What foods from your childhood....

[Darcy Baldwin]

do you love or hate?

I'm sitting here with a tuna patty recipe that I think I'm going to try (have some tuna in a can that needs to get used up), and then realized it was a food from my childhood that I didn't ever like and swore I'd never serve to my family.

However, there are a few like lima beans, asparagus and spinach in a can that I will *NEVER* serve my family.

Cold pizza for breakfast, though, that's something I encourage

[scrapperjade]

Salisbury Steak! I hated that stuff! I've never made it and never will!

[marlathrall]

Meatloaf... I will never even google the recipe.

And my husband loves it... And my mother-in-law loves to remind me of that fact.

[BrattyMeg]

I HATED pot roast as a kid (seriously mom made it EVERY Sunday)

My kids LOVE it..lol it's easy to make it in the crock pot and I still don't like it but will tolerate it when it's chosen.

My mom made the BEST country fried steak when I was a kid. Has way too many carbs for me to make regularly but every once in awhile on a free day I'll make it and we all love it.

[DawnMarch]

My mother used to make some sort of white fish broiled with (shudder) I think milk and paprika. It used to stink up the house and I despised it (of course I didn't like any fish, so that may have had something to do with it). I do serve fish now but I would never ever serve it that way.

My mom was pretty adventurous and she really was (and is) a great cook. But she had a few notable flops. One was during her vegetarian phase when she made a main course of a peanut casserole. Sounds good, but it was so bad that she didn't even make anybody eat more than a bit of it. The other was Borscht.

As for me? Zucchini and eggplant will never be served by me. I hated them then and I still do. In any form.

[BrattyMeg]

Originally Posted by marlathrall

Meatloaf... I will never even google the recipe.

And my husband loves it... And my mother-in-law loves to remind me of that fact.

blech I don't like meatloaf either...I don't make it..ever Pretty sure my kids have NEVER had it lol

We eat hamburger steaks and I'll even cook peppers/onions but something about it mixed with a glob of tomato sauce or ketchup and cooked together is so unappetizing to me.

I also have the eating style (but not palette) of a 5yr old. I don't like my foods touching and will spend extra $$ to have portioned paper plates vs regular round ones when not using regular plates.

[nikkiARNGwife]

I used to HATE meatloaf as a kid..but I think it's mostly b/c my mom literally put hamburger meat a little bit of bread crumbs and ketchup mixed together and called it meatloaf..it was awful.

Now I love it if it's a good recipe and my kids will gobble it up. It's a good recipe to hide veggies in too

[Stacey42]

my mom made this thing called chili that wasn't at all chili & featured ground beef, tomato paste, kidney beans and,this was important, a whisper of powdered garlic. I hated it. Don't like real chili either for that matter.

I will never serve canned green beans. Even if they were hand canned by you from your organic garden & you gave them to me as a gift. Been there, done that, as well as del Monte & Hunt's versions, far far too many times as a kid.

[marlathrall]

Originally Posted by FlirtatiousBrat

blech I don't like meatloaf either...I don't make it..ever Pretty sure my kids have NEVER had it lol

We eat hamburger steaks and I'll even cook peppers/onions but something about it mixed with a glob of tomato sauce or ketchup and cooked together is so unappetizing to me.

I also have the eating style (but not palette) of a 5yr old. I don't like my foods touching and will spend extra $$ to have portioned paper plates vs regular round ones when not using regular plates.

I think we have very similar eating styles. And I adore chicken fried steak... which is one of my husbands other favorites that make for him every once in a while. But man, it sure makes a huge mess in the kitchen.

Other childhood loves- chicken strips and nachos. Fancy food, right there.

[MamaBee]

Hmm... if you talked to my mom she would say everything she makes I don't make for my family. LOL! I'm an adventurous cook and get bored a lot with food so I'm always trying new recipes. My hubby would rather have meat and potatoes Monday, Taco Tuesday, Spaghetti Wednesday, etc.

I use to hate split pea soup... now I love it. So what are some things from childhood that i won't be serving my family? Fried fish... be it catfish or perch... blech! Chicken cooked in the microwave with no seasonings... nope... hmm... that is all I can remember, mostly foods when my dad had to go on a low cholesterol diet...

