Oddest thing you've ever tasted.

[Derleth]

Mine is phenolphthalein (http://www.jtbaker.com/msds/englishhtml/P2015.htm), a chemical used as a pH indicator in my high school chem class.

Anyone who's worked around phenolphthalein knows its bitter chemical odor. They also know it as being rather messy and, for my clumsy hands, hard to work with without spilling. But hell, it does what it's supposed to do, and when you're titrating a solution, anything to make a touchy process more exact is welcome.

Getting on with my story, I was working in the lab in full regalia, a setup that didn't include gloves. I'm not sure how it entered my mouth, as a good scrub was SOP after any lab, but it might have been absorbed through the skin of my ungloved hands. I do know I didn't get my hands near my mouth: Nobody could have paid me enough to even risk getting any of that vile stuff on my tongue.

Of course, I didn't notice anything odd until I got home. Then I began to taste in my mouth the bitter chemical smell associated with my Least Favored Indicator. Not lightly, mind you, but very strong. Overpowering. Enough to make me need to drink large amounts of water to attempt to remove the taste from my olfactory system.

The taste is indescribable, but it can be approximated: Lick copper (but don't eat it, as it's a neurotoxin). Copper is bitter the same way as phenolphthalein is bitter, but it lacks the chemical tones that make the indicator's taste that much worse. I know people who ate pennies when they were children, but nobody would deliberately drink phenolphthalein.

Aside from the taste, my extremities began to get cold. Icy cold, even as I lay in bed, wrapped in my covers. This also points to The Big P: As the MSDS linked to above indicates, phenolphthalein lowers your blood pressure.

Of course, the MSDS recommends inducing vomiting. I didn't. It recommends seeking medical attention. I didn't. I survived, but it isn't something I'd volunteer to undergo again.

As a final note, phenolphthalein is carcinogenic. Did my teacher mention this? Nooo. So when I turn into a giant walking tumor with cold fingers and toes and a truly awful taste in my mouth, I'll know who to terrorise. :D

[Aro]

I once ate Mashonzha (http://www.questconnect.org/images/mopani_worms.jpg), a type of worm considered the National dish of Botswana.

I think it tasted better than it looked, but that's not saying much at all. I don't remember it as vile, but it's certainly up there in the odd stakes.

[jjimm]

Umeboshi (http://metropolis.japantoday.com/biginjapan/350/biginjapaninc.htm) - Japanese pickled plums, at a posh dinner party in Kyushu. They are the most unpleasantly intense, salty, bitter thing I've ever tasted.

When I finally regained control of my facial muscles from my autonomous nervous system, I got the attention of the room, and turned to my girlfriend, making a big show of how delicious they were, and got her to eat one. I don't think I've ever seen expressions as funny that, as her conscious necessity for politeness fought against her reflex facial scrunching. I am evil. :D

[krisolov]

fried gluten from a can (flavor not bad, texture not good). Cuttlefish chips(actually quite good). Skate( at a french restaurant-excellent), canned fried dace[a fish](vile).
Most of these were gag (no pun intended) gifts I gave to friends at Christmas. I picked up the most interesting stuff I could find at the local asian market. Little did I know I would need to share...

[clayton_e]

Derleth, I've had the same stuff, only a couple drops, though. I was demonstrating how neutralization of a strong acid (in that case it was HCl) with a strong base (I can't remember what one I used at the time..) results in a harmless solution of a salt and water (yes I checked to make sure the type of salt that was created was harmless).

I drank the beaker after EXTENSIVE checks that it was 7 Ph.

I thought that phenolphthalein would taste odd.. It did.

[Duke]

A yellow Easter-egg dye tablet, when I was six. I thought it would taste like mustard. It tasted like...hard to explain, but it was bitter and chalky.

And, to forestall any follow-up inquiries: what came in yellow, came out yellow.

[WhiteyFoo]

Benzene. It doesn't taste as sweet as it smells. I worked at a chemical plant for awhile and got the opportunity to inadvertently taste it more than once. I wouldn't recommend it. Actually tastes rather bad. And I definatly know who to blame when I become a walking tumor.

[hebesphenomegacorona]

Originally posted by Aro
I once ate Mashonzha (http://www.questconnect.org/images/mopani_worms.jpg), a type of worm considered the National dish of Botswana.

I think it tasted better than it looked, but that's not saying much at all. I don't remember it as vile, but it's certainly up there in the odd stakes.

They look like cigars!

Now, I haven't ATE them, but I saw fried cuttlefish snacks in the supermarket.

[lieu]

I was at a south Texas BBQ and ate some kind of a cow gland. Not that it tasted bad, I just usually don't include a lot of glands in my diet. "Want some more glands?" "Let me thi...no."

[rsa]

A Coke with something in it which I didn't see because I drank from the bottle. Flakes of something with a horrible metallic taste. With the taste and the knowlege that Coke should not have solids in, I came *this* close to throwing up.

I'm just glad that I never figured out what was in there.

[Janx]

That would have to be musk flavored life savers candy.
When I was a kid, my friend brought them back from Australia. Tasted like the smell of cheap hand soap.

[Peg]

So this one time I was making chili and a guy came by and dumped in a couple of tablespoons of cinnamon.

Bleck.

[LilyoftheValley]

Originally posted by lieu
I was at a south Texas BBQ and ate some kind of a cow gland. Not that it tasted bad, I just usually don't include a lot of glands in my diet. "Want some more glands?" "Let me thi...no."

I wonder if you ate what I ate, lieu! When I was in Argentina, I got served fried adrenal glands (at least, that's what they told me it was). I found the glands to be most unpleasant, particularly in texture. *shiver*

[Rib Eye]

Ayran, a turkish yogurt drink. Imagine a very salty milkshake. Cold, it was tolerable. I shudder to think of what it would have been like warm.

