MetaChat - Childhood Dinners

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06 July 2006

Childhood Dinners →[More:]Inspired by a conversation I had yesterday. What was your most dreaded evening meal growing up? The one you eventually got a pass on and got to eat toast or something instead?

My mom regularly made something she called "Spanish Weiners" and it went something like this:

Spanish Hot Dogs and Rice

1 cn Stewed tomatoes.
1/2 lb Hot dogs sliced 1/2"
3/4 c Green pepper, diced
3/4 c Onion, diced
Rice for 4 people

Except I think she used tomato soup instead of stewed tomatoes?

Brrrrrrrrrrr.. . .. oh the horror. . . .

post by: rainbaby at: 09:17 | 19 comments

Well, I'm one of the few Italian-Americans you will ever hear say this, but my mom's kind of a mediocre cook (nonna's a whole other caldaia dei pesci, of course) and didn't cook much Italian food. Mainly a lot of dry meat loaf, baked chicken and lumpy mashed potatoes. My dad and her always had salads of iceberg lettuce, raw onion and olives swimming in oil & vinegar, that until recently, had put me off salad for life.

posted by jonmc 06 July | 09:22

I hate cooked spinach. I'd sit at the table for hours because I'd be told I couldn't get up until I ate it. I always won.

Alternatively, the night my mother's water broke, she'd had smoked sausage, macaroni and cheese and peas for dinner. It has always been one of my favorite meals.

posted by sciurus 06 July | 09:22

Liver and onions! My parents still laugh about it, and I still hate it (though they never forced me to eat it). Ugh. No. Fucking. Way.

posted by taz 06 July | 09:29

and rainbaby... you're perfectly right. The Spanish Weiners sound grotesque.

posted by taz 06 July | 09:30

I disliked cauliflower & yellow squash. But generally, my mom didn't do the whole feed me things I didn't like thing. Practical lady that she was, she just made things I liked so we didn't need to fight. I love my mommy.

posted by dame 06 July | 10:01

rainbaby - we used to have the same thing with Matteson's smoked sausage (that might be a British thing, not sure) and I used to really like it...

posted by altolinguistic 06 July | 10:06

Succotash. Ewww, it has lima beans in it AND okra, my two least favorite vegetables in the whole world AND these little unidentifiable red slimy things. Ewwwwww.

posted by mygothlaundry 06 July | 10:16

Who puts okra in succotash?

My mom is a great cook, and growing up I rarely had anything to complain about. She didn't make me eat anything I didn't like, but I liked most everything. She wouldn't let me eat Doritos, though, and that was hard.

posted by Specklet 06 July | 10:24

Kind of a sad story, but, one time there was nothing in the fridge except a few shriveled onions. My birth mom fried 'em up with grease from a coffee can and tried to get me to eat some. I remember her holding out the fork with the greasy, dripping onion strands and me pressing my lips together in that no-way tight way. She finally gave up and ate the onions herself. She was hungry, too.

On the first, when the state check and food stamps arrived, she made up for it with a huge pan of lasagna. Yum. It was feast or famine with us.

Funny thing, I love fried onions now.

posted by Pips 06 July | 11:02

Chipped beef. *shudders*

posted by Fuzzbean 06 July | 11:14

Pretty much anything. I hated virtually all foods except hamburgers and bologna sandwiches while growing up (ironically, now I'm a vegetarian).

posted by JanetLand 06 July | 11:18

My mother, who can't cook worth a damn, (I pretty much took over the kitchen when I was about 13) used to suggest "scratch dinners" which pretty much meant we would look in the cupboards and fridge and see what we could make. Usually meant weird combinations of baked beans, brussels sprouts and pasta. Or something like that.

Woman still drives me nuts with her lack of organisation. She'll have 5 half full cartons of milk in the fridge and no eggs, butter or other staples. Heh, it's making me angry just thinking about it.

posted by gaspode 06 July | 11:21

Ugh, I don't even remember what she called it, but it was pretty much just mixing all the leftovers from the week into some sort of stew. Most of the time, it was gross.

But she made a mean Mexican Casserole, which often served the same purpose...

posted by muddgirl 06 July | 11:49

Food at our house was consistently excellent. I had to depend on school lunches for hating material.

posted by tangerine 06 July | 12:02

The dorms at Michigan used to do something similar, muddgirl, only with hamburger. In my brother's day, they called 'em Quadi-Burgers, served on Fridays, with all the week's leftovers mixed in. By my time, it'd morphed into Sunday Quadi-Quiche.

(they also called meatloaf "beefloaf")

posted by Pips 06 July | 12:38

(the dorms were referred to as "Quads," by the by)

posted by Pips 06 July | 12:39

(that sounds vaguely pornographic)
(the beefloaf, not the quads, although whatever blows your hair back, I suppose)

posted by jonmc 06 July | 12:40

My mom's a great cook, and I liked just about everything - yes, even liver and onions. What I couldn't handle (and still can't) was the pork chops. Specifically the fat on the pork chops. Actually any fat or gristle like that. _Can_not_ eat it. Naturally Dad forced me to. :( And I can't eat (cheddar) cheese and mayonnaise sandwiches anymore either. Et too many of 'em growing up.

posted by Zack_Replica 06 July | 14:00

The one you eventually got a pass on and got to eat toast or something instead?

That never happened. It was served for breakfast the next morning - cold. If it didn't get eaten then, we went hungry.

- liver
- lima beans
- sauer kraut (sp?)
- cauliflower
- broccoli
- navy bean soup
- stewed tomatoes
- anything with fat or gristle

I'm sure there's stuff I've blacked out. I learned to slather stuff with whatever condiments were available and choke them down as quickly as possible.

I wish our option had been a peanut butter & jelly sandwich with no dessert (as the mister's family did). Mum now realizes she was out of line and has apologized for some of her past behaviour.

posted by deborah 06 July | 16:44

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