[MandaT]

Peas. I don't care if they are frozen, fresh or from a can, they will not be served in my house. My dad was of the 'you eat every.single.thing on your plate' school....which only worked until one day, one very lovely day, he forced me to eat peas, the kind from a can, I dispised them and everything came back to the kitchen table. That was the end of 'eat it, even if you don't like it'.
I actually do not serve any veggie/fruit from a can (except pineapple/diced tomatoes). In fact, we don't eat except maybe 5 things from cans. (re -fried beans, olives, diced tomatoes, pineapple, spaghetti sauce in a jar).

I used to not like cooked broccoli, it's delicious now.

[Leila]

I don't make a thing my mother used to make for us. She's an awful cook. Well, she made good baked potatoes once she gave up on microwaving them...and I do make those, but I still cook them in a different way.

She used to make bean paste--she'd soak black eyed peas over night then boil the wahooty out of them, then throw them into the food processor to make this nasty grey paste. No seasoning of any kind, yet she expected us to ingest this travesty. So that's one thing my family will never be subjected to. The other is shake 'n bake. Just kill me if you ever see me contemplating shake 'n bake.

I use a lot of my grandmother's recipes, or variations of such since she never wrote down anything.

[Tracyfish]

I used to hate chicken and yellow rice when my mom made it, but now I kinda like it.

I used to LOVE beanie weenies when I was a kid, but I won't make it now for my guys because Jay doesn't think it's a meal and L.J. prefers things separate. I have to convince him to eat some casseroles every once in a while.

My mom cooked convenience food so we came up with a lot of funny foods. Beanie weenies, Beanie Burger (with ground beef instead of hot dogs) and Ricey Burger (Rice-A-Roni with ground beef). I love a good fast easy meal.

[melrio]

This is funny since I was at work today and we had this same discussion.

I WILL NOT COOK GREEN PEAS, LIMA BEANS, OR CANNED CARROTS!

After 20 years of being married to me, DH already knows that it just ain't gonna happen in our house...in MY kitchen! LOL His mother will cook that stuff and he'll eat it up but I'll go without food if I have to eat that stuff. Never liked 'em....never will! Even my kids love peas, beans, and carrots that way. Good thing they have wives that'll cook that stuff.

[mariewilcox]

I will never ever ever serve liver with bacon and onions (I actually liked this as a kid) or lamb and green beans. Other than those 2 dishes (which I really liked back about 35-40 years ago) I would and do serve a lot of dishes I grew up with. My mom was a great cook and my grandmas.

The one meal that is coveted by my sisters and I is our "Chrismaskah" meal every year (my mother's family are German Jews and my dad is Christian/agnostic - making for a pretty messed up religious upbrining ) Anyway, the meal consists of sauerbraten, latkes, and German red cabbage... I can smell it now as I type this.

[NeverendingJen]

meatloaf, cream tuna on toast, french onion soup, fish of any kind. eta THOSE are the ones I hate.


about the only dishes I make from childhood are grammies mac n cheese, and chicken rollups

[aggiefamily]

I love lima beans and asparagus! My boys don't enjoy asparagus but will eat enough of it to get the cool side effect. :/

I have never cooked liver and onions or fried liver and don't see myself doing that anytime soon. It has been a while since I made meatloaf but mine will eat it. I can't think of any other food from childhood that we don't eat now. I never ate vienna sausages, beanie weenies and sardines as a kid but my boys do now on camping trips. I can't stand the smell of all three so they aren't allowed in the house.

[LenaGardner]

My mom is an excellent cook, and a healthy cook, and I truly loved everything she made.










Except for flounder night.




Ugh.

[emmasmommy]

i will never make sh*t on a shingle. LOL (chipped beef i think is the 'proper' name)

there's really nothing that i grew up hating....thus my struggle with my weight my whole life bwahahaha

[BrattyMeg]

Originally Posted by aggiefamily

I never ate vienna sausages, beanie weenies and sardines as a kid but my boys do now on camping trips. I can't stand the smell of all three so they aren't allowed in the house.

