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This Christmas my sister, brother and I all visited my mom and dad.
My mom "made" a rice dish out of Uncle Ben's microwavable rice. She added some dried cranberries and sliced almonds. It didn't come out right (?) so she added some tap water to the whole thing and let it soak for a while, then re-microwaved it. It's hard to describe what it tasted like, but it wasn't good. Sort of like eating AirSoft pellets with a metallic "heavy water" sauce. Nobody ate it, except my 300 pound brother. Today she served the exact same thing, now 4 days old, for lunch! AFAIK you're supposed to throw away rice as it doesn't keep well at all. I avoided it again, this time for my own safety. My brother will eat anything. Hopefully he does not end up in the ER.
Her cooking "style" is mostly to combine various prepackaged things then add more stuff to them. For example her "holiday meatball" recipe is putting some hormel meatballs into a crock pot with grape jelly and BBQ sauce. Admittedly those are pretty tasty and that was the best thing she made. Everyone scarfed on those, health be damned.
My dad can't stand it and therefore they eat out about 5 times a week. Their blood pressure is through the roof!
Unfortunately, with the toxic rice and high-sodium microwaved stuff I fear that her cooking isn't just bad tasting, but dangerous.
Does anyone else have a terrible cook for a mother? Any holiday cooking horror stories?
I've always said that anyone who eats my mother's cooking will convert to a vegetarian. She can't cook meat to save her life, either it's overcooked or... not at all. She once served me undercooked chicken and didn't get why I was freaking out at the pink meat and bloodied juice that came out from the first bite. Vegetables stuff, she's not bad at all.
I just saw a commercial ... perfect gift for her. Dump dinners. MMMMM dry pasta, un cooked beef and tomato sauce...another dish finishes off with a few cubes of valveta :O
Plain leftover white or brown rice can be kept safely for several days in a tightly-sealed container at room temperature. I leave mine in a canning jar on the counter. To heat it up, put the rice in a skillet or small pot with a bit of water and cover with a lid. Turn the burner to low and let it simmer for 15 -20 minutes or so until the water has been absorbed. It will be perfect.
My mom is a decent if predictable Midwestern cook. I think she'd be more adventurous were my father a little more flexible in his eating habits. Supper in my youth was either stew, pasta with red sauce, or a roast with two veg, fruit, & a roll. We ate a lot of garden produce. My dad maintained a large suburban garden, so in the spring & early summer, we enjoyed big salads with store-bought dressings.
As an adult, I have carried on the stew tradition, but ours is always vegetarian to accommodate the non-meat eaters in the family. We eat a ton of beans, which is something I never had growing up. My mom is always stymied by what to feed us when we come to visit, so we end up eating out frequently. The meals we routinely make at home, heavily influenced by the ethnic cuisines we enjoyed during our years in the Bay Area, do not appeal to my picky eater father. Similarly, the meat & two veg meals that my mother has mastered do not fly with my daughter.
It's...uh...a challenge, but I can't say that I fear anyone will starve when Mom goes into the kitchen. Everything she prepares is perfectly edible and many times quite tasty, and she goes out of her way to accommodate her strictly vegetarian granddaughter (I'm mostly a veg, but I will eat meat if it's served to me.) We just like a wider variety of foods in this family.
My mom was a great cook, and baker also. Wish I was half as good...
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AFAIK you're supposed to throw away rice as it doesn't keep well at all. I avoided it again, this time for my own safety. My brother will eat anything. Hopefully he does not end up in the ER. 
