While I can't compete with milepig's mother's salmon loaf, my mother's casserole comes pretty close. It was made up of canned tuna fish, canned peas including the liquid, potato chips and cream of mushroom soup. It was totally disgusting. I could gag just thinking about it.

Bobette

My mother was an extraordinarily good cook, and I didn't
think that I'd be able to contribute to this thread, until
I remembered what she did with Smithfield ham, which
was to bake it as though it were an ordinary ham, then
serve it in thick slices. She did that only a couple times
before giving up. Otherwise, what she made was either
true to the original recipe (even if one didn't like it, as
with brussels sprouts) or very good or both.

Ditto...it put me off liver for life.

Another was her asparagus soup....thank God she never served both courses at the same dinner.

I should add she was a pretty good cook apart from those two.

I told my mom about this thread. She got a grin on her face and said "hockey pucks!"

My mom is an incredibly good cook (Southern US foods), even in her eighties today when I come home for the holidays. I can name so many dishes (the best, believe it or not, a squash casserole) that I've never been able to replicate and I like to think I know something about cooking.

There still is one thing, though ... the gravy that she makes at holidays. Pale gray, thick, and (yuck) full of hard-boiled egg slices. I've never gotten it, but because everything else is spectacular, I've never said anything.

I saw a few negative comments about salmon croquettes -- I don't know what my mom did with those, but my mouth is watering thinking about those again.

My Mother tries and tries and tries to make lamb but she just can't do it. She cooks it with rosemary and carrots in the oven and she has a terrible fear of overcooking it, so she always serves it horribly undercooked. We're talking raw...and cold. She served it to my sister-in-law's parents two years ago and apparently they're still talking about how bad it is

Thankfully, she makes a great pumpkin pie and she also made me, so she's forgiven

+nod+ I must say my mom was generally a good cook. Her beef stroganoff is a real treat.

But man, oh man, she cooked that liver to +death+. At least once a month. Even my dad, the Col. who served in exciting places, could stomach anything, and taught me to eat interesting thing like kimchi (the real deal, not that lame pasteurized stuff) straight up, would push it around his plate and give us PB&Js on the sly. The onions couldn't begin to save it. I still can't go there.

My mom also went through strange, experimental cooking phases. The Japanese period was generally good, but I may suggest that feeding your midwestern kids under the age of 12 severely overcooked baby octopus in fish sauce is a complete non-starter...

Sounds like your mother didn't know how to cook them.

Other wise a grand and creative cook, my mother, capable of turning out fine chef quality scrambled eggs, soft and creamy, could not "fry" and egg without turning it into a "crispy critter". Nor, breakfasting a large household, 5 of us plus Dad (when he hadn't left early for rounds or surgery), did she do well with bacon which often suffered the same fate as the fried eggs, charred to a level capable of producing more carcinogens than a un-remedied chemical dump site.

I won't blame her culinary ability for the "Tuna Noodle Casserole", just the times, although the addition of "canned" English Peas (buckshot, not birdshot) lowered the dish to less than subsistence quality, leaving me to parse the dish for the bits of pimento to savor. When you're reduced to enjoying bottled pimento, you're reduced....

But then, a Gulf Coaster reared on deviled crab and crab cakes, she could work wonders with canned salmon, even the cheap pink kind, and even today, I'll occasionally resort to her recipe for salmon patties, deja vu. ....And then there was her coffee, a dark roast Gulf Coast brand, "percolated", served in bowl-like cups mixed with hot "whole" milk (She kept the cream for herself.) and a dollop of cane syrup. At about 10, we came of age to be allowed to enjoy it in the morning.

Hands down it was cauliflower cheese. This was cauliflower done in a pressure cooker untiil it was a mush (she is now 78 and still does not know the meaning of al dente). This mush was then covered with a cheese sauce that was thick and pasty because of the flour added.

More an item than a meal, but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention canned asparagus. Really, why would anyone think that canning something already slimy to begin with would be a good idea!!

My mom's a great Chinese cook, but when I was a kid, she couldn't cook anything else. My sister and I were crazy over KFC coleslaw as kids. So my mom figured she'd whip up a batch one day. She cut up some cabbage, poured in milk, added some sugar, and voila!

My sister and I still get a chuckle over that!

Custard. My mother's custard is a grey, gelatinous mess that tastes worse than it looks - it's the sort of thing I imagine that the authorities would serve in prisons to deter people from committing crimes upon their release in case they were sent back and had to eat it again.

In her younger days she used to make a tangy citrus dessert that was actually delicious, but we called it "lemon surprise" because it never, ever came out the same way twice. I must ask her to do that again next time I visit.

We would have corncakes and beans. The corn cakes were like pancakes made from cornmeal. Over 2-3 corncakes we poured pork'n beans from the can (heated). A garnish of diced onions and voila!.. A complete protein (I think)...

My mom was a good cook; she didn't go for anything fancy but she produced healthy, tasty, thrifty meals nearly every night of the week. Lots of casseroles so we could have leftovers the next day, and her idea of salad was a wedge of iceberg with bottled dressing, but by and large quite good. At one point she dabbled in Chinese cuisine and made credible spring rolls and stir fries. And for holidays she would produce a full turkey with all the trimmings for a dozen people. I learned a lot and still use many of her recipes today.

Except... for bean-sprout lasagna. I have a feeling it came from a Weight Watcher's cookbook/magazine, during a phase of low-fat, super-healthy meals. It used a large quantity of raw fresh bean sprouts in place of lasagna pasta sheets, and had (thin) tomato sauce, probably some low-fat cheese or cheese-substitute, and maybe a small amount of ground beef. In any case, in the baking process, the bean sprouts cooked down to a water, slimy mess was so tasteless that it actually sucked the taste out of the other ingredients as well. I believe she made it a three or four times before accepting that it was a loser.