Did yer parents ever make something that might as well have been poison?

[Rabrrrrrr]

My mom was a very good cook - nothing fancy, standard midwestern poor family fare, but she made it very well. She was an excellent baker, though. Incredbile pie crusts. But, this thread is about parental foods that might as well have been poisonous.

Mom boiled all veggies, which wasn't so bad, but her boiled-for-fifteen-minutes brussels sprouts pretty well made me gag and turned me off those delicious veggies until I had them properly made when i was about 32.

And mom's stuffed green peppers were pretty toxic tasting. Some kind of faux-spanish rice mix, plopped into green peppers. I abhor green peppers to begin with, can't even tolerate the smell that comes just from cutting one, but those things were NASTY!

And of course the mince meat pie, but that was never mom's fault. That's purely the fault of mince meat.

And I won't even talk about the food that Dad made. He was an excellent griller of meat, but anything else...keep dad out of the kitchen, mmmkay?

mom's pie crusts and pies, though - mmmmmmmmm. After my mom died, I decided I'll never eat a rhubarb pie again, because no one, anywhere, ever made one as good as hers, and I want to go through life knowing only excellent rhubarb pie.

[moof]

1. Well that's odd,

although maybe moof finding it not odd is somewhat telling,
That said, this seemed like an interesting topic
that would have generated at least a few replies,
irregardless The one time a dish ever came up to the poison comparison was when a bowl of mashed potatos was barely touched. The assurance that the green color was not going to effect the taste did not go any distance towards convincing anyone to partake of the spuds.

[Rabrrrrrr]

3. Ewww, green spuds. Why were they green?

that's the question we must know, now that you've offered the bait.

I've had purple mashed potatoes - even made them myself - but that's because the potatoes are purple because that's how they grow.

but green? Hmmmmmmmm.....

[moof]

6. They were also mashed but have to wait till ...

morning to check with the cook. There was a reasonable explaination but it escapes the memory chip at the moment.

[MI Cherie]

8. Was it kale?

That could explain the greenness. Granted, it looks icky, but I was encouraged to try it long ago and it tasted sort of like cabbage. Not as bad as it looked.

[moof]

34. Ok it was food coloring,

The cook said it was a misguided attempt at decorating in light of some celebration.
One of those, "seemed like a good idea at the time", ideas.

[qwertyMike]

2. Pig's Feet

Now I'm a Muslim

[Rabrrrrrr]

4. My mom almost always had a jar of pig's feet in the fridge

never had the courage to try it. Often, they were home-canned.

[bobbieinok]

5. canned asparagus......never had fresh until in my 20s

[dweller]

7. yeah, my

repug kid brother...

:evilgrin:

oh okay, food. My dad loved something he called "Salmon Stew". My mom would make it by the 5-gallon pot full. It would stink up the house, and we'd all be sitting at the table later with disgruntled gloomy faces looking at the bowls of red 'stew' with onions (whole rings) salmon chunks (there were still spinal bones in it) and god knows whatever was dug up to toss in the pot. My dad would relish it, my brothers and sister would fight it down. To this day none of my siblings like salmon but me. I learned how to really cook fresh salmon in a variety of ways that have no inkling to that glop i gagged through then. Occasionally at family gatherings the subject of that stew will come up, and everyone groans and recounts horror stories and the lingering aftereffects. My dad is like 'what? it was delicious!'....
But, i have never ever used ketchup again since then.....i think my mom put a whole bottle of ketchup in that god awful stew trying to cover up the flavor.


dp

edit: fish eyeballs...i forgot one of the suspected ingredients...

[kodi]

9. yes, in our family we refer to that as my sister.

.

[marigold20]

10. Potted meat sandwiches

She didn't make the potted meat but she opened the can! I can still feel that gritty texture. The color was not quite brown, not quite gray.

