MetaChat - What's the grossest thing you've ever found in your food?

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23 November 2005

What's the grossest thing you've ever found in your food? →[More:]

I once found a worm in my salad that looked just like an alfalfa sprout. It was about two inches long, very slender, white, and squirmed and writhed slowly. It was a really gross worm without being in something I was eating, but the fact that it was in my salad, a salad that had alfalfa sprouts in it, was just unbelievably disgusting. My mom and sister and I all watched it for a minute, horrified and grimacing, then scraped our salads in the garbage. Then took the garbage out.

post by: Specklet at: 16:52 | 50 comments

Cilantro.

Nah, I don't even know what it is

posted by dodgygeezer 23 November | 16:57

A bowl of cereal with little worms in it. Thank all that is holy that I spotted them before I took a bite.

posted by LeeJay 23 November | 16:59

You know, I was going to make a cilantro disclaimer and I forgot.

posted by Specklet 23 November | 17:03

I didn't find them in my food, but I once woke up to find hundreds of maggots crawling all over the kitchen. So it's 10 am, and I'm hungover and I have a job interview in four hours and I'm like, "WTF"! These weren't just your average fly larvae, either, these were super maggots. We tried dousing them with every chemical we could find in the house, poured boiling water on them, bleach, vinegar - everything. And they just wouldn't stay dead, it was amazing. They'd pretend to be dead, and then about 20 minutes later they'd start writhing around again. Finally we just had to walk around with pieces of paper, stepping on the little fuckers. They're fast crawlers, too; my room was right next to the kitchen and I spent most of my time keeping them out because they kept coming out of the woodwork. Seriously, we spent 8 hours cleaning them up.

I think I have pictures if anyone wants to see what a maggot apocalypse looks like.

posted by cmonkey 23 November | 17:08

cmonkey, I'm never coming over to your house.

For me the grossest thing is curdled soy milk. Or natto. Although that's supposed to be food. Just not for Americans.

posted by matildaben 23 November | 17:13

cmonkey, i will regret this, but please post proof of this!

posted by Mrs.Pants 23 November | 17:17

Found a larval beet armyworm while slicing a bell pepper. Of course, the damn thing looked up at me as if to say, "Hey, I'm eatin' here!"

posted by Smart Dalek 23 November | 17:19

Earwig in the pasta. The 6 of us got to drink for free that night.

posted by arse_hat 23 November | 17:30

cmonkey, we totally need pictures.

posted by Specklet 23 November | 17:30

Crickets, in northern Thailand. But it turned out that was what I had ordered.

posted by LarryC 23 November | 17:38

The first time I ever saw a live cockroach was on a plate of food in a South San Francisco diner. Didn't do much for my appetite. More for the coackroach, I guess.

posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson 23 November | 17:42

Guess it would have to be the partially-formed chick in an egg I cracked (but did not eat) one morning pre-breakfast.

I didn't eat eggs again for about 20 years.

posted by mr_crash_davis 23 November | 17:43

But you still ate chickens, right? The chickens came first, didn't they?

posted by Smart Dalek 23 November | 17:49

Sorry, couldn't resist.

posted by Smart Dalek 23 November | 17:50

They did if the egg was fertilized.

posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson 23 November | 17:51

Band-aid in a loaf of bread.

posted by amro 23 November | 17:53

Broken Glass. In a steak, bacon and gorgonzola sandwich. Usually the sandwich included red onions, but I asked them to hold 'em. I initially thought they had fucked up the order (the glass was dark, musta been from a beer bottle). they gave me a free sandwich.

posted by jonmc 23 November | 17:53

Crash, weirdly, the same thing happened to my mother, sometime in the '60's. She has never eaten another egg to this very day.

posted by anastasiav 23 November | 17:59

A friend was eating mashed potatoes in the school cafeteria, and found a quarter in them. When he went up and told the lunch ladies, they made him give it back.

posted by ThePinkSuperhero 23 November | 17:59

Two slugs in a salad. ergh.

posted by gaspode 23 November | 18:08

OK, I think the photos are on my camera at home. Check back tomorrow for thrilling photos of God's Littlest Wonders - in my former kitchen!

posted by cmonkey 23 November | 18:13

Cigarette butt in a can of Coke. We were playing canasta and my dad thought the can was empty, I was looking the other way. We had to get a fresh deck of cards.

posted by warbaby 23 November | 18:16

Well, I'm a slob and I tend to use empty beer bottles as ashtrays. I've drank my own ashes a number of times. Didn't hurt me none, but I'm from hardy stock.

posted by jonmc 23 November | 18:18

Crash: your description sounds exactly like balut, a Filipino delicacy.

