What are some untypical food dishes that your family served growing up?

@cwillie, our head cheese was homemade but now it can be bought in the deli at grocery stores. Not me though...yuck...

I remember my mom feeding us cream peas as a kid, more than once. We hated them and I've never seen her make them for herself. Not sure why she thought we'd want them! lol

We ate sheep and goat meat, and organ meats, more than other families when I was growing up, and occasionally had some goat milk. Maybe because my mom was poor, maybe because family members were farmers and raised them, maybe because she's half Greek and used to it. Not sure.

I'm eating some delicious slimy okra right now, Send.

CW, PeggySue, I think slimy asparagus can come from frozen. I've noticed a wide variety in frozen asparagus I've bought, and it ranges from not-bad to almost like it's been canned and left in liquid for years. I know canned asparagus exists, too, but I can't imagine why someone would buy asparagus that way. Of all the veggies that don't taste right if you can them...

I bake or broil spears after spritzing with truffle oil. Love them!

Isn't Okra the slimey vegetable?

Out of eggs for breakfast.
Remember the movie "Fried Green Tomatoes"?
Untypical food today-we actually ate this...

Fried red tomatoes and onions sliced, breaded with garlic and romano croutons, topped with grated romano cheese.

Sauteed crimini mushrooms. onions, and Baby Bok Choy in Teriyaki Sauce.

Will not make that again, but the tomatoes would have been better baked or grilled.

Cooked separately, served together for Sunday brunch.

My attempt at vegetarian, for my Dh. I am not a vegetarian.

I forgot about headcheese, my parents loved that stuff!

Liver and onions
Tongue
Tripe
Heart
Head cheese
Rocky Mountain Oysters
Anything that came out of the water ways and could be fried in beer batter
Heart and gizzards from turkey and chicken

With the exception of liver and onions (I now eat onions), I wouldn't eat any of it then and I won't eat it now and I DO NOT feed it to my family!

Sheese...you all have had some interesting meals...wow. For some unknown reason, my Mom suddenly kicked into high gear as far as cooking was concerned when I was about 8 years old. Before that she'd serve my sister and I heated canned beef broth and tell us how good it was. My father walked in one day on our cheery repast of sumptious beef broth and really yelled at my mother about it. Anyways...fast forward a few years on, and some of the meals she made were really really good. I guess 'cause we'd moved into a very swanky neighborhood, and all the other moms were cooking like crazy-this was at the height of Julia Child, French food, and James Beard. That lasted for awhile, then being a narcissist, all kinds of other foods were made. She had a thing for the wholistic, vegan (and this was over 40 years ago) cooking....the Nixon bean burgers were almost inedible.....which took a few weeks to digest.
For those of youse who have picky eaters who won't touch vegetables, there are lots of easy ways to sneak 'em into meals. Say....tomatoe "sauce"....cook down other vegetables of choice, puree, 'n add to the sauce.
Children have fairly sensitive taste buds, so the sulfers in broccoli, cabbage are pronounced to them. I'd suggest early spring lettuce-let 'em dip the leaves into their dressings of choice and eat.

I know I've served some truly awful dinners in an effort to hide more vegetables in our meals, I wonder what kind of answer I'd get if I asked my boys this question?🤣
And I think all of us have go to meals for those days we are not feeling inspired, thank goodness for kraft dinner!

My Mom was a very good cook, but she worked so did not cook often. Dad could also cook really well, steak and eggs, steak and baked potatoes with sour cream and chives, when he was home. The siblings would make the salad.
Sounds like feast or famine.

I guess we (as siblings) could be described as 'latchkey' kids, coming home from school to an empty house often with nothing in the fridge.

The thing I did not like was rhubarb. She made rhubarb pie, but also, served as a vegetable? What was that? Red celery?

Mom was a good cook but there was one thing she served I really couldn't stand: a concoction made with hot dogs and cornmeal mush. I actually like both, but not together! The garlic flavor of the hot dogs totally infused the cornmeal. It was disgusting!

So being from Florida some of the dishes were different than other parts of the country. I am sure they fed me as a child but you will not catch me eating today! But I do like some of these. I remember my Mom frying frog legs and them jumping out of the frying pan. And it tasted kind of like chicken?
Like:
Banana and Mayonnaise Sandwiches
Peanut butter and syrup
Mash Potato salad
Frog legs
Chicken Hearts, Chicken Gizzards and Chicken liver
Goat
Opossum and coon
Dove
Gator
Liver and Onion
Then Teenage years we moved West then came:
Deer
Antelope
Whatever could be shot and consumed?
At teenage years I didn’t eat everything started eating Kraft Mac &Cheese everyday and pretty that was much it because didn’t know what the foods on the table was, I was being told it was steak or chicken?

We had SOS growing up at home and when I was in the military. Loved it then, love it still. It was always made with browned ground beef or sausage. I knew chipped beef on toast by another name completely. I never liked that meal.

Do any of you enjoy eating asparagus fresh? Just washed well and, to me, it’s good just to gnaw on without cooking.

What is she doing to get slimy asparagus? I love it done in the oven on a sheet pan, topped with garlic butter, YUM!

