Worst food you ate in childhood?

hoof_it_up_to_benty

A lot of this depends obviously on how aspirational your family were and when you grew up.

The standout dishes for me are Vesta curry which just tasted of chemicals and frozen pizzas from Bejam(now Iceland) - these pizzas were like a piece of cardboard with a miniscule amount of red sauce on top and four strands of cheese.

Findus crispy pancakes were also particularly vile.

I don't remember anyone eating well in the 70s.

Solidgone

Brussel sprouts - yuk of the yuckiest!

Baldybonce

hoof_it_up_to_benty said:

A lot of this depends obviously on how aspirational your family were and when you grew up.

The standout dishes for me are Vesta curry which just tasted of chemicals and frozen pizzas from Bejam(now Iceland) - these pizzas were like a piece of cardboard with a miniscule amount of red sauce on top and four strands of cheese.

Findus crispy pancakes were also particularly vile.

I don't remember anyone eating well in the 70s.

They thought they were though. The vesta and frozen pizza was seen as very exotic to those not used to foreign food.

ricky_otto

Liver

Baldybonce

Worst.
A tin of vegetable soup.

SomervilleAddick

School dinner greens.

hoof_it_up_to_benty

SomervilleAddick said:

School dinner greens.

Presumably cooked for seven hours.....

clive

Pease Pudding.

iainment

Beetroot. Salad cream.

Both still make me retch.

Big_Bad_World

Tapioca and semolina.

DaveMehmet

ricky_otto said:

Liver

Snap, my mum used to cook this as well, always hated it. I actually used to like Findus crispy pancakes, especially chicken & bacon. Especially if served with oven crunchies.

ricky_otto

DaveMehmet said:

ricky_otto said:

Liver

Snap, my mum used to cook this as well, always hated it. I actually used to like Findus crispy pancakes, especially chicken & bacon. Especially if served with oven crunchies.

My mum said that when I was 4, I picked up a bit off the side in the kitchen and ate it raw.
I suspect this is when my cannibalism started.

SomervilleAddick

hoof_it_up_to_benty said:

SomervilleAddick said:

School dinner greens.

Presumably cooked for seven hours.....

Yep, my mother was horrified that she could smell them cooking greens at 9am.

IdleHans

I generally liked school dinners and ate the lot, but there were three stand out revolting puddings in reverse order of disgustingness as follows:

Semolina pudding - bright bleached white, utterly vile, the only edible bit was the spot of red jam in the middle. This always created the dilemma of whether to stir it in making the whole thing slightly less unpalatable, or save until the end to remove the taste of the foul white muck.

Gypsy tart - inexplicably popular with most other kids, this was a foul whipped moussey dessert tasting only of sickly brown sugar, intolerably sweet even to my eight year old self, served in a flaccid pastry case. Its redeeming feature was that I had no trouble swapping my full bowl for an empty one.

Macaroni pudding - pasta as a dessert. WTF?!?!?!? In the same white filthy sauce as the semolina, without the saving grace of jam, but with slimy lumps reminiscent of those big larvae you sometimes find under logs in the garden in springtime. Just remembering it has put me back into therapy.

Greenie

Frey Bentos pie in a tin. Simply dogshit.

Covered End

School dinners -

Tapioca, semolina, the skin on custard, spam fritters and warm milk.

i_b_b_o_r_g

Fussy buggers

I ate everything put in front if me, even the boiled caterpillar infested cabbage me nan picked off our allotment. School diners? Use to have 2nds and 3rds if I was lucky.

Pringle

Stuffed pig hearts
Butterscotch Angel Delight

Stefco

In the 80's, my primary school fed my culinary nightmares.

They actually used to cook crisps!! I shat thee not!! They ended up as a disgusting, fatty, chewy mess. God knows what the dinner ladies were thinking.

I would wonder whether or not they would give their own kids such awful fare.

Other delights were mashed "potato" which always had a healthy does of unmixed powder.

Black peas....no, not black eyed peas,
& burgers so overcooked they would curl up at both ends. Kind of like mini baseball catchers mitts, but way more crunchy.

However, in a bizarre about-face, the puddings were unbelievably excellent. Amazing sponge & custard (vanilla, choc & strawberry flavours), jam roly poly, spotted dick, arctic roll, & even the rhubarb was great too.

_MrDick

Without doubt ... Primary school semolina with a dollop of jam. Still heave just at the thought of it.

hoof_it_up_to_benty

Covered End said:

School dinners -

Tapioca, semolina, the skin on custard, spam fritters and warm milk.

The thought of spam fritters makes me want to retch.....

Did anyone like semolina?

_MrDick

iainment said:

Beetroot. Salad cream.

Both still make me retch.

You should avoid an invite round to my house for tea, in that case. Favourite sandwich is corned beef, beetroot and salad cream

TeslaGirl

My mother was a hippie in the 60s. Meals in the late 70s/ early 80s therefore included amongst other things stewed nettles and nastursium flowers.

Much nastier than it sounds.

DaveMehmet

i_b_b_o_r_g said:

Fussy buggers

I ate everything put in front if me, even the boiled caterpillar infested cabbage me nan picked off our allotment. School diners? Use to have 2nds and 3rds if I was lucky.

Those that know me will not believe this but I used to be put on the "slow eaters table" when I was at infant/junior school as I would hardly eat anything.

It came to head when the headmistress made me stand in front of her desk and force fed me. I got about halfway through and was sick over her desk.

She was furious and called my mum in to tell her I needed to go home for dinners. Unfortunately both my parents worked so it was a no no.

She'd probably get sacked if she did something like that now.

cafcfan

Solidgone said:

Brussel sprouts - yuk of the yuckiest!

Well, yes, this. For more years than I care to think about I hated them. But eventually I found out that they were only disgusting because my mother used to boil them until they were mush. Now, properly cooked, I like them a lot.

SuedeAdidas

Pringle said:

Stuffed pig hearts
Butterscotch Angel Delight

Oh my god. The horror when you’d see a heart soaking in a bowl in the fridge.

Looked like a donkey’s helmet.

MrLargo

Liver and kidney. Disgusting. Anyone who actually enjoys eating that stuff must be a borderline cannibal.

School dinners were all revolting - our dinner ladies all had facial hair so I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised that most of our chips had bits of hair poking out.

HarryLime

Greenie said:

Frey Bentos pie in a tin. Simply dogshit.

I used to love Fray Bentos pies as a kid, then didn't have one for years and years until about 18 months ago, although I didn't quite get dogshit on my palate, definitely more than a hind of dog food. Horrible stuff.

SuedeAdidas

Stuffed marrow. The filling was ok but the colourless, tasteless mush of the marrow was shocking.

Gravesend_Addick

Liver. The only food that's ever made me instantly sick. Never tried it again since.

A special mention for Gherkins. Yuk

bobmunro

MrLargo said:

Liver and kidney. Disgusting. Anyone who actually enjoys eating that stuff must be a borderline cannibal.

School dinners were all revolting - our dinner ladies all had facial hair so I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised that most of our chips had bits of hair poking out.

Liver is one of my favourites (ideally calves liver).

As someone else said - stuffed hearts. They used to regularly appear on primary school dinners in the 60s. Now that is revolting.