I just gagged a little

I have a sensitive gag reflex too that reacts to smells..i might like the taste but if i can't get past the smell it won't make it's way to my mouth.

I'm a pretty adventurous eater too and I'm not very picky but if it smells forget it!

[scrapperjade]

Okay, what the HECK are Beanie Weenies???

[DawnMarch]

Yes, I forgot about liver & onions. How in the world did my mom think that was a good idea?

[lovely1m]

Originally Posted by apphotos

My dad was of the 'you eat every.single.thing on your plate' school....which only worked until one day, one very lovely day, he forced me to eat peas, the kind from a can, I dispised them and everything came back to the kitchen table. That was the end of 'eat it, even if you don't like it'.

I totally did this same thing with dumplings. lol I still absolutely hate them! Then years later he tried to make me sit at the table until I ate my fish sticks, I completely hated even the smell of fish let alone eating it. I sat there til they finally gave up. I am a vegetarian now and didn't like it even then. I will never force my child to eat somethng he doesn't like. He does however have to try new things, but nothing more than try and I won't make him contine with it.

[MissKim]

Fish sticks. They are the only food that I remember getting the "you're not leaving the table until you eat them" talk. I still don't eat any fish (except tuna, which isn't really fish cuz it's in a can) and I have serious fish issues. I can't even smell it without starting to gag. We don't eat in seafood restaurants, I avoid the fish section at the supermarket and I can't even stand live fish. Luckily, my dh, who grew up fishing and eating his catch, no longer has much of a taste for fish.

I also haven't eaten a hot dog in 20 years. I'll eat a brat or sausage from the grill, but I won't eat a regular hot dog. We had tickets to a major league game and they came with free hot dogs and I made Dan eat mine. My girls used to eat them every time we went out to eat (we didn't have them at home) but they stopped that over 5 years ago. Just not a hot dog family. When I was in college, I did a book review on a really old (but classic) book about the meat packing industry. There was a whole section where they detailed what went into frankfurters. That was enough for me.

[Melissa Bennett]

I will not fix cooked carrots! I hated them as a kid and still do and will not torture my kids with them. Also liver and onions. The smell of it cooking used to make me sick alone. Oh ya and Swiss Steak. Gag!!

[AmberK]

My mom instituted a torture rule of "if you complain about what you eat then you get a second helping" the night she fixed sauerkraut. HURK! I think my brother and I said at the table for 2 hours that night.

I can't stand peas, spinach, liver and onions, shrimp, tomatoes....I could go on and on. Im a picky eater.

But I do love meatloaf but it CANNOT have bell peppers in it. I LOATHE cooked bell peppers.

[Tracie Stroud]

My mom used to make this frozen turkey meatloaf. I HATED it and will NEVER make it for my family. LOL

We also had tons of gumbo when I was a kid, since my mom grew up in Cajun country. It's still one of my favorites and I make it often.

My dad actually taught me how to cook, and he taught me how to make this super yummy squash and zucchini dish with onions and bacon. YUM!

[nun69]

carrots...really I HATE carrots....and lima beans {I have never ever made lima beans at my house}....oh and my grandma use to make potato soup and to this day I HATE it! YUCK!

the one thing I LOVED as a kid was my mom's fried chicken...and even though I don't make it exactly the same, my family LOVES it...

[LeeAndra]

The older I've gotten, the more I realize that my mom is not so much a good cook, but a much better cook compared to everyone else in the family when I was growing up! She made just plain ol' American stuff which I still make, but dressed up and flavored so it actually tastes like something.

Now that my dad is diabetic and gout-y and she is prone to heartburn, her food is even more bland than when I was growing up: no red meat, no meat that has had spices added to it during the cooking, no/low sugar, no Mexican or Asian. Think abt how fun it is when J. and I come to town and she has to make it GF, too!

That's my favorite part abt cooking: I make only the foods I like and just the way I like them!

[MamaBee]

ooh... sauerkraut... hated it as a kid... love it today... it's the german in me. But I like it sweeter than it being really sour, so I guess that isn't the same as when I was a kid.

