My first roomate experience…
I had gone out of town, and when I came back I saw that the roomie had used my new pots and pans to cook, but left the pans on the stove with food still in them.
‘Well, I’m not cleaning that stinky mess’, thinks I. ‘I’ll just wait until she notices I’m home, then she’ll clean up that mess.’
Days went by. The odor became overwhelming eventually, and what had once been mashed potatos was soon taking on a second, animated life. It begins to occur to me that she has no intention of cleaing my pots and pans… that she used, etc.
But then happiness came. One day I came home and the mess and odor was gone!
Later, when I went to cook again, I couldn’t find my pots or pans anywhere! I finally noticed them when I went to the bathroom.
They were in the neighbors back yard. She had thrown them out the window!
My brother and I played a similar waiting game when we lived together. Nobody ever wants to do the dishes, do they?
I quit playing that game the day I found the kitchen counter swarming with maggots. Did you know that you can’t wipe up a mess o’ maggots? The bastards roll.
My freshman year of college we had built a large set of shelves with milk crates and wood. One of the pieces of wood covered the top of the refrigerator. Apparently, my roommate spilled a beer (or something else that was fermentable/bacteria food) on it, and didn’t pick up the wood to clean under it.
We didn’t realize there was a problem until it was time to disassemble the whole thing to clean up to move out at the end of the year. Once we lifted the wood, the stench came out. It filled the room, filled the hallway of our floor, and worked it way past the fire doors, and up to the floors above.
Folks came from around the building trying to find the source, but by then the evidence was gone, and we got to play the “Who farted” game.
Mom takes bite out of Almond Joy, leaves on counter overnight. Next day Mom goes to finish off the “Joy”, and finds wiggly maggots dancing out of the bitten end.
A couple of years ago I was making homemade pizza. The plan was for the pizza to have a Bisquick crust. Until I took down the box of Bisquick and looked inside it. It was full of little black insects. I dumped it down the drain, alerted my mother, and pondered whether to go to the store and buy more Bisquick or make biscuit dough from scratch. I made the biscuit dough from scratch, not difficult, and less time-consuming than a trip to the store and back.
Mom checked her cupboards for other insect-infested dry goods. And found some.
I once bought several 100 packs of corn tortillas for a rugby social. We didn’t use as many as I expected for the enchiladas, so I put the bags on a shelf next to the stove. About a week later, one of them was laying on its side, so I picked it up, and realized it was super light. I turned it around to realize that mice had eaten the entire backside of the tortillas through a small, neat hole in the bottom of the plastic. It was a pretty disgusting thought.
Not really a food story, but in line with the spirit o’ the thread.
I worked in a fisheries biology lab, and we would take lots of fish samples to analyse later. Sometimes there were lots of fish in a little bottle, sometimes more fish than the bottle could easily hold, displacing the preservative. One day someone opened a sample in the lab, and the rotting menhaden, partially preserved fish gut smell spilled out of the sample and filled the room.
A lovely young woman (who happened to be wearing a bikini - it’s a marine laboratory) in the next room ran like hell out of the room and down the exterior lane past a group of guys working on motors and such. Then the smell hit them.
Their conclusion: She’s cute, but if she farts like that, I’m not interested.
Damn, until I read this thread, I thought I was a slob. Thanks for making me feel better about myself
One story, which might possibly be apocryphal but was related to me by a reliable person, was of a car left in an underground car park prior to the IRA bomb in Manchester. The city centre was evacuated prior to the bomb exploding, and the woman had presumed her car was destroyed as it was under one of the badly damaged buildings.
However, she received a call several weeks later, from the police, informing her that it had been recovered, undamaged, however there was a strange smell coming from it. It turned out the frozen salmon she’d bought shortly before the evacuation hadn’t exactly stayed frozen throughout the summer…
Not necessarily the explanation of your experience, it’s nevertheless worth knowing that it can carry a bug which is not killed in the cooking process. Don’t leave cooked rice sitting around at warm temperatures!
Made sure to unplug mini fridge before leaving dorm for winter break.
Did not understand necessity of wiping out fridge and blocking door open before doing so.
2 1/2 weeks later, plugged in fridge and opened it to find shitstorm of acrid-smelling gray-green mold coating most of the inside, fed by residue of spilled orange juice left on floor of fridge in anaerobic environment created by closed door.
Cleaned mold out with Comet and sponge plus loads of hot water.
Tasted mold in everything I ate and drank for 24 hours afterwards, no matter what or where.
I keep chocolate in my crisper drawers. I never entirely forget it, but if I don’t see it every time I open the fridge, it lasts longer. And, of course, it never spoils.
