• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Anyone Have A Mom That Was "Not So Good" in The Kitchen?

rhinefire

rhinefire

DP Veteran
Joined
May 3, 2007
Messages
10,371
Reaction score
2,999
Gender
Undisclosed
Political Leaning
Independent
I was born in 1948 and my mom was average in the kitchen at best. One nightmare meal she made was chopsuey that tasted like bad beef stew. She simmered everything for an hour in a black iron skillet until everything was soggy and man it was rough getting through that one. We never dared say anything bad about the food on the table....ever!! When mom would screwed up the dinner dad would always say "Just right Maxine" proceeded to eat everything without saying a word while my brother and I tried to hint to mom using body language only that this is cruelty.
 
rhinefire said:
I was born in 1948 and my mom was average in the kitchen at best. One nightmare meal she made was chopsuey that tasted like bad beef stew. She simmered everything for an hour in a black iron skillet until everything was soggy and man it was rough getting through that one. We never dared say anything bad about the food on the table....ever!! When mom would screwed up the dinner dad would always say "Just right Maxine" proceeded to eat everything without saying a word while my brother and I tried to hint to mom using body language only that this is cruelty.
Click to expand...

You had a mother who cooked for you, and tried to raise you right... and you insult and abuse her in a damned internet forum? My mother wasn't a particularly good cook either, but you know what? We had food on the table every day. I decided to learn how to bake bread from scratch, and cook tasty meals from inexpensive meat cuts. Even then, with 5 kids, some of whom hated everything no matter how much time/effort/ingredients were expended on the meal, I eventually realized my mother had done the best she could with what she could afford and what she had to work with.

My suggestion is that YOU prepare 365 meals for a half-dozen people every year. Then get back to me about how successful you were.
 
You all seemed to have loved (or feared) your mom enough to not say anything about her cooking, but maybe a few kind hints now and then, or an offer to cook with her may have helped. My mom was a good cook so I have no complaints except that she couldn't cook enough due to work.
 
Bless her heart, my Mom was below average in the kitchen.

I grew up knowing in my heart that anything served anywhere from any restaurant style serving method was exotic food. This includes all of the variations of drive-ins and sit down restaurants. TV dinners were Haute Cuisine.

In a succeeding generation, she would have had an out-of-the-home job and not have had to bother with the challenges of the kitchen that she neither enjoyed nor understood.

Now, I find to my surprise that delicious food can be baked, fried, roasted, grilled or even crock-potted in the home with delicious results. I appreciate it in those homes gracious enough to host my presence, but don't really covet it. It's like the joy of a Spring day occurring in late winter.

I was raised, though, with the idea that food was fuel, not an occassion for delight. I must admit that the challenges of the kitchen are things that I neither enjoy nor understand.
 
Last edited:
That is much like asking - did anyone have a dad that was not a good handyman? Assuming that parental gender defines one's skills is simply silly.
 
I always loved my moms cooking. But my dad was better.





SSSHhhhhhhh........it'll be our little secret.....
 
My mother was about the 6th eldest in a family with 13 children. She ended up being the "baby tender"... some of the younger kids thought SHE was their Mama until they were school age. :)


When she and my Dad married, she admits freely she didn't know how to boil water, let alone cook. My Grandma was a great cook but she'd never gotten around to teaching my mom anything, too busy.


Well, she learned. Boy did she learn. By the time I came along she could give a cordon-bleu chef a run for his money, and she got better still as the years went by. She learned to cook not just traditional Southern fare, but Italian, Chinese and Japanese cuisine BETTER than the restaurant! Just because her family liked it.


As I've said before, when Mom cooked, I believe the angels of Heaven gathered round her table and wept bitter tears that they were not mortal, so they could taste what she was preparing. :D



Dear lord, how I miss her and her cooking. Fortunately I have a niece and a sister whom she taught almost all her secrets... :D
 
My mom wasn't a great cook but then again she grew up rich. My granny couldnt cook either but she had a great cook.
 
DiAnna said:
You had a mother who cooked for you, and tried to raise you right... and you insult and abuse her in a damned internet forum? My mother wasn't a particularly good cook either, but you know what? We had food on the table every day. I decided to learn how to bake bread from scratch, and cook tasty meals from inexpensive meat cuts. Even then, with 5 kids, some of whom hated everything no matter how much time/effort/ingredients were expended on the meal, I eventually realized my mother had done the best she could with what she could afford and what she had to work with.

My suggestion is that YOU prepare 365 meals for a half-dozen people every year. Then get back to me about how successful you were.
Click to expand...

Ever give any thought to giving up the meds? As far as mothers go yours should have had you flushed at birth.
 
My mother tended to make meats well done ( and a little dry) as such I put soy sauce over all my meats to make them a little more tender
 
I don't cook for my kids. It's that simple. They'll complain about damned pizza for Christ's sake - cook for THEIR tastes means serving candy in a fancy dish at dinner time.

I cook for myself and for my husband. On special occasions the kids pick out the meals. If they're willing to HELP cook they can instruct me however they please.

My purpose is to raise children on HEALTHY food. Not on things that they only LIKE. Now if they LIKE healthy foods then by all means I'll make an effort to provide them more often.

But if it weren't for all that gross healthy food you wouldn't APPRECIATE the good stuff, anyway. Trust me: if you had your fav every night you'd get sick of it.
 
My kids mom is by her own description a kitchen nightmare. Woman has literally burned water.
 
Mom came from a family that seemed to have been better off than most. She married my dad who came it seems from an average family.
She was not as good a cook as my dad was. But meals were ok I suppose. The idea was that food was for fuel and not for taste. She had nothing to pass down to the kids as far as family recipes go. She never learned to cook as a child. That was work for the servants. Same thing with dad who made a few really nice dishes but never bothered to teach us kids.
 