My mom use to make liver and onions, too... my grandfather LOVED it... but my mom couldn't stand the smell, so it was a once a year kind of thing where the windows could all be wide open when she make it.

and I forgot... never ate it as a kid and WILL NOT ever eat it is lamb and veal... *gag*

[MandaT]

Some things I thought about while reading everyone's yucks:

We never had growing up & won't ever be made in my home: liver/onions (pretty sure never, ever, ever in my life have I even known someone in my family to cook this), veal/lamb & the one occasional thing we did have that I will NEVER make: tuna casserole.

Pretty much everything I cook is different from what I grew up with, same principles just different methods. I do not used canned/box foods, with the exception of refried beans, jarred spaghetti sauce, olives, pineapple. (no hamburger/chicken/tuna helper, no rice-aoni, no noodles in a bag, top ramen, etc)

[scrapweaver]

Every year I was allowed to have my favourite meal on my birthday - sweet and sour pork with fried rice from the chinese restaurant. Loved it, even though mum waaaay overcooked the crumbed pork LOL. She would also make a lovely apple pie and also a mouth watering selection of slices, bikkies and marshmallow.

I HATED PEAS as a kid, only carrots and corn for me!!

Other than that, mainly happy food memories from my childhood . . two of my kids eat anything, and the other two are really fussy and picky, so there are very few meals I cook that everyone will eat - I'm sure they'll love a thread like this when they're older hehehe

[nikkiARNGwife]

Growing up we relied very heavily on our garden for our food. And I don't mean a little plot in the back yard..I mean about 4 acres planted of corn/butter beans/purple hull peas/okra/tomatoes/ etc. And we ALL worked it...from the time I could hold a hoe my Daddy had me in the garden working from sunup in the summer time. Because we had to..we had to fill that freezer full so that we'd have food during the winter..Now of course we did grocery shopping, but my parents were raising 4 kids on 2 teacher salaries so we had to make everything stretch.

So of course as a kid/teenager I hated it. I hated working it and I hated eating it b/c all we EVER ate were veggies. One day a week my mom would add some type of meat to the menu but most nights it was a plate of vegetables and corn bread or biscuits. In the summer we ate it fresh and in the winter it came from the freezer.

Now though I love it. I love working our own garden and eating the food that we grow ourselves. So even though I grumbled and hated it growing up I think my parents did a good job of teaching us to appreciate it.

[Darcy Baldwin]

Nikki - that sounds wonderful to me, actually! Well, I would've hated it back then, too, but now I would love it (though my repertoire would leave something to be desired, I'm sure). My mom only ever served vegetables out of a can. And it was pretty limited at that. The only fresh veg. I can remember was an occasional corn on the cob (but those were mostly frozen), and iceberg lettuce salad with some shaved carrots if we were lucky.

My mom hated to cook, was a bad cook (our spaghetti sauce came out of a dry packet that you added a can of tomato paste to and some water), and ended up spending most of the last 10 years of her life eating take out. Granted, she was ill, so cooking was even more of a chore for her, but I don't remember her and Dad eating too many meals that she cooked. Dad loves to cook, but works so much he never has good time for it.

[4noisyboys]

I LOVED bisquits and gravy as a kid, and I still make it a few times a year. I loved waking up on a saturday morning and smelling the bacon (never sausage) cooking, hearing my dad outside mowing the lawn...good memories!

My mom made stuffed green peppers, and while I like everything individually in them, somehow putting it all together and baking it gives off a smell that makes me want to gag. I can't do it.

My mom made roast beef every sunday and I didn't like it then, and I don't really like it now. Thankfully my dh doesn't really care for it either, so I never make it.

Jello salads....BLECH!!!! The thought of them makes me want to puke. I mentioned this to a friend last week and she was telling me of this lime jello, cottage cheese, marshmallow nasty stuff she makes all the time. I really thought I was going to lose it right then and there. WHY????

I LOVE meatloaf...such a comfort food from my past, but my boys all detest it. It doesn't matter what recipe I use...they just don't eat it.

