Not literally. In addition to being the standard camp name for generic Kool Aid, it was also the name for the five cups of evil cooked up by the Eagle Scouts for the athletic/gross-out relay at the end of camp.
I was the lucky one chosen for my patrol. I’m not sure what all went into it, but I do know there was milk, tabasco, mayonaisse, olives, a pickle, pepper, soggy bread, mustard, relish, and basically anything else you could expect to find in a camp kitchen. And each cup was a different meld of exotic evil. Boy did that get the vomiting going.
And I was then the victim in the “down a warm cream soda and then get rolled around the baseball diamond in a broiling-hot oil drum”. More vomiting!
No one has mentioned tripe. I have had it and either loved it or hated it. I will cook it occasionally with curry, rice, and vegetables.
I have never had a mollosc that I disliked (well an oyster after the sellby was a very quick spitter). Snails are great. Squid is sublime, Octopus is the secret of my spring rolls.
Cuy – guinea pig was rather nice. I picked and slaughtered one in Peru. The skin is very thick. I am interested in trying nutria.
Calves Foot soup. Caldo de pato. Gelatenous and sort of unsettling. I’d pass the next time.
Palm grubs. Ants are okay, and I love the taste of termites, but the smell and the ooze of the grub was a pass.
I love fermented bamboo shoots in Chili oil. The odor has baned me from the work microwave, but they make addition to meat stirfrys.
The most awful thing I’ve had – the cheese course at a three star restaurant in France. Yuk. Nasty does not even begin to describe it. I almost barfed at the table.
This reminds me…
After writing before to defend the honor of my Grandmother’s gefilte fish, I now recall something else she makes that is quite revolting: P’tchah.
I’m not sure if that’s actually how it’s spelled but it sounds like it should be a Klingon curse word. It also smells as bad as Klingon food is supposed to (and yes I am suitably embarassed to know anything about Klingon food). Let me say that I’ve never actually consumed this product myself, but I have watched my mother down a quart at a time, and then stayed well away from her for the next several days.
So tell you what the dish actually is? Okay, but you’ll regret it.
It is a calve’s foot jelly flavored with garlic. Garlic jello. Smelling vaguely of cow foot. If you can get past the smell of the dozens of bulbs of garlic (bulbs not cloves) that go into each batch. It is pale yellow in color and trembles at the approach. No wait, that’s me trembling.
I have been traumatized by this dish any number of times. The appearance of food from my Grandmother in my parents’ fridge is usually cause for celebration. So I see a tupperware container and I rip into it contemplating the treasures inside. Is is her delicious, smoky, spicy eggplant spread? Her wonderful fried chicken? Pea or matzo ball soup? Only to be blasted back against the far wall. Hair singed and smoking (which can only improve the atmosphere). Gasping “Mother, why didn’t you warn me? Why oh why?” only to be shooed out of the kitchen with a scornful look and a muttering of “Philistine”.
Being a Hispanic, I’ve eaten some pretty weird things none of which are especially revolting, just things some normal (i.e. sane) people would eat. Barbacoa (cow brains) for breakfast, menudo (that honeycomb meat not sure what it is) for the holidays (I can smell right now), and tripas (cow tripe or intestines) that are made over a wood fire with water and without cleaning out the tripe. Like I said, all of these things are actually pretty tasty but just thought I should mention them because they are pretty gross to think about.
There is something in most Thai dishes that tastes like what baby poop smells like. Yuck.
Once when I was a kid I ate an earthworm that was covered with mustard from a mustard squeeze-bottle that had been in the back yard for who knows how long. I also ate a worm (cooked) on a dare when I was 15.
I also ate a freeze-dried beetle larva that was in a tequila lollipop.
Menudo is tripe (beef stomach). I can get it in the local WalMart (we have a rapidly growing Latin community and their food needs are being provided). They also have beef heart. It has a lot of the flavor characteristics of a filet mignon. With a bit of an organy tone. I normally use a citrus based mojo to marinade, then grill. It’s a Peruvian antichucho.
I have three words for you: Soviet dorm food. All of it. I did a semester in Leningrad in 1989, during some pretty bad food shortages, and my group used to get food poisoning at least once a week. God only knows what we ate.
Too bad my buddy isn’t around to participate in this thread; she’s now in the Peace Corps in Turkmenistan. She was fearful of having to eat camel-eyeball plov (pilaf); they always save the eyeballs for guests (they are considered a delicacy).
Balachan was the most disgusting in theory–fermented, dried fish paste. Basically rotting fish wedged together into a cheeselike black fragrant block. Tasted damn good in curry, though.
Several months ago, I went to a place that was serving stuffed deep-fried shrimp. Whole. Head intact. Feelers intact. They were stale, btw–a fact which I found out after crunching it up. I swear, I could hear it screaming as I swallowed it…
The fact that I not only ate it, but went back to the buffet for a second plate (sans shrimp) says something about my intestinal fortitude.
This is nothing compared to the horror stories I’ve read elsewhere in this thread though…
Once, when I was about nine or ten, my mom was busy making Christmas cookies. She was getting all fancy and making icing and all kinds of goodies to decorate them. She turned her back for a moment, and I stuck my finger in a bowl of this fluffy, creamy white stuff she had in a bowl, thinking that it was frosting. It was Crisco! EWWWWW!
