Growing-up cooking stories: please share

[Pappymn]

This post is inspired by Hikerman and his story of boiling meat.

My story.....and I have many about my mom's cooking. I never had a good pork chop growing up. We always had
1 1/2 inch "Iowa" chops. So far so good.

But she would cook them on the indoor Farberware "grill."
I think she cooked them for a couple of hours basting them with stick margarine. Until they were a dry hockey puck.

[Smokin Don]

My Mom was a pretty good cook but she always overcooked the thick porter house steaks my Dad bought. They were still eatable though and I ate a lot of them. The only thing I remember she made a lot that I didn't like was green or orange jello that had slaw in it, I hated that stuff.

Dad loved ham and beans so Mom made it a lot. He freaked me out on them, he had a plate full over cornbread, then he poured about a half bottle of ketchup over and topped with chopped raw onion. I hated beans then but we ate what was fixed. I love beans now but no ketchup on them!

I was not crazy about veggies; green beans and peas we had a lot and like I said if you were hungry you ate what Mom fixed. Smokin Don

[RAD]

[teesquare]

Those are good ones Pappy and Don! At least your Mom cooked something that you could go outside and play with int he winter ( hockey puck... )

Mine....she did not learn to cook at home...And the first few years up my growing up we ate at my Grandmothers - a LOT.... .  My Mom did become a good cook after enough disasters, of which there are some really good stories....My favorite is that when I was about 5 - she insisted that SHE would cook the turkey and dressing that year.

So - the famished family is going to town it. The sound of silverware was like wind chimes in a tornado, until my Dad said: " Honey - this is a fine turkey! And the stuffing...it is REALLY good!"

To which my Mom replied - and silenced the cacophony of clatter from plates, glasses knives and forks ...." Stuffing"...I thought it came stuffed already..?"

This was the turn of the 1960's.....turkeys did not come with stuffing - other than that which was provided by mother nature....

[Ka Honu]

My mother was actually a pretty good cook but family legend has it that when she and my father got married (which incidentally turned out to be the reason I couldn't get into either Texas A&M or the Marines) she told him she couldn't cook. He cooked (decent but uninspired) meals for several months until one day he was doing something to prep a chicken when my mother's mouth overrode her brain (I come by that honestly) and said, "That's not how you do that!"  Busted, paid for it by being the only family cook for the rest of their lives, and never cooked a chicken without muttering "damn bird."

[Tailgating is my game]

My Dad over did the lighter fluid...like a marinade. I thought all steaks tasted that way.........

[Saber 4]

The worst of our family meals was back in the early 70's when beef prices went through the roof for the first time. To save money my mother tried a woman's magazine recipe for the now and forever dreaded "Shrimp Pie". It used a pre made store bought dessert pie crust and to call it horrible would be an understatement. Of course dad made us choke it all down including leftovers the next night because we really didn't have the money to throw it away and eat a sandwich.

[N. Ontario Smoker]

My Mom used to put the thin pork chops in the frying pan and start frying them at 2 pm for 6 pm supper. When I would ask her why she started them so early she would say, "because it's pork". Don't get me started on her liver cooking. God love her.

[akruckus]

This could take a while, but one that jumps out at me that I still laugh about today.  My great grandmother, the Greek side, would make stuffed peppers and stuffed tomatoes.  Both with ground meat (lamb or beef I forget now) and rice.  She would make them with my great aunt (her daughter) and they would freeze them into single servings to give them out to family.  We loved them they were so good... until one day my mom opened the pepper top and saw 2TB butter tab sitting on top.  They went from being amazing to being dry and not as good because my mom started taking them out as the low fat craze of the 90s took over.  Everyone on the Greek side was either thick green Greek olive oil, or loads and loads of butter.  Lamb shanks braised in butter, some halved lemons, and fat from the lamb as it slowly cooked out.  That was one of the best meals I have ever eaten, homemade, high end restaurant, doesn't matter.  The braised lamb shanks were so good.  I wish I could have gotten a few more recipes before all my older relatives passed away...

I will add more as the time goes one.  Most of mine were good memories based on grandmothers and great grandmothers from the "old country" cooked.