Cookies. Loved them then. Love them now! LOL

I never had canned (unless my parents canned them) vegetables. My dad always has grown all of our veggies. My dh said he hated asparagus and would never eat it, so when I served him fresh asparagus, he had no idea what it was. Now it's one of his faves. They lived in Alaska though growing up so a lot of things were canned.

[Darcy Baldwin]

Originally Posted by 4noisyboys

Jello salads....BLECH!!!! The thought of them makes me want to puke. I mentioned this to a friend last week and she was telling me of this lime jello, cottage cheese, marshmallow nasty stuff she makes all the time. I really thought I was going to lose it right then and there. WHY????

I agree - floaty things don't belong in my jello or drinks (unless they are marshmallows in my hot chocolate LOL)

[dana]

a lot of the things i hated as a kid are still on my 'no way!' list - basically any canned "meal" (i used to get so hungry at my friends' houses when their moms would serve spagettio's or similar), canned veggies (other than corn, black beans, diced tomatoes ...), and sloppy joe's (i hate the idea of the wet meat part getting the buns all soggy - ugghho! LOL! i can eat the mean part over rice if i have to) ... i always liked real veggies - even lima beans (actually i LOVED them and still do! LOL!), brussell (sp?) sprouts, etc. i also hate meatloaf - and ketchup ... actually, i'm not too much of a 'homestyle' food fan - every once in a while i enjoy a casserole, but mostly if it's mexican! i like spicy, ethnic food vs. "american" cooking - e.g., i have some moroccan cooked carrot recipes that i LOVE, but if it's just plain cooked carrots i don't like them. i don't think there is anything that i didn't like growing up that i like now, mainly because i always liked everything

[Scrapper007]

Asparagus. I hated as a child, and I hate it as an adult!

[Davita]

Wow, what a thread. It brings back so many (bad) memories that I feel kind of nauseous, lol! I hate bologna. My mom used to pack it in my lunches and just the smell of it did and still does make me wretch. The weird thing is, I never told her how much I hated it. When she found out many years later she was just devastated that she had packed me all of those sandwiches that I could not bring myself to eat.

She insisted on cooking liver and onions too. Blchhh! Never, ever will it appear on my table. Also, I come from a partly hispanic family and we often had posole for dinner. I did not like it then and I feel the same way now. No canned veggies allowed her either or Jello with floaty things. Disgusting.

[xboxmom]

Originally Posted by scrapperjade

Salisbury Steak! I hated that stuff! I've never made it and never will!

Right there with you jade!!! I gag just thinking about it!

[xboxmom]

Originally Posted by 4noisyboys

I LOVE meatloaf...such a comfort food from my past, but my boys all detest it. It doesn't matter what recipe I use...they just don't eat it.

Have you tried putting theirs on a hamburger bun and adding a slice of cheese "meatloaf burger" mwahahah

[4noisyboys]

Originally Posted by xboxmom

Have you tried putting theirs on a hamburger bun and adding a slice of cheese "meatloaf burger" mwahahah

hmmmm...I'll have to try that next time. I'll probably make it again when my dh comes back from Alaska. I won't make it if I think it's just going to be me eating it!

Three of my boys are pretty good eaters, but they aren't big on those "comfort" food types of things. I can make Thai Chicken with veggies and they'll gobble it up!

[cardinalskate]

I'm on the sloppy joe, salisbury steak, and peas train, too. Hated them then and hate them now. *shudder*

I wouldn't eat sauerkraut, asparagus, any kind of melon, or most beans then, but love it all now. I don't think there's a bean I don't love, especially black beans and the good old white northern bean. mmmmm!

[adrianka]

I loved anything Grandma made, but I hated spinach and all kinds of milky sauces made in the school cantina. Now I'm older and wiser I know the stuff was disgusting because they didn't know how to prepare it (or didn't care, or both). So now I can eat those. I also never really liked fish before I came to Luxembourg, because Slovaks CAN'T do fish.

[Andrea G]

Still hate brussel sprouts and lima beans. I don't think that one will ever change, lol!

Still love hot cereal, toast, chocoalate, baked goodies. I don't think that will ever change, either, lol!