Lima beans. Yuck. I think they were boiled until they were somewhat soft. They were disgusting. We added ketchup to give it a little flavor. Oh, and we drank powdered milk because it was cheaper than regular milk. Also very disgusting.

I think it was my mother's one and only attempt at cooking a curry, a Steak Vindaloo. It was many many years ago before we started eating at Indian Restaurants and a spicy dish for us would have been a roast dinner with a good dollop of English Mustard. She left the Steak simmering away for about 2 hours, but still the steak was tough and extremely hot

I see pierogies a lot in the grocery stores around here. Are they ever eaten with gravy or any other kind of sauce, or just butter?

I've only eaten them with butter, but then again, why bother with gravy? :)

A blast from the past...

I must have been 5, so set the date as late 1944 or early '45, Dad overseas. Some generous friend gave my mother a case of canned mackerel, back then a grocery store standard. The only edible creation therefrom (after several failures) was mashed with chopped onions and spread on Saltine crackers (which done with sardines helped me survive college).

Don't try it, but if in dire straits and educed to canned mackerel, it's better that way than in casseroles, patties or "loaf'.

....But then, even today, I'll go out of my way to find salt mackerel, to my breakfast palate having better flavor and appeal than kippers. It's been 50 years since they were a breakfast menu standard at San Antonio's Menger Hotel, served with boiled potatoes, truly the "Breakfast of Champions". Then there's smoked mullet, a specialty of the Florida Panhandle Coast, hard to find today, and not everyone's cup of tea.

I've had to deal with canned mackerel precisely once - I was on a sailing course, and the person who stocked the boat with 'supplies' was having a laugh. NOTHING went together! As I proved pretty useless at ropes, sails etc. my jobs were a) monioting the radar and depth guage (which others found baffling!), b) driving with the engine on (simples!) and c) all the cooking (that, and I suspect being a girl also may have played a part!) The only thing I could come up with to use the mackerel was a version of kedgeree, having both rice and eggs, as well as a tin of curry powder. I don't eat fish, but at the rate it vanished, and second helpings having been taken, I think it went down well!

Tuna fish casserole with big chunks of onions and crumbled up crackers on the top. That stuff was hideous and not even edible. I ate the bread and salad only the nights that crap was for dinner. The salmon patties prepared with canned salmon with bones were equally disgusting, no amount of mayo or catsup could help or disguise that flavor. I would not feed any of that nasty tasting stuff to my cats. Other than those two dishes she was an amazing cook, I think those were her easy to cook and cheap dishes. Fortunately they didn't make an appearance very often.

My Mom made some kind of soup with white beans that was hideous. Luckily it only made the rotation a few times per year but I can still imagine that horrible taste. Thankfully most of her other dishes were much, much better!

Wow. Most of them. She made just a couple of things well. Chicken soup and mac n cheese. Everything else was dog food. Even she'll admit that. She does not like to cook.

Pork and beef roasts. I swear I hated them so much my mother stopped cooking them. The roasts were always far too lean and cooked to a medium-well, at least.

All was forgiven when mom made cupcakes, spaghetti with Italian sweet sausage, or shrimp stir fried with pineapples and veg.

I have no idea what it was, except that it was cooked in a crock pot and my brother and I called it "zoo meat."

I second that motion. Beef liver is one thing I hated growing up.

Another dish in which "prep" and cooking time/temp can make a world of difference. I learned from my Dad (not my Mom) to cut calves' (or lamb) liver in strips, let in spend a while in a marinade of olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, cominos, salt and pepper, skewer it, then sear in very briefly to rare or medium rare over as hot a fire as possible. Works well for hearts too, although they, tougher, profit from a longer period in the marinade (overnight's not too long).

Quick cooking seems to prevent the breakdown of some of the complex organic compounds (with bad smell and taste) present in organ meats. With kidneys, it's tough to mask or overcome that ever-present hint of what went on within them....

I learned a valuable lesson when I was about 9 or 10. When I was younger we rarely went out to restaurants and the only beef we usually had was hamburger (for the very cheap meal of Hamburger Helper). We had steak once on special occasions. I went to live with a new family at age 9 and we went to a local buffet restaurant (anyone else remember King's Table?). They had servings of what I thought was steak. I found the biggest one I could find and brought it back to the table. My new parents snickered as I anxiously cut it up into bit-size pieces. Imagine my surprise it wasn't steak at all but liver. As a lesson, my parents made me eat the entire thing. Yuck. To this day, I won't eat liver.

When I was kid I didn't like meatloaf really and my Mom would make it with these hugeee chunks of onion in it and HATED it! I can laugh about it now and don't mind onions but back then? It was my worst nightmare...lol