[LDS Jock]

11. home made ketchup... yuck

My father, who otherwise was an excellent cook, decided to make home made ketchup for some reason. With nine kids, I'm sure it was some sort of cost cutting measure, which I'm fine with. He took tomatoes from the garden and did I don't know what to them. The ketchup itself was sort of runny, highly salty, with an aftertaste. I dreaded summertime because I knew that meant home made ketchup season.

[NashVegas]

12. the Green Peppers / Spanish Rice thing

I suspect that unless you lived in the Southwest, 30 years ago spanish rice may have been ubiquitously toxic. The smell alone of those green bell peppers being fried up with whatever concoctions they used (tomato paste & onion?) gave me brain-shattering headaches, as a kid.

Probably something from the old Betty Crocker cookbooks.

[bearfan454]

13. My Mom made a concoction she called hot dog stew(putrid)

She would cut up a pack of generic hot dogs into very little pieces which were probably about .49 cents back in the early 60's. She would add these to a large pan that she had fried up small chunks of potatoes, diced onions, and later added tomatoes she had canned the summer before. This would be served on a plate with bread and butter and milk. Doesn't sound that bad, huh ? The only problem was she served it at least once a week and leftovers the next day too. It is the family joke now. Whenever one of us goes to visit them in Fla she always asks if we want her to make some hot dog stew. We all tell her hell no.

[dmr]

14. Your mother sounds like mine

but I absolutley hated creamed cabbage. YUK! She made me eat it too! I'd get so mad when she had left overs of it and the next day she would mix it in the mashed potatoes! How could she do such a horrible thing?

I wish I could make a pie crust like she did, and I agree, it is purely the fault of the mince meat. The name alone confused me as a kid.

My dad fried up some pork chops once when mom went to her sister's funeral in Florida. He did not cook them well. I was deathly sick for a week, surprisingly, he wasn't. It took 26 years before I would eat another pork chop, and to this day, I prefer not to eat another.


Edit: typo

[baldguy]

15. Many, many times.

My familiy regales each other with tales of bouncing meat balls, rubberized mac & cheese, "blackened" main courses ad infinitum...

The classic incident was when my mother was trying to clean her teacups - with bleach. She was very careful to tell everyone NOT TO DRINK THE BLEACH!

Unfortunatly, my brother wasn't around to hear her. He came running in from playing and said "Oh boy! Lemonade!" and proceeded to chug it down.

My dad the EMT stopped him before he got too much. Dad made him drink almost half a gallon of milk and took him to the emergency room.

[nuxvomica]

17. More bleach-drinking, in case you missed it

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=105&topic_id=1144527&mesg_id=1144960&page=

[WillParkinson]

16. My dad once made me a hot dog omelette...

He was no great cook. Mom was in the hospital so he had to make due. Although, I will say it wasn't bad at all!

[nuxvomica]

18. My mom's a good cook but I dreaded her calamari

She'd make linguini with a red sauce that included fried calamari that were in two pieces: the top parts were stuffed with bread crumbs and looked like little pillows; the bottom parts, with the tentacles, were deep-fried and looked like large dead spiders. The dish was presented in a big bowl with the calamari pieces randomly mixed in and smelled like low tide at the docks.

[Khephra]

19. Anything pork

Somehow she always manages to cook that meat to the point that the air in the house is saturated with pork. It makes me sicker than sick.

[bratcatinok]

20. Turkey tettrazini

I was able to choke it down but my sister rebelled. They made her eat it anyway and made her re-eat it after she urped it up.

To this day I can't eat turkey tettrazini and don't like anything turkey.

I also don't like green peppers, they taste too green to me. Mom didn't use them in cooking though so I'm not sure where my dislike of them came from.

[Enraged_Ape]

21. "Tolling Bell Tuna Rolls" from the Nancy Drew Cookbook

My sister insisted.

They were gawdawful. They tasted like they were scraped from the hull of a fishing boat.

[SheWhoMustBeObeyed]

22. Creamed asparagus on toast

She made it just once, a big bowl of viscous green slop. I couldn't gag down even one bite, as I usually did with the vile sauerkraut she served about once a month. Years later she denied any recollection of having made it, but the kids all remembered.

