I do remember my mom boiling pork chops and then broiling them (I think it had to do with the fear of eating raw pork, and our 'bow' to italian food was the Chef Boy R Dee spaghetti in a box (loved the meat sauce), and while (at the time) I never considered these to be 'worst meals', looking back now I couldn't imagine eating them again.
Also at every dinner meal we would have a vegetable and potatoes -- yes, even with pasta. pizza or or take out chow main, and milk-- always glasses of milk with every meal.

"succotash": canned lima beans, canned creamed corn, dried-up breakfast sausage links.

Sigh. How we children of children of the Depression suffered through an odd culinary time in America.

My mom is a very good cook when it comes to old country recipes. Her being from Germany makes me very lucky.

That being said she thinks her skills with German food translates somehow to Southeastern US fare.

For example, she will chop up a pork butt, throw it in the crock pot with BBQ sauce and let it simmer for several hours and claim it is SC BBQ. No, it's not. It's some type of mushy pork that doesn't even resemble BBQ.

She also thinks she can cook fried chicken. She can't.

She buys the cheapest steaks possible, marinates them in Teriyaki overnight and cooks them on the grill until they are burnt. She insists that is they way steak should be eaten.

I just asked Mrs. Gamecock about her mom, who is a terrible cook, for something that was really bad. The DW laughed and said "fried spinach patties." Ketchup was added to taste.

Frozen food was still an innovation, thanks to Clarence Birdseye, and our elders grew up thinking canned vegetables tasted just fine.

This thread brings back fond kitchen memories of my own mother, a pretty good cook overall with some sense of adventure. Although I too grew up thinking all Chinese food came in a La Choy can, and ate my share of Chef Boyardee canned ravioli, she did make a pretty good lasagne that impressed dinner guests and even home-made pizza, both of which counted as "ethnic" food in my part of the world in the 50s and a step above the casseroles of the day (corn flake toppings and all).

Children of the depression? Sometimes it really showed... I remember a rare occasion on a trip when we bought french fries to go and at the counter she picked up the wrong shaker and sprinkled sugar on them instead of salt. Back in the car, after we found out she continued to eat her share and urged us to do the same, insisting they tasted just fine if you brushed the sugar off.

My favorite? The time she cooked her traditional well-done rump roast for Sunday dinner and the meat thermometer broke when she inserted it. She called a drug store for advice about mercury and the pharmacist told her she shouldn't serve the roast to her family.

That wasn't good enough. She had to call another drug store for a second opinion. Fortunately the second druggist concurred and I still remember the excitement of being eight and eating that night in a real restaurant - most regular folks didn't out that much in those days - thanks to that broken meat thermometer.

Thanks for the memories. ^

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a winner!

Goat's head. Honest to God the whole head of a goat right there on the table roasted.........ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!! I had an Uncle who loved it so my mother made it just for him one time.
I left the room very quickly......

Worst: Her "pot roast". I understand that it's a comfort food for many families but I never, ever got the point of pot roast. I want my carrots to taste like carrots, my potatoes to taste like potatoes and my meat not to absolutely fall apart before I can get it to my mouth.

Best: Her invention "shepherd's pie burgers". She'd cut hamburger with a can of tomato paste, fry the burgers till cooked. Cover each burger with a patty of stiff mashed potatoes and then (while still in the pan) throw a good large but thin slice of cheddar cheese over them. There was just something about the tomato paste that made them amazing, it caramelized and changed the flavor completely.

I hope she left the eyes in so it would "see you through the week".

That sound absolutely amazing ^

My all-American mom excelled at cooking complex and decidedly non-standard fare (for middle America at least) but failed when it came to simple things. Jell-o stumped her, honestly. But a batch of from-scratch grape-leaf sarma - an all-day affair that took over the entire kitchen and dining table - was a triumphant winner whenever she made it.

Her worst concoction was swiss steak. What we ended up with was a usually-burnt piece of stringy, dry meat which had definitely not been tenderized with a tomato-y sauce that had many bits of curled-up tomato skin in it and green peppers that had been cooked so long to the point of bitterness, plopped on top of mashed potatoes made from a box with too much liquid so they were on the soupy side. (She refused to make mashed potatoes from real potatoes, ever, who knows why.)

Just thinking about that meat makes me want to go floss my teeth right now.

In my opinion, they are best with sour cream.

They work well with a tomato based pasta sauce. I have no shame mixing Polish & Italian!

They also work with English baked beans or ketchup!

How about a dozen lamb heads staring at you from the kitchen counter?! The joys of a Greek Easter.

I'd agree.

My Polish partner makes them (some varieties boiled, some shallow fried in butter w/chopped onion or bacon bits) and a good quality creme fraiche really tops them off!

Adey