Caviar
I was on a cruise a while back and the first course consisted of amongst other things, caviar. When I eat, I have to finish everything on my plate…I’m not sure why, but I have to. With the caviar, they gave us some chopped up boiled eggs. When I first tried the caviar I absolutely hated it. It took three servings of eggs (in which I would hide the caviar as best I could) for me to finish that crap.
mayo
Gifelte fish.
The one single time that I gave in to my grandmother and tried it was mere weeks before I went totally vegetarian.
Coincidence? You be the judge.
Grass Jelly drink and fried dace (it had a picture of a fish on the can, I assume it was fish). I got them as a gag holiday gift for some friends, and after a few cocktails we decided to try them. The grass jelly drink was… very gelatinous. And foul, in an earthy sort of way. The fried dace came in an oblong tin, and resembled week old catfood mixed with chili sauce. We had it on crackers. I am sure there are worse things to eat, but I will never willingly subject myself to these two foods again.
Fried calamari. It smelled like rubber, it looked like rubber, it felt like rubber, and it tasted like rubber. They called it fried calamari, I call it rubber. Yuck!!!
There are of course, plenty of much grosser things that won’t go near my mouth. liver being one of them. yeah, I’ll try that, the day after I pull the filtering system off my AC and chew on that for a while. Same concept. Ewwww.
Tomato aspic. It would have been bad enough, but before I took the first bite I thought it was fruit-flavored jello (yes, tomato is a fruit, but you know what I mean) with whipped cream (which turned out to be mayo).
Sheep’s brains!
I was in Senegal, staying with a fairly well-to-do family. At least once a week we’d all sit down to a big bowl of rice & veggies with meat sauce. It took me a couple of weeks to figure out what kind of meat it was. The jawbone sitting in the bowl was one clue, but the night I knew for sure was when I came to dinner and saw half of a sheep’s skull sitting in the middle of the bowl. Halfway through dinner, my sister turned the skull over to get more meat out. It rolled over, coming to rest “face up”; the one remaining eye stared glassily out at us. In the most Indiana Jones moment of my travels, my sister then put her finger into the socket in order to take out the eyeball and pop it in her mouth. I had to try very hard not to laugh, I was so disgusted and yet amused by the culture-shockiness of it all.
(And yes, I know that disgustingness is all relative, and I’d rather eat sheep brain than chitlins, if it came down to it…!)
Oh geesh, and one more. Brain tacos.
I was hungover and walking my ma to the train, she stopped in this mexican joint, she said to get something for breakfast.
She comes out and says “here honey, take a bite”
What is it? says I
“It’s an egg taco, have a bite” while she holds it up
bite chew chew … blurrrrrrgh!!!
My dad’s fried squash. Slimier than snail shit, and about as palatable.
Lychee fruit.
It was like biting into an old boiled egg that’d been soaked in cheap drugstore perfume. Nastiest thing EVER. I’d rather eat an entire umeboshi plum on its own than ever have another sliver of lychee. Blech, ptooey, gag!
I’ve had that grass gel stuff too. Blurrghhh its like taking a dog dish that’s been out on the lawn collecting stray blades of gras and guzzling it down. Also, it has this unpleasant slimy texture (No beverage should feel slimy! It is forbidden!)
I was given squirrel brains as a child, and told they were scrambled eggs…I still get a little sick thinking about it.
Haggis.
I tried it last spring in London, and had to literally force myself to swallow one bite, then disposed of the rest.
Limburger cheese.
I knew it had a reputation for having a bad odor, but I figured that people do buy it and eat it, so how bad can it be? So I unrapped it, and was almost bowled over by a smell like very concentrated cat urine. And the taste was even worse.
Red Bull, oh that is a drink; well, I did just try some Phillips Seafood Restaurants Crab and Spinach Dip - tasted like foul fish and cream cheese.
odd…lychee fruit and grass jelly drink…and fish dace (supposed to be either boiled after made into balls, or deep fried) are totally okay with me.
I used to like durian when I was younger but then I realized how it smelled…lol
Worst thing I tried were these braised chicken feet that they serve in chinese restaurants for dim sum.
Menudo–it’s this Mexican stew of pig guts. Slimy, rubbery, with a flavor highly reminicent of pig crap. Yum, yum.
My ex-almost-mother-in-law’s oyster casserole. This stuff was considered a delicacy by my ex-almost-husband’s entire family; I thought it was too much like chunky snot in Corningware to be particularly charmed.
The first time I tried calamari, it came out all rubbery. Then I realized that I had overcooked it. The second time, pure heaven.
I love calamari, but I hate the way a lot of restaraunts cook it. There are only a few places here in Vegas where they can cook it without rubberizing it. Interestingly, it’s usually the cheaper oriental restaraunts (or, sometimes, bars) that do it right. The more expensive places turn it into something completely inedible.
I prefer to cook it myself, but it’s hard to get mom out of the house and she hates the smell of, well, food cooking.
BTW, it helps to soak it in lemon juice before you cook it.
I didn’t try it there was this cheese at a market in Sardinia I saw, which was literally crawling with small worms, maggots I guess. I was told it was meant to be so. It was about 40% maggot versus 60% cheese…regret I cannot remember it’s name. :eek:
Hijack - best calamari receipe ever:
Chop some zuchini into 1/2 to 3/4 inch chunks, skin and deseed some plum tomatoes ditto. Crushed garlic to taste, ditto red chilli pepper, chop big handful of parsley. Clean and slice calamari as usual - proportions roughly 50/50 vegetables to squid.
Heat big iron frying pan nice and hot, add some good olive oil fry zuchini for bare minute, add tomatoes and chilli and fry another 30 seconds, add calamari and garlic and fry another 90 secs to 2 minutes. Take off heat ,throw in parsley, stir and serve with good chunky bread to mop up those juices. Usually as a starter.
End hijack.
Prairie oysters. :eek:
I don’t even like the sea ones.
A hunk of tofu. I thought it was a piece of chicken. My gagging was heard throughout the dining hall.