Mom was a decent cook and some things she made were wonderful, but Dad didn't like vegetables so she never bothered to make them palatable. I was an adult before I ever tasted (and came to love) fresh broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts...and asparagus.

[Rabrrrrrr]

30. HAHA! My dad didn't like vegetables either, and so mom had to

boil veggies until they were mushy. Dad hated them crunchy.

I was in college before I knew that veggies could actually taste good, and once I discovered the steamer I loved ALL vegetables, even some of the ones that I had always thought were SUPER gross, like aspargus (which I thought were gross because of being boiled for ten or fifteen minutes).


The only vegetable we didn't boil until dead was fresh corn on the cob, which dad loved. We still boiled it, but not to the point of mushy.

Since I moved out of the house, I've come to very much love veggies, and now only cook them until they are hot, usually a minute-long blanching or toss some asparagus into the sauce for a steak, etc., for the last minute before serving.

Crunchy veggies rock!

[m-jean03]

23. Shark meat!

Horrible, horrible. I'm surprised I didn't throw up. :P

[Ratty]

24. Whale meat

Don't ask ...

[jmowreader]

25. Cast iron pork chops

Not because of the pan she cooked them in. But because they were about that tender.

Grandma told mom pork had to be thoroughly cooked, so mom would put the pork chops in the pan, turn the heat up all the way, and cook them for 30 minutes. By the time she was done, you could drive nails with these. A couple of us kids broke teeth on them.

[SarahB]

26. My mother's nasty concoction of

Boxed mac n' cheese, tuna fish, and peas. Don't make me think about those traumatic memories. :scared:

[Rabrrrrrr]

29. Ooh, I make that sometimes. That's comfort food for me.

With Vienna bread slathered with peanut butter and many glasses of beautiful, cold milk.

Yum!!

[flowomo]

27. pasta fazool....

which is really "pasta fagioli" or something like that.... little macaroni tubes and white beans.... ugh, I hated that stuff.

[ProudGerman]

28. My mom has a new one

Recently my mom has taking a liking to vegetable lasagna (how they have the nerve to call that glop lasagna is beyond me, there isn't even any tomatos in it fer crying out loud). I tried it a couple of times, I seem to come over for dinner when she makes it. It's horrible. Seeing as I'm a vegetable segregationist, I don't think I'll ever like it. I don't mind vegetables, just don't mix them, blech!

The part that bothers me the most is that she takes it as a personal insult when I refuse to eat it. When I find out its being served, I say I'm not eating it as I don't care for it one bit. I don't go into how I think its an abomination to call it lasagna, how its filled with all kinds of ingredients but everything tastes like overcooked broccoli, or that I think its gag inducing.

Whoever invented it should be drenched in gravy and tossed into a den of ravenous lions, its fucking awful.

As a kid, my dad used to make what the family lovingly referred to hog slop. The name fits too, on Saturday, find whatever leftovers are in the fridge and throw it into a pot, whatever it is.

[cally]

31. Turkey soup

She took the turkey carcas and covered it with water, added only a pinch of salt, and boiled it for hours. It ended up a slimy mess with almost no flavor. She then would freeze it and serve it when my Dad was gone. It was horrid. My Mom and Grandma actually liked it. The first time I made a chicken broth, I was shocked to see all the ingredients and spices added. Her turkey 'soup' was nothing like that.

My Mom also overcooks all meat. That's the way they like it so all meat is very tough and pretty tasteless. I don't think of it as poison, but it's not very good.

I actually love those stuffed bell peppers with 'spanish rice.' That's definitely comfort food for me.

[SOteric]

32. Honestly, - objectively, - realistically

No.

But I did. As a budding cheffette in Mama SOteric's Cucina I chose to make a batch of fondant (a particular favourite of wee SOteric) and it came out the approximate consistency of golf balls. God bless his tender heart, my father ate every horrid little globule and pronounced them delicious.

Remarkably, he lived.

[Donkeyboy75]

33. Arsenic casserole.

I always felt sick after that one.