Blimey
There are a LOT of frankly very worrying and very sad stories on here. Are that many people really brought up in such horrible circumstance?

My sisters and I had rather a good childhood, we didn't have much cash but I had loving parents who did their damn best, well apart from my mother, who whilst an otherwise admirable woman is the worst cook in the northern hemisphere. Not technically incompetent per se, more like a persistent victim of culinary circumstance.

For example, one year, my parents forgot to defrost the Christmas lunch turkey, so we had "Lunch" at 11pm that night. Nothing particularly special about that I hear you cry, and in isolation it wasn’t, but from that year onwards (until I took over the cooking) she used to “warm up” the turkey by defrosting it or over de-fridging it several days before hand by keeping it in the airing cupboard. Hmmm cue very “high” smelling but surprisingly tasty turkey but also rather “high” and surprisingly nasty smelling towels and sheets for a while.

The list goes on, chickens cooked with the giblets (still in plastic bag) inside by the dozen, trifles made with Benedictine rather than sherry (a very odd taste indeed), sponges made with lard rather than butter (a very very odd taste), rice cakes made using uncooked rice (very hard), cheesecakes made with dairylea (don’t ask), rice puddings cooked until they turn into rice concrete etc ad-nauseum (sometimes literally).

Needless to say I’m attempting to teach my own children to cook better than that although the Benedictine thing seems to be genetic because I’ve made gravy with it when pissed and it’s just as nasty as you might imagine.
( edz314 smelled the glove on, Sun 19 Aug 2007, 12:24, Reply)