A fellow brought durian to a potluck at our church. The smell readily fills all available space. When I entered the basement (where the lunch was held), my immediate reaction was to start checking for a gas leak. It smells just like the agent that is added to natural gas to give it a stink.
I cautiously dipped a spoon into a small cupful of the substance and tasted it: not only did it taste like it smelled, but it had an odd metallic note to it, as if I had a mouthful of nickels. Yuck.
bughunter, I am not a vegetarian and love me meat. But tempeh is fantastic when cooked properly. Before it was discovered by tofuburger eating loons, Indonesians were happily frying it as tempe goreng, which is a crispy, savoury treat. From all the food I ate when I lived in Indonesia, tempe goreng is the one I find myself missing the most.
But the few times I have eaten tempeh in health food places back home, it has been very damprottensocklike.
I’m also a big durian, tofu, lychee fan. In fact, I’m tolerant of most everything except sweetmeats and, shudder, carrots.
sweetbreads, not sweetmeats! crystalised fruits are generally acceptable.
My wife was out of town over thanksgiving. A neighbor invited me over for dinner. So far so good. Everything looked delicious as we sat down to eat. Turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, potatoes and gravy (one of my favorites), corn, hot rolls, and I forget what else.
Along with the rest I had a generous mound of mashed potatoes with a big pool of gravy in the middle.
What a mistake! The gravy had some strange unaccustomed seasoning which almost gagged me and I had to be polite, choke it down and comment about how good EVERYTHING was to please the hostess.
“Beware of the Cog”
Hmm… well the only thing that comes to mind immediately after reading the question, was a situation at my grandmother’s place when I was a kid. I was thirsty, so she gets a jug of water from the fridge and poured me a glass. I took one sip and realized, oh god this is NOT water… at least not JUST water. It was drained cabbage water that she soaked cabbage in before cooking with it or something. (I absolutely can’t stand cabbage!) I choked it down but it was the nastiest “drink” I ever encountered.
One story that involves my friend’s brother: we all live in ontario and one christmas their family decided to drive to florida for the holidays…or maybe it was during the summer, i forget. Anyway, they brought along the one grandmother too, who sat at the very back of the van with the luggage (don’t laugh!), while the rest sat in the middle portion and of course the front. So half way there the brother switched places with the grandmother. Mind you it’s horribly hot and the only drink is an open can of coke. So he starts drinking what’s left of the pop and to his dismay, realizes theres several cigarette butts and ashes in the coke!!! He then SWALLOWS everything, and said not one word to his family about it. (he told me this a while ago for kicks). I would spit the contents in my mouth on the floor of the van or something and clean it up later… no WAY would I swallow cigarette butts and ashes !!!
About three-quarters of the contents of my old truck’s ashtray.
And I was damn glad I ate it.
Boy, this thread brings up some bad food memories.
I’ll 2nd or 10th oysters. Sorry, but it ain’t seafood. A member of the phlegm family, in my opinion. Got tricked into eating one fried by my mother. I never forgave her for that one.
In Greece, we were served a platter of dubious-looking seafood, one of the items obviously being octopus. Having never tried it, and being somewhat adventurous (foodwise), I bit into it. My jaw snapped back with such force that I put my left eye out with my nose. It’s why I wear a patch to this day.
The Portuguese have a national dish called “Cozido”, which is traditionally served around New Years. My workers had me come out back to their lunch room and served this mess up, waiting eagerly for me to try it. I swear, I didn’t know those things were part of a cow’s anatomy. It’s basically meat and vegetables boiled until they’re quite past dead, then drizzled with olive oil. The poorer folks only get things like ears and noses and the like and the sight of someone grinding happily on a piece of gristle is enough to make you gag. “Cow in a blender”, I calls it. It’s all washed down with an unbelievably raw purple wine made that very day in someone’s toilet basin.
Lastly would have to be the “mishwi” given me when I left Bamako, Mali. I say “given”, but I forked out the money for it. Not a problem, those folks are far too poor to afford that sort of thing. Imagine the platters of goat meat (an incredibly fatty substance) sitting in the 100+ heat for a couple of hours with the accompanying armies of flies and ants prior to the celebration. The paper covering just didn’t cut the mustard. I poked at it a bit, but wisely ate none of it. Everyone else was in goatfat-smeared heaven.
One peanut butter sandwhich. Palve had one also.
Long story that includes vomit.
Worst food in the OP-referenced situation: Pig’s blood over rice at a girlfriend’s parents’ house. I ate a plate, but was out of sorts because this was the first time we’d met, and the parents were so gleeful at my discomfort.
Other stuff I’ve eaten: tripe, hundred year old eggs, chickens’ feet, raw oysters and blood sausage. (In the blood sausage case I’d had several days’ warning). Wasn’t too fond of a plate of boiled tongue that I think an ex-roommate didn’t cook correctly.
The winner for me, and I still don’t know what came over me, was fish eyes. They were like latex chalk.