My MIL made asparagus for her kids growing up. The rule in their house was that you could not get up from the dinner table without first having finished your food. SO and his brother ended up sneaking quite a bit of asparagus to the pet dogs so that they could go watch Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom and Disney.

It's over half a century later and MIL still DOES IT. Like rote, SO takes a "no thank you" small helping of the asparagus. Then he gets green looking at it as it's kinda slimy.

I don't really like asparagus but felt the need to intervene. When this happens I'll just get "hungry" for asparagus and take it off DH's plate so that he can concentrate on wolfing down mom's delicious roast (she is a very good cook) without thinking about how slimy it is.

Some thing parents called "SOS" which they said stood for "54it on a shingle". It was actually chipped beef on toast. I think they only made it to laugh at the name. Smelled awful, and no, I never made it.

I know I already weighed in on this hot debate--but I remember my first 'meal' after having my son. I'd had a c-section and had to fast 24 hrs prior to his birth and then only liquids for 36 hrs afterwards. I was STARVING. They finally brought my my 'first meal' and it was a BOILED TROUT. Boiled. And some slimy canned beans.

I realize hospitals are trying to run a huge food service but I saw that trout and it put me off seafood for years.

My mom would make Clam Pie…it was awful

Oh, that's funny! Eat the pigeons?
So glad that I have my budgie! So cute, but in an emergency---nah.

I might try the skunks and opossums just outside my door first. nah there too.

Lake smelt and suckers used to be popular with the locals when they ran in the spring, probably because they were free and abundant - I don't know if they are scarce now or people have just gotten too picky to eat them. There was also a man who used to go door to door peddling his catch (usually lake trout or whitefish), fish at my house were always pan fried and full of bones.
Another item that used to be popular but isn't eaten much any more was squab, I've always kind of wondered why city people don't eat their pigeons instead of complaining about them🤔.

Dad liked beef kidneys. No way did I then nor since I left home years ago eat them. Maybe Mom didn’t know how to cook them but they stunk up the house like you wouldn’t believe. And then he ate them. Yuck-o!

Fried beef liver and onions is delicious. Tongue, too, on Beefsteak Hearty rye bread and Dijon mustard is tasty. Deer liver is good. It has a milder flavor than beef liver.

My parents came as Korean immigrants in the 1960s. They tried to Americanize us, meaning that we didn't learn the language and adapted white people attitude toward the food. These days of course people think the food is delicious; at that point we were not encouraged to really eat it.

The stuff she made in the 1970s was not really "good cook food." Lots of swanson tv dinners, slimy tuna sandwiches marinating in thousand island dressing. One time she made pumpkin pie without adding sugar, but probably the most infamous example was that of the trout.

My dad would go trout fish at night. He did not care about the legal limit. Some days there would be two rice bags filled with dead trout that my mother had to clean and store. The advantage was that it was free food for their 3 kids, so my mom would fry it up all bone in, head on and all, with ketchup and scrambled eggs.

I don't know if I could do the ketchup and scrambled eggs with it, but I've always been generally ok with eating fish with the head on. I don't scoop out the eyeballs like i did when I wa a kid, tho

My dad was a hunter, so growing up we had deer liver, elk liver, as well as beef liver. All was nasty. The smell made me gag. When my son was about mom said she was making him a 'special steak'......turns out it was liver. He asked why I didn't ever make it! Told him the only place in the world he would get it was at Grandma's house! Beef tongue on the other hand I loved. Go figure!

My parents loved all manner of foods that I don’t touch now. I’ve told my now adult children that they’ll never appreciate not having to eat certain items because I had to. And yes, liver with gravy served over grits was one, yuck!

Liver,, Nope,, not me..

hugs!

My mom could be a very good cook when she wanted to be. But she mostly didn't.

My favorite (and least liked) thing she'd fix was either calf's liver or chicken gizzards. She thought we all loved them, truth is--gag.

I remember once she made a special 'marinated ham loaf' for a dinner party. 4 kinds of ground pork mixed together and then marinated in pineapple juice and cloves. She called me in to 'taste it' and she sliced off a little piece and I tasted it and said "Mother, you just made a 5 lb loaf of SPAM."

My mom's "stew" was awful. It was a fatty, bone in chunk of beef boiled for hours with very overcooked veggies. The broth was not thickened, the only seasoning was salt and pepper, and there was usually a good amount of fat floating on top of it.
Liver smells like something good and it was a huge disappointment when I'd realize what we were getting for dinner.
Tongue - I remember tongue sitting in the fridge. I wouldn't eat that.
Beef heart - that's another one that smelled like something good but was not.

My mother once made a dinner recipe that involved 1. breakfast sausage links, 2. sliced apples, and 3. Tomato paste.

That was around 1967, and trust me, no one EVER requested that again. Even with dementia, my mom didn't go there!

Probably not untypicsl but I mostly remember TV dinners with the sections for food. My mother was not a cook. Never served that to my children. Her meals in SN resemble that but often look more desirable but I find it hard not to gag when visiting her at lunchtime. I guess just something about institution food although the desserts are good and if she doesn't want it I take it home.

My parents served fried calf brains-but I would not taste it. It was untypical to me!

I did like beef tongue sandwiches with mustard, but the thought-and cooking it -boiling-was unappetizing.