Yuck!!!

My first ever attempt at making svíčková... It was pretty good...

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/membe...2-svi-kova.jpg

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/membe...svi-kova-2.jpg

So many laughs from this thread!
 

My mother was a good cook, but in the mid-70's, she discovered "Chinese food". You know- "chop suey" - she would take some pork, cut it up and brown it, and then open up giant cans of La Choy chop suey mix, or something like that. Dump it all in the pot and serve with soy sauce and white rice. shudder. We all thought we were eating this exotic stuff, but looking back on it today, I am pretty grossed out.

My poor Mom, she had the best intentions...

When we were kids, my mom would make us eat mushy canned asparagus, covered with mayonnaise. that soft/mushy texture made me want to hurl everytime. I like fresh asparagus now, but the memory of that canned mushy stuff still makes me shiver. ugh.

https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8043/8...c2228c96_z.jpg

Not my mom, but we had a neighbor who one afternoon was excited to be making foreign food (exact phrase) but wasn't sure her husband would eat it. Turned out to be a casserole with those canned fried noodles on top.

My mom never made a bad meal. Seriously!

My Mom invited me over for dinner the other night. I get to the house and find there's smoke pouring out of the oven. My Mom and Dad are flipping through the owners manual trying to figure out what's going on. Turned out her marinade caught fire :eek:

Spinach out of the can with mushy meatloaf. Still cringe thinking about it.

That's pretty bad.

Yep - pretty much grew up with the stuff, along with cooked to death everything in the vegetable family. My BIL was recently in the hospital for a couple days, and his only complaint was that the vegetables were undercooked, apparently they had a bit of resistance when chewed rather than being a complete mush.

I am reminded of a friend who is from Hong Kong, who once told me "Westerners torture their vegetables."

I had no idea that vegetables came in frozen form until I reached my mid teens. It either came from the garden (corn, tomatoes, lettuce & potatoes) or a can (corn and beans).

I suspect the measly household budget had something to do with it.

Fresh vegetables were a treat and seldom seen - ditto for frozen - except:

Potatoes - bought in the fall by the bushel and stored in our basement "cold room".

Apples - picked ourselves in the orchard by the bushel and also stored. Also cheaper apples that had fallen from the tree which were turned into applesauce and canned.

Corn - in season, bought from the farmstand.

Bought fresh but preserved - peaches/strawberries/raspberries/blueberries were all bought in bulk and/or hand picked and either frozen (we had a huge chest freezer) or canned or turned into preserves.

Onions were unknown in my mother's house, ditto garlic. Salt was OK, black pepper was viewed with suspicion.

Orange juice came in frozen concentrate form.

We would see lettuce and grapes from time to time, but only when the price was right. Very occasionally the random tomato would appear usually to be used in BLT sandwiches (but only when lettuce and bacon were on sale.) The only tomato we say otherwise can in a can in the form of sauce.

But we all not only survived but grew and flourished. The food was plain and bland but we lived.

There was fruit in my house. I grew up in apple country. In my backyard was an apple tree, two plum trees and a cherry tree was in the front yard. The cherries only appeared one summer in my recollection, but there were apples and plums every year. In addition the woods were full of blueberries and I knew where a patch of wild strawberries was located. They were the size of your fingernail but sweet as anything. I learned how easy applesauce was to make at a young age and my mother made the strawberries into strawberry shortcake and strawberry jam.

In the fall, unpicked apples fell to the ground where the yellowjackets got at them. It was my job to pick them up. I learned at a Boy Scout jamboree how to use a limber stick to fling them a block from my home. Many a neighbor was left wondering about the origin of a rain of hornet-laden, half-rotten apples that fell from the sky.

Orange juice at our home came from frozen concentrate too. My mother threw in an extra can of water every time she made it. I could not believe how good real orange juice tasted when I finally tried it as a young adult.

My mother was a great cook, so the answer has to be liver and onions. My sister was 8 years older than I was and hated it too. She got in big trouble when my mother tried to tell me it was "steak" and my sister told me not to believe her. :D