Still TBD: Brains and bugs (meaning, bugs that I know about beforehand, not the miscellaneous bug parts and shellac that we all eat).
Oh. The gravy story reminded me of the first time I was fed fresh cilantro.
I was a few months into a new job - a small startup aerospace company, where the electronics tech was this tiny little hotbody of a mexican girl, straight out of the USAF, who I thought I had the hots for.
She hosted a Halloween party at her apartment, and made some nachos. Her recipe for nachos was a can of Campbell’s Nacho Cheese soup mixed and heated with a jar of salsa, poured over a pan full of tortilla chips, and then mounded high with coarsely chopped fresh cilantro… like it was lettuce on a subway sandwich.
I thought it was parsley. And I wanted to impress miss-hottie-who-never-checked-her-wiring (another story), so I choked down two plates of this stuff. Being a Gringo from the East Coast, I had no idea what cilantro was. I just knew that the food on my plate had the most powerful, cloying, skunky flavor. But hoping to get laid (never happened), I ate and smiled.
I tasted cilantro for two days. It was a couple more years before I even learned what it was that I kept tasting from time to time, and to associate it with “the parsley.”
Ever since, I have not been able to stand cilantro. It ruins any food it touches. And it sucks, because I love the carnitas (pork tenderloin) at little hole in the wall authentic Mexican places that are all over LA here, and every one of them garnishes their carnitas with cilantro and onion. I learned to ask for no cilantro, and to send it back if it comes out with cilantro.
One time, I got a plate of carnitas tacos that they had gone and put the cilantro on, so I sent it back saying “no cilantro por favor.” It came back with most of the cilantro gone, but not all of it. The chef had just brushed off the biggest pieces. Hell, I could have done a better job than that, but the cilantro was still there, and had ruined the food. So I sent it back again. “No quiero cilantro, nada, nunca… whatever, none at all. Please make me a fresh order without any cilantro.” So they came out again, a fresh batch of tacos just like the first ones.
At this point I became irritated, and raised my voice at the senorita serving me. “Look, I want new tacos that have never touched cilantro. Take these back and bring me carnitas with no cilantro.” And then I notice that I have the attention of el chefe in the back… thru the little window, and that I’ve made myself a prime target for “a little something extra” in my food, so I quickly add “and this time I want extra sperm in that.”
And I turned around and walked out.
Of course, there are so many places that serve good carnitas, I never have needed to go back.
hmmm… cilantro. I love that stuff. It tastes so “GREEN”, thats the only way I can describe it. We put it in almost all our rice dishes and chicken soup. mmm…
I completely ruined a giant pot of chili once with one, just ONE habanero pepper though. Made the whole pot taste like you were sticking your tongue on a hot iron. eeech.
Mayo and octopus. Separately - God help us if they are ever served together.
This thread has made my stomach turn.
Ok a food that scores a 10 on the gross scale is MOUNTAIN OYSTERS. You know, pig testicles. There is something unnerving about eating that part of the body. Blech!
As disgusting as this thread is, it is also very funny so keep em coming.
CairaJade: Only my mother would do something like that. She can eat mayo out of the jar with a spoon. I hate the stuff myself.
Mayo, ewwwwwwww. When I eat spaghetti at friends’ houses I am consistantly forced to eat Ragu. I hate Ragu.
Okra.
It feels like a wad of someone’s booger in your mouth.
Raw Rabbit Eyeballs.
(in SERE survival school…)
geewhiz, that is beyond disgusting. Mayo straight from the JAR???
I have a horrible bit of memory of somebody forcing me to taste mayo from a spoon – I couldn’t have been more than four years old, I was on a sofa and she (whoever she was) was looming over me. This might have something to do with why I loathe the stuff.
WhiteRabbit…oh that’s horrible. I can’t stand the consistency or smell of mayo or that horrible miracle whip. But it did remind me of a family story.
My mom and I went to my aunts for thanksgiving or some other food holiday one year. Her MIL is living with them and she is like 85 years old. She wanted to make the deviled eggs.
They were absolutly disgusting. She added just enough mayo to make the egg yolk stick but not enough to mask the egg yolk taste. Also no relish, nothing else. My aunt insisted we could not be rude and not eat them until she stuck one into her mouth and almost vomited.
So while I kept the MIL busy in the living room, my mom and aunt fixed the eggs to at least make them gaggable. I ate the egg white after scooping all the gross stuff out.
Okay, Just had one this weekend. Was eating shrimp with the cocktail sauce on the side and the tails were still on, I guess to use as handles.
Anyway, as I put the shrimp into my mouth, instead of biting the tail off I pull with my teeth and draw the shrimp into my mouth.
Just as it goes in, I catch the tinest glance as the mud vein goes into my mouth. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaugh! Too late to spit it out, people are looking in my direction, maybe not right at me, but still, too late to spit it into my hand.
I swallowed, and felt nauseated the rest of the day.