Gabby wrote:
>
> "Sylvia" > wrote in message
> ...
> > > My in-laws like ordinary, tasteless food.
> >
> > Sounds like my mother's cooking. I was 16 before I found out that roast
> > beef wasn't necessarily grey cardboard, over 20 before I found out what
> > vegetables tasted like before they had been boiled into submission, and
> > past 25 before I discovered fish wasn't necessarily white cardboard.
>
> I was in university before I found out steak wasn't supposed to be crisp
> like bacon. Round steak, pounded to within an eighth of an inch of its life
> then fried 'til crisp.
>
> Gabby

Think I had the opposite experience. We have/had a lot of great cooks in
our family, including a couple of professional chefs. However, when I
got to university (in the US midwest), I discovered things like
vegetables boiled to death, greyish-brown 'meat' and similarly-coloured
'gravy'. The first inkling was when I went down to breakfast that first
morning in the residence hall; the toast was being 'buttered' with some
sort of oil and the coffee had a colour I still couldn't describe. It
never got any better and I moved out after that year.