Tell me about foods or drinks you only had when at your mates, or you had there for the first time then introduced into your life/begged your parents to.
When I was 14 I spent most of the summer at my friend’s house and it was a really hot summer (1997). We mostly seemed to just eat ice pops (those triangular ones, Jubbly?) but on the rare occasions we ate we had boiled egg, just the whites, mashed up on tiger bread with salty butter and more salt on the egg. I’d never had tiger bread before and it blew my mind, and until then I thought proper butter was just something I could only source at my Nan’s house.
Later that week we had French bread pizzas, another first, an incredible first.
Bare with me on this, when I was in school I used to go to my mate Tom’s house to play Warhammer and we’d always have cheap Tesco Prawn Cocktail flavoured crisps which his family for some reason KEPT IN THE FRIDGE. They tasted incredible. So vibrant and full of crunch. Tried to replicate it at home but never could and my Mum shouted at me for putting crisps in the fridge like a weirdo.
No, she had a polish surname but don’t think she had any alive Polish relatives. I just had it for breakfast in fact.
Used to love being ill at home and getting mashed up egg and butter in a cup, seems to have been more butter than egg. What a way to go (from a heart attack). I admire your friends for upscaling it to a dish.
Soda Stream at Jez Newman’s. Was barely allowed fizzy pop at mine, so this was a whole new ball game. Having a pomegranate at Simon Lee’s once blew by mind too; so many seeds.
Just things like sausages, egg and chips, chicken nuggets and chips, anything and chips really. We very, very rarely had that sort of stuff at my house, even when we had friends over.
Once my little sister implored my mum “please can we have something kids like to eat when my friend comes over”
Mum “of course, darling! You know what, I bought a reduced pizza the other day, you can have that”
She got the pizza out of the freezer and it turned out to be a Waitrose pear and gorgonzola monstrosity
The only things I can specifically remember eating at other people’s houses are from childminders’ houses - tinned boiled potatoes with slices of ham at one house, and corned beef with baked beans and lemonade that smelled like washing up liquid at another. The latter has left me with a lifelong hatred of corned beef and I wouldn’t buy lemon scented washing up liquid until I was in my 30s because the smell reminded me of being forced to drink disgusting lemonade.
Went to a mates house and his dad asked if I wanted some pizza. Say yes obv and he turns up
With melted cheese on toast with tomato sauce under the cheese. Was fuming
Also not a friend but my Grandma would buy real bread but get it sliced thinly by the baker and then put real butter from her anchor (?) butter dish with the little men on it, was the greatest.
Eggs in general freak me out so sometime I even have to throw the delicious salty mashed up whites in the bin. Didn’t help my…phobia? by looking at an image of what eggs look like before fully developed.