What's funny is that a lot of the things that are being described -- particularly the insects -- are culturally-prescribed aversions (Of course there's a difference between a bug that's served for dinner, as in LarryC's case, and in those that have decided to serve themselves your dinner, which is simply rude -- but in either case it's harmless). A majority of the world's population eats bugs. And why not? They're tasty and full of protein.

LarryC: speaking as one who has both cooked and eaten bugs, I'd wager your crickets tasted nutty, or possibly even a bit like bacon. Yum.

(I vote bandaids).

posted by With move as the Kimchi the user who knows 23 November | 18:21

The ashes went down just fine. It was the butt that did it. He smoked Camel straights.

posted by warbaby 23 November | 18:25

Oooh, also: I was being all adventurous, as I was raised vegetarian, by trying the meatloaf in my middle school cafeteria. After eating a few bites and pronouncing it weird but edible, I found a cockraoch baked into it.

Also: I was eating steamed broccoli and penne and found a bright broccoli-green steamed caterpillar.

On preview: yeah, it's not the bugs that really gross me out (I'd love to sample some traditional bug dishes), it's that they're unexpected and uninvited.

posted by Specklet 23 November | 18:25

It was the butt that did it. He smoked Camel straights.

A high school buddy of mine once ate a whole unlit cigarette on a dare. he didn't even gag.

Also: I was eating steamed broccoli and penne and found a bright broccoli-green steamed caterpillar.

That happened at the familymc dinner table when I was young. Nobody dared touch the broccoli. (although ours was boiled, steaming would be a mite exotic for my folks). My sister once bit into a frozen fly in an ice cream cone, she was not pleased.

posted by jonmc 23 November | 18:29

When I was a kid I found a spider in my McDonald's fried apple pie. And my brother once bit into a Chicken McNugget that turned out to be completely raw on the inside.

posted by gigawhat? 23 November | 18:33

Actually, WmatKtuwk, it wasn't the fact that it was a bug crawling around in my food that grossed me out, per se: it's that he didn't wash his hands after using the restroom.

posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson 23 November | 18:37

And my brother once bit into a Chicken McNugget that turned out to be completely raw on the inside.

Dude, I once ordered a sausage-egg-and-cheese breakfast sandwich at Dunkin' Donuts. The Indian guy behind the counter brought me one suspiciously quickly. I held my hand to the box and felt no warmth. I opened it and found a untoasted croissant filled with am unthawed sausage patty and a slice of unmelted American cheese. Thankfully, he had forgotten the egg.

"Hey!" I yelled.

"Iz problem?" He asked.

"It's fine," I said "except you forgot to cook it!"

"Very bad. I fix."

Perhaps he was trying to make a breakfast sushi roll and I stifled his creativity. Too bad.

posted by jonmc 23 November | 18:37

I once found a barbie hand in a slice of cheesecake at Dennys.
Once at a 50s diner, now closed, every single person in my group found hair in their food. Lots of it.

posted by kellydamnit 23 November | 18:53

I am not reading this thread. Not a word of it.

posted by jrossi4r 23 November | 18:53

I read this thread whilst eating lunch.

posted by cmonkey 23 November | 19:08

Dodgy, we call it by its proper name: coriander.

posted by urbanwhaleshark 23 November | 19:12

I once found a latex glove in a large salad platter we had delivered at work. No-one touched the salad after that, but it kept me wondering about the rest of the food. That, and I *really* hoped that it was the glove had been used for food prep and not for randy shenanigans in the restaurant kitchen.
There was also the time that my brother found a cockroach leg in his hot-&-sour soup once. The really disgusting part was that we were at a chinese restaurant having everything family style, so everyone was having the exact same soup at the time. Eeeurgh.

posted by ooga_booga 23 November | 19:13

Dodgy, urbanwhaleshark may call it coriander, but I say that both coriander and cilantro come from the same plant: coriander is the seed, cilantro is the leaf.