[cookiecdcmk]

I had forgotten about the colored Jello with slaw in it until Don mentioned it.  My grandmother always had it, and I hated it.  If Kraft Dinner was not available my mother would have starved us to death, as it was a weekly staple.  I also remember my mother making beef tongue ground up for sandwiches, and I did not like to look at it while it was cooking; pretty tasty though.  I loved to go to my other grandmother's house on Sunday, as she usually had a big pot of stew with raccoon, rabbit, or sometimes bear on the old cast iron wood stove.
One of my biggest mistakes was eating pasta made with Italian "Gravy" by my new half Italian wife, and I put ketchup on it before I even tasted it.  Divorce was close.

[drholly]

My mom was a pretty good cook, not a "foodie" but made good, filling food. BUT, my dad had a thing about roast beef being DONE. When I was a kid, we had Sunday dinner together as a family (right before Disney's Magic Kingdom came on.) It was almost always roast beef with roasted potatoes, carrots and onions. The beef was a cinder block because that's how dad liked it. I think that is when I developed my love for roasted vegetables!

But, my mom made the absolute best Boston Baked Beans, bar none! I could eat them for breakfast, lunch and supper along with some extra for snacks. In fact, one week I did. I was sick for the next week, and for years just the smell of BBB made me sick...  Now, I am ok, but my mom is gone and I never got the recipe... 

[drholly]

Christmas Eve growing up...

There were 5 kids in my family, my mom was stay at home, and my dad in the military. We didn't have a strong ethnic alliance, so anything was possible, as long as it was economical (I didn't know that then.)

Our Christmas Eve dinner (served after church and before opening presents) was spaghetti. Not some fancy smancy home made stuff - no, this was Chef Boy-R-Dee in the box. Included the noodles,  can of sauce and a can of cheese dust. The advantages were - it was easy for Mom to make with kids pestering her to open presents, it was dirt cheap, and it actually tasted pretty good. This was our tradition from when I can remember to when I finally left the nest.

Now, I am part of my wife's family tradition which includes inedible things like potato sausage, swedish meatballs and lutefisk (this has become my annual fast - NOT feast.) I have been to my brother's house for his homemade spaghetti (he does make a good spaghetti)... but NOTHING can take the place of my memory of the Chef Boy-R-Dee spaghetti of my childhood.

[akruckus]

My grandmom always made jello with fruit in it, that and stewed apples for dessert, or snack.  Never had the jello with slaw.  Never even heard of that before?!

[hikerman]

Growing up, other than the shared roles in destroying pork by her boiling it and dad burning it on the grill, mom did all of the cooking. She was a pretty good cook, but she was an excellent baker. Sadly, she passed away when I was 15 from an aneurysm.  My sister was married by then and my brother was in the Navy. That meant dear ol' dad was the house cook.
As much as he tried....it was just not his cup of tea. You see he only knew one way to cook....the burners on the stove were ALWAYS on HI! The oven on 500F! And the broiler... was always broiling way too long. The local fire dept. was always on standby when he cooked!   Everything he made looked the same.....black and smoking!!!
After 2 or 3 weeks of this I decided it was high time for me to either move in with grandma or learn to cook. I chose the latter and never looked back!   

[SmokinKat]

These stories are awesome, thank you everyone for sharing!!

My dad was always the more adventurous one in the kitchen (when he was home from the boats), though my mom kept us fed most of the year.  (He kept us well supplied with king crab, salmon, and halibut from Alaska, so we weren't hurting too badly!)

My two most distinct memories of my dad's kitchen exploits were him making homemade horseradish, and another time (shortly later) cooking a beef tongue.   

He found out our house in Seattle had horseradish growing in the backyard, and decided to grind up some of his own, cursing the ridiculous price of 'that store bought crap' the entire time.  He threw the horseradish roots in the Cuisinart, and let it run for a good long time.  Always the engaging parent, and wanting to include us in the festivities, he invited us older kiddos (4 and 6 years old) to take a big sniff of his made-at-home miracle.  Caught up in his excitement, we stuck our little faces deeply into the Cuisinart bowl, only to be immediately overwhelmed with horseradish mustard gas that left us horking and blubbering the rest of the afternoon.   

Undeterred by the verbal lashing he received from dear Mama, he soon decided to share with us one of his childhood favorites, beef tongue.  As he's no longer around to give his version of events, it will suffice to say that the afternoon involved a pressure cooker and beef tongue that were left home alone on the stove to their own devices.   We returned home to find the kitchen redecorated with wee bits of tongue glued to every surface imaginable, and the sad remains of a crock pot on what was left of the stove top.

Everyone always assumed that any bad words we learned as kids were a result of having a boat captain as a father-- I assure you, this was not entirely the case.