what was the ickiest thing your mom made for dinner?

What I learned at home was coocking colourfull.
If we had a white fish we never got a white dessert - it had to be colourful like strawberries or bluberries.
If I serve couliflower there will also be carrots and peas, if I have green peas I serve a tomatosallad. Potatoes, meat and two or three different vegetables in different colours either as salad or as a warm dish.
I have also had a ladies lunch all in rose. Shirmp salad, salom and a rose marzipan cake for dessert.

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My father was a frustrated farmer who fell in love with an adamently town girl who refused to live in the country. As a consequence, he devoted a large portion of our huge back yard to a prolific garden. He grew corn, green beens, beets, strawberries, cucumbers, carrots, potatoes,radishes (both white and red) and the most delicious tomatoes I've ever tasted. My mother canned every year, using one of those scary pressure cooker things with the metal tabs that shuddered and sputtered, I was sure, as a prelude t0 explosion. Sure produced some fine food, though. Do people still can food?

Oh, and guess who got rousted out of bed in the summer mornings to pick said vegetables?

lovely pic of the pink cake! I too, sometimes cook for color contrast. No meal containing both potatoes and cauliflower...have to have some contrast

Our fathers sound similar mags, but my mother also grew up on a farm, so they double-teamed us kids into weeding the garden and harvesting their produce every year. Plus we lived across the street from an apple orchard and we lived ON Peach Orchard Drive, so as you can imagine, us kids were constantly peeling peaches for her to can, shucking corn for her to freeze in freezer bags.
My friends would all be on their way to the swim club and I'd be sitting on the porch shucking corn or out back weeding the garden.

I loved it though and when I grew up I went to college on a working farm and when I got my first house, the first thing I did was plant a vegetable garden.

I used to make relishes and freeze stuff, but I never got totally into canning. I only had two kids so economically it made more sense for us to buy the stuff.
My parents had six kids - so it was more economic to grow or buy the fruits and vegetables in bulk and can them.

My sister still cans though. She's big into it.

How do you feel about pasta and red sauce as an adult ebeth? Stephen and I love it and have a pasta dish of some sort probably every other day if not as a main course then a side dish.

I have stuff like that from my kids tucked away - little cute notes and stuff.

My mon cooked things to death too - most things - she is italien, but with an Irish dad she often cooked to his taste. I never thought steak was any good, until a young adult when I had a good cut of steak cooked appropriately - medium rare as opposed to cooked to the extent it was dry and chewy as could be.

Her spaghetti and meatball are to die for though. That made up for the chewy steak.

Sounds alot like my mom's sauce. The bonus was - we got to lay a piece of bread on the top while it was cooking and then immediately eat it. That was heaven.

What kind of peppers (sweet red?)
Secret ingredient, oh, noooooooooo.
Great description, JoeN.

I hated back then - and still do, though I've said goodbye to most of my food distastes - many kinds of eggs, over easy, sunny side up, hard boiled, soft boiled, runny scrambled, not to mention raw - abiding only scrambled well mixed and not overcooked either. Ms. Picky lives.. The good thing, from my viewpoint, was that the try it once rule also prevailed at our house, except for the never ending 'drink your milk' rule. Failure to eat something never got rewarded with an alternative, which was smart. I usually belonged to the clean plate club, but I don't remember that the portions were all that large. I was a skinny kid.

The ickiest thing I can remember was le sueur peas. We were little and thought mom said 'sewer' peas (which is what we still call them) and the name alone made us gag. Gagging always worked. Gagging and crying worked faster.

"Stew."

By this my mother meant potatoes, carrots, and fatty chunks of beef in a BROTH!

Cottage cheese.

I wouldn't touch it (wiggly, you know). Which is why it's funny that I make ricotta torta.

She actually made cottage cheese?

That's pretty cool.

However, I expect you meant she "served" cottage cheese.

Actually my mom was a very good cook, but I grew up in the late 50's early 60's.

Back then, the wife made dinner according to the tastes of the husband and when the family had steak, the kids got the fatty crap pieces while the parents assured them they got "the best pieces."

Fortunately for me, I shared my father's taste in food and so was quite content with:

1) Raw hamburgers with slices of raw onion
2) Potato pancakes with canned peaches, not applesauce or sour cream
3) Fried egg sandwiches dripping in ketchup (although my Dad preferred Pride of the Farm Catsup - while I craved Heinz Ketchup)
4) Pork Roast with crispy brown sauerkraut that caught all the drippings.

But he liked Stew as I described it, and so my Mom made it so.

Horrible!

With it, I learned the kid's chipmunk technique of cramming all foul food in my cheeks and then running to the bathroom to disgorge the mess into the toilet.

My sister, for some unknown reason, hated french fries (Go figure) and found that she could secrete them into the cast iron legs of our 50's kitchen table. When we move in the mid 60's and broke down the table, we discovere hundreds of dried, black and moldy fry carcasses.

Cottage is very easy to make.

Leave milk on a shelf for six weeks?

No, heat milk it to 120F, slowly pour in some vinegar, let it sit for 1/2 hour, pour mixture into a tea towel, drain, run under cold running water, then dry it as much a possible while mushing it up, add salt and some cream, et viola, cottage cheese, way better than store bought.

wow. thanks ceili

You're welcome. Don't forget to stir when adding the vinegar.