And it is delicious.

posted by Specklet 23 November | 19:26

I once found a barbie hand in a slice of cheesecake at Dennys.

That sounds like the first line of a Dave Eggers story to me, for some reason.

posted by anastasiav 23 November | 19:39

Specklet: Something similar happened to my son in a restaurant, only it was a LIVE MOTH! The restaurant? Hooters!

posted by Doohickie 23 November | 19:42

Stinkbug in the lima beans. Same color, same size.

posted by atchafalaya 23 November | 19:53

An egg that was filled with blood. An otherwise normal looking egg on the outside but with no egg white, no yolk, just blood.

posted by timefactor 23 November | 20:42

"Crash: your description sounds exactly like balut, a Filipino delicacy."

OK, balut is just nasty.

Although the egg I opened looked nastier (or maybe just my memory of it is nastier). Either way, now I won't eat eggs again for another twenty years.

posted by mr_crash_davis 23 November | 20:50

Onions

posted by DeepFriedTwinkies 23 November | 21:00

Ah, the fond childhood memories of fresh leaf-lettuce salad with a smooth creamy homemade dressing and.....little green inchworms.

This happened on more than one occasion; since Mom is a gold-plated member of the "clean your plate club" as well as the "we don't ever waste food" cadre, her response while my brothers and I were groaning was "Pick them out. They won't hurt you."

A few years back I gave her a salad spinner for Xmas....since clearly she needs to wash her produce a mite better.

posted by mihail 23 November | 21:14

I try to put most food horrors from my memory (or else I'd never eat at a restaurant again--and since I used to work at a few... I'll just keep it at that). But I've definitely found maggots in food that I thought was still good. My father once ordered a burger from a fast food place while travelling and it was entirely wrapped in hair. And they wouldn't give him a free sandwich.

Although it isn't food, I once started pouring a bottle of wine at a party of mine and found chunks of something at the bottom. It also smelled like kerosene. Although I was fine with drinking it, everyone else made me take it back.

posted by sleepy_pete 23 November | 21:59

I forgot to mention that one time I found a dolphin in my tuna salad.

posted by mr_crash_davis 23 November | 22:12

I found an inch long, wafer-thin, razor-sharp shard of glass in a Genessee Cream Ale can once. I 'found' it with my tongue; it buried itself and I had to pull it out.

I tossed that can and immediately opened another. After all, I had to dull the pain of my sore tongue somehow, didn't I?

posted by ikkyu2 24 November | 01:18

I had been taking sandwiches to work, made them from a loaf one day and had them for lunch - no problem. The next day went to make sandwiches from the rest of the loaf, knew they were getting near the use-by date so took the top couple of slices out to get at the crust. Opened up the four slices and between each of them was a mass of tiny spiders running around with a layer of web covering the face of each slice. It was a real struggle to keep my breakfast down. Thinking about this is giving me problems keeping today's breakfast down.

I really hate finding hairs in my food too, I remember having some pie once when I was a kid and felt a hair in my mouth. I pulled it out and it just kept coming, it was about a foot long and I had swallowed most of it so could feel it coming back up my throat. May well have chucked on that one.

posted by biffa 24 November | 07:30

Opened up the four slices and between each of them was a mass of tiny spiders running around with a layer of web covering the face of each slice.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

posted by LeeJay 24 November | 08:28

I once had soup with hairy meat in it. I was told it was chicken, but chickens don't have grey fur anywhere that I'm aware of... So I think of it as rat soup, which perhaps indicates resourcefulness during shortages?

posted by MightyNez 24 November | 12:02

Is it wrong that I'm crying with laughter between gags?

Not horrifying, but there was a foot long, thick black hair cooked into the omelette I had at IHOP at 4 am after the senior prom. Went the whole length of the omelette, yessir.

posted by tristeza 25 November | 20:18

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