[jjimm]

Ayran sounds a lot like lhassi, which is served in India (and Indian restaurants - salty or sweet are available). Personally I love it.

Other things, however, that I know by experience I don't love include: Tibetan rancid yak-butter tea. Chiu Chow delicacy comprising fertilised chicken eggs boiled in fish-head soup. Half a can of tepid beer laced with about 20 cigarette ends.

[tomyoung]

jjimm: I actually really like umeboshi, and I was born and raised in Tennessee. Eating one whole is too intense, but eating a little at a time is pretty good, I think. The weirdest food I've ever tasted was natto (sp?), fermented sticky, gummy soybeans. Not great, not horrible, but very, very strange.

[Moirai]

Originally posted by jjimm
Half a can of tepid beer laced with about 20 cigarette ends.

Ah yes, room-temperature wine also tastes lovely with those particular additions!

I ate dog once. Don't ask. And no, it did not taste like chicken. Or beef. It tasted OK but smelled really bad in this dish. Note to self- if it smells bad, don't try it anyway.

[GorillaGirl]

Second-worst thing: kumiss (Mongolian fermented mare's milk).
First-worst thing: kumiss with Hershey's Chocolate Syrup added.

Urk.

[Beadalin]

Maybe related to umeboshi, mine was Salty Plum Soda at the local Vietnamese cafe. I love that place, and had never had anything I didn't love... until that fateful drink. I tried really hard to like it, but man. It was soda water poured over a mushed-up salty plum (which I had never heard of before). The flavor was just intensely odd. I couldn't even decide if it was bad or not, because it was so foreign.

I stick to the limeade sodas now.

[flapcats]

tame, by these standards:

Pickled Walnuts.

Eugh.

[lurker anonymous]

chittlins!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!mountain oysters!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[The Grapist]

Originally posted by lurker anonymous
chittlins!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!mountain oysters!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! this post has been Graped by the Grapist!

[The_Stranger]

Raw rabbit eyeballs.

After the third day of going hungry at SERE school, (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape), those eyeballs were...well they were still gross.

[viking]

There's a gelato place here that will try anything once. As in, if you drop a suggestion in their box, if they haven't tried it yet, they will make up a batch. If it's less revolting that it seemed, it may even become part of the regular lineup. I had Marmite and Vegemite gelato, which were odd. Wasabi gelato actually worked pretty well. But the all time weirdest was walnut and blue-cheese gelato. That was just plain wrong.

[Janx]

[hijack]
Another 2 cents worth. Some of the things above just sound to bizarre to contemplate, as in, I couldn't even THINK of that let alone EAT IT!
jjimm wrote:

* Tibetan rancid yak-butter tea.
* Chiu Chow delicacy comprising fertilised chicken eggs boiled in fish-head soup.
* Half a can of tepid beer laced with about 20 cigarette ends.


I mean, come on, who in the world would ever dream up something like Yak Butter TEA? Oh, it gets weirder, we even have RANCID yak butter tea. And that's just the aperitivo, for the main coarse we gots (are you sitting down) fertilised chicken eggs boiled in fish-head soup, Mmmmm!

Now the cigarette thing I have done, but that was just because I was not paying attention. So tell me jjimm Of the three things above which was the worst?

[/byjack]

[jjimm]

I managed to drink 3 cups of the tea (it's the butter that's rancid, btw. The tea is fine!), and I nearly barfed when I drank the cigarette butts, but the memory of those fertilized eggs made me gag involuntarily every time I recalled the taste for the next three or four weeks.

[DeVena]

An odd but addictive taste is Wasabi Peas (dried english peas coated in wasabi)

Hot - sweet - salty and strange.

[Gravity]

I thought it would be fun to try 'grass jelly drink' from an asian foods store. I was thirsty, I thougt it would be herbal... I was right. It tasted like a thin, unpleasant, very strong herbal infusion. That was OK. It was that it had little...chunks...of unflavored gelatin floating in it. It was horrid. Even when I figured out what they were (the 'jelly', I guess) I couldn't bring myself to finish the drink.

[plnnr]

Some sort of herbal concoction that an extremely lean, Rastafarian marathon runner gave me in the steam room at the gym. I noticed him drinking this green stuff like it was going out of style and I asked him what it was. I don't recall the name, but distinctly remember that it tasted just like fresh cut grass smells. The smell of fresh cut grass is great, and I've even enjoyed the taste of a sprig of grass in my teeth, but a whole mouthful was more than I could handle.

After I got finished gagging (didn't puke, but it was close), he smiled this REALLY snaggle toothed smile and I asked him what had happened to his teeth. He told me, "Too much pussy." I burst out laughing and he said, "No, really. I lost my teeth from eating too much pussy. A guy caught me with my face between his wife's thighs and beat my face in pretty bad." He was quite the character.

[lieu]

Snatched from the yaws of victory?


I ate an acorn once just to see what the deer were up to. Apparently, not much.

[HBby]

I love the salty, cured, preserved, dried plums. Yum. In my mother's culture, you're supposed to eat one if you have a sore throat.

The oddest thing: freshly cut squid, still squirming and pulsating. The odd part was trying to chew it in the mouth without having the suction cups stick to the inner cheek or tongue or the roof of your mouth. It was also a bitch to try to pry it from a chopstick if a tentacle decided to wrap itself around it and suck and wiggle. Good with hot sauce. Odd texture.

[Feynn]

Tastes like chicken?

Nope... it tasted like reptile... turtle to be exact.

Frogs legs taste like.... frogs legs.

Escargot taste like slugs except they're served in garlic butter... don't ask me how I know this.