Oooh yeah. That's why my dad did virtually all of the cooking (and had both a love and a talent for it).

As far as I can tell, my mother knows how to make three things, and three things only: nachos, microwave dinners, and what we named "glop."

One of these three things was what I got whenever my dad wasn't available to cook. And "glop" was something to behold.

The last time I ate it, I was probably about 5, so I don't remember it extremely well. It was some unholy stew type of thing. What it looked like is aptly described by the name, and what it smelled like is, well... farts. It smelled like farts. And didn't taste much better.

DiAnna said:
You had a mother who cooked for you, and tried to raise you right... and you insult and abuse her in a damned internet forum? My mother wasn't a particularly good cook either, but you know what? We had food on the table every day. I decided to learn how to bake bread from scratch, and cook tasty meals from inexpensive meat cuts. Even then, with 5 kids, some of whom hated everything no matter how much time/effort/ingredients were expended on the meal, I eventually realized my mother had done the best she could with what she could afford and what she had to work with. .

My suggestion is that YOU prepare 365 meals for a half-dozen people every year. Then get back to me about how successful you were.
Click to expand...

Hey now... I don't think this thread is meant to be mean. I'm taking it as humorous. We all have stuff we're not good at, and it can be funny. Some women aren't good at cooking. My mother wasn't, as you can see -- just not one of her talents.

She had an extraordinary green thumb though, which my father lacked.

Unfortunately, I got double unlucky: no talent in the kitchen, and none in the garden either. Ah well. I'm good at plenty of other things.
 
Last edited:
I will not look back fondly at my mom's cooking, but she did the best she could. We were very, very poor growing up, so she had to stretch like $15 a long, long way. That meant beans often. Ground beef often. Potatoes often. We didn't have alot but I think my mom could have done better if she'd had better to do with.

Funny -- as a child, I always thought my mom loved to cook, because she did it every single day. Once we were all grown and gone, she rarely cooked. I asked her why, and she said, "Why would I cook for just your dad and me? I was never a fan of it, honestly." I was stunned. I said, "I thought you loved it - you did it every single day." She said, "Well I wasn't gonna let you starve."

Maybe that's why Hubs and I eat out so often now - because I never got to as a child. I can count on 1 hand the times we ate out (restaurants OR fast food) when I was a kid.
 
my mom's a bad cook. my step mom is pretty good. my dad is a great cook. i'm a bad cook. lol.
 
My mother is a great cook.. but my father's mother was not so good. He claimed he was in the army before he learned you can actually cut liver with a knife.
 
Well, I have learned not to be so picky and to appreciate anyone who cooked for me while I was growing up (now that I have to eat cafeteria food or boil an egg myself). Which to be accurate, was more likely to be the school kitchen or our cook at home, than my mum. I honestly don't think I have ever eaten anything cooked by my mum - not because she was a bad cook, but because she simply had no need to cook. Mum is a highly educated and cultured person, a talented musician, and is highly regarded for her daily charitable work, but I have no idea whether she is a good cook or not. And if she were not, I would not consider that a deficiency - nor would I be particularly surprised - we all have our areas of expertise, and she does not lack those.

However, while I respect the point DiAnna makes; I would not regard someone humorously describing his/her mum's cooking as less than optimum as a disrespectful or ungrateful act. But then I come from a different culture, and as the poet put it "... none of my travels have been in the same lands". ;)
 
My Mom was a pretty good cook, but she was very limited. For example, I never knew what garlic or mushrooms were until my mid teens and my then-step-mother introduced me to them. What my Mom did make was good, just not a lot of variety.
 
DiAnna said:
You had a mother who cooked for you, and tried to raise you right... and you insult and abuse her in a damned internet forum? My mother wasn't a particularly good cook either, but you know what? We had food on the table every day. I decided to learn how to bake bread from scratch, and cook tasty meals from inexpensive meat cuts. Even then, with 5 kids, some of whom hated everything no matter how much time/effort/ingredients were expended on the meal, I eventually realized my mother had done the best she could with what she could afford and what she had to work with.

My suggestion is that YOU prepare 365 meals for a half-dozen people every year. Then get back to me about how successful you were.
Click to expand...
You'll eat this and LIKE it!!! *whack*
 
Aunt Spiker said:
I don't cook for my kids. It's that simple. They'll complain about damned pizza for Christ's sake - cook for THEIR tastes means serving candy in a fancy dish at dinner time.

I cook for myself and for my husband. On special occasions the kids pick out the meals. If they're willing to HELP cook they can instruct me however they please.

My purpose is to raise children on HEALTHY food. Not on things that they only LIKE. Now if they LIKE healthy foods then by all means I'll make an effort to provide them more often.

But if it weren't for all that gross healthy food you wouldn't APPRECIATE the good stuff, anyway. Trust me: if you had your fav every night you'd get sick of it.
Click to expand...

[Yes, replying to my post]

Tonight's dinner would be a damned good example of a dinner that SOME kids just DIDN'T like (and two are still sitting and eating as we speak). BUT - I swear - it's the best dinner I've fixed in months!


Shrimp tossed in a sweet butter (like what you'd get at Red Lobster with the tail)

Branberry salad (a sweet salad that's almost like Coleslaw)

Dipped braids (bread - braided, baked, and then baked with a sweet orange flavored butter to soften and flavor the crust)


Five star dining right there. Half the kids didn't care for it. Do I care? NO! It's not very often I can close my eyes while I eat dinner and imagine I'm in freaking Paris.
 
Sounds divine.
 
best roast beef in the world

and I bitched about it

what? roast beef again...it must be Sunday...

as I got older I went home every Sunday that I could for the beef and nobody has ever made beef that way again...I sure as hell can't
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom