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01 April 2006
What's the most disgusting thing you've eaten?→[More:]Inspired by Miko's McMeatJelly story which sent my naptime imagination running. A dare? Something you didn't realize would be so gawdawful gross? A cooking experiment gone horribly awry?
When I was in high school, we used to "out-tough" each other by eating bugs. Which wasn't so bad, just do not, under any circumstances eat a moth. They are foul, dusty buggers.
There's a Thai place near my house that we get take out from. One night they were running late and gave me a bowl of soup that smelled like rancid vomit and tasted about what I'd expect rancid vomit to taste like.
Some folks think oysters are the nasty but I love me some oysters!
Hot dogs. Raw. Chicken, beef and/or pork. Seriously, that's about as gross as it gets.
I've had an experience or two with weevil'ed grain products. Guh.
Natto is pretty foul stuff.
Despite my previous comments, I've had kimchee, and I did go a bit emetic over the ordeal. I had to know if it tasted as bad as it smells. It's worse.
I don't think I could eat anything that's still moving, unless we're talking about freshly caught Yellowtail or Bluefin Tuna steaks the size of phone books half-seared on a Hibachi on the transom of the deep sea sportfisher you just caught the Tuna from.
Yeah, really, really fresh fish kinda moves a bit for a while even after it's been sliced up. But OMG is it good. I'm probably banned from being a vegetarian or vegan for life after admitting this.
I had a swig of export-only Irish potcheen once, sober, on an empty stomach. That was really vile; it tasted bad, it went down harsh, and it kept reminding me of its noxious presence for hours.
Once when I was in Italy I got drunk on bubbly red wine from a jug and was served a plate of whole, pickled little octopi in a light vinaigrette. They were delicious, but as I got drunker I imagined them biting my throat with their beaks and wrapping their tentacles around my tongue to avoid being swallowed. That was creepy and I had to stop eating them, which I do regret extremely.
I am a cheerful omnivore; I don't recall intentionally eating anything