[LBIJim]

Minute steaks. don't even know what they are, but that is what she called them. They were tough and full of grizzle. She served it with spinach and for some reason would dump vinegar and oil on the spinach and I hated it. I hated the sting of the vinegar. Finally one day I tasted the spinach without the vinegar and I was like, "this isn't so bad!"

We called those "cube steaks" or maybe "chip steak." Thin tough beef which was pounded with a mallet to supposedly tenderize them. But still tough and gristly. My brother and I finally had to tell Mom not to make them anymore.

Spinach from a can was the lowest of the low. I don't know what she had against fresh vegetables. It's not like they weren't available or that we couldn't afford them. I suppose she grew up on canned veggies and was afraid to even attempt to cook fresh ones.

 

[scrapquitler]

My Mom used to make a chicken casserole thing: layer uncooked minute rice in a 9X13 pan, place chicken legs on top of it, mix a can of cream of mushroom soup and a can of water together and pour over the top of it and bake. My Dad and brothers used to love this, so she made it one or two times a week. I hated it.

We ate more casseroles than anything else. At least a few times a week. Now I NEVER make casseroles.

And we rarely had fresh (or frozen) vegetables. ALWAYS canned vegetables. Except Brussels sprouts, which she boiled for way too long.

She wasn't good at some things, but she made the BEST lasagna and she made fabulous cakes and cupcakes.

 

[ColoradoDisneyFreaks]

Fish cakes, but she called them Salmon Croquettes. Like the fancy name would make them taste better!

But she made amazing dumplings! They were so light and yummy! Hmm, I think I'll have to ask her to make some next weekend when DD and I are down there for a swim meet.

 

[ImDMous]

My mom was another in the all veggies must start canned and end up mush. All meat was overcooked and tough, I think she was afraid of undercooking, but there was certainly no chance of that!

She used to serve succotash a LOT and I just hate lima beans. She claims now that she hates them too so I have no idea why we had them so much. Thankfully, the liver and onions were not for me, I got something else to eat those nights. I still make a lot of things she did but I have definitely added more zip to them and nothing comes from a can if I can help it.

 

[lovesmurfs]

Anything broiled -- she made shoe leather. I was grown before I realized I actually like pork chops. She really never liked to cook (and still doesn't, but tries more).

 

[LukenDC]

My paternal grandmother was not a very good cook. She was famous for her undercooked chicken. We called it Chicken Salmonella.

 

[luvsJack]

My mom is a great southern cook. Wonderful homemade biscuits. Gravy out of this world. Homemade pies and from scratch cakes and cookies. Fried chicken, fried pork chops, fried fish (noticing a pattern here??) She was a bit limited on veggies though. Daddy liked English peas so we ate English peas at. every. supper. And corn because. . . it went with the peas? And we always had salad = iceberg lettuce and chopped tomatoes. But it did encourage me to be different. I have tried all kinds of raw veggies in salads and have figured out a way to cook most any vegetable in a way that I like it and I can at least get dh and the kids to try.

There were two things that I really didn't eat that she cooked. One was liver and onions and the other was some sort of casserole/hash stuff that had sliced potatoes in it and beer. It smelled bad and tasted worse. Other casseroles I liked but that one, not so much. And it really wasn't a testament to her cooking so much as the fact that I can't stand the look or smell of liver and just did not like the casserole thing.

 

[SamRoc]

My grandmother was a wonderful baker, but when she would make lamb and mint jelly i would have to leave the house!! it smelled disgusting! i still hate lamb to this day but loved my Grandma!!

 

[Handbag Lady]

Pork chops. I had no idea it was actually something one ate until I grew up and someone at my table ordered them in a restaurant. Someone told my mom that pork would give you worms if it wasn't cooked THOROUGHLY, which she took to mean rock-hard. I mean that, you could pick one up and smack it on the table and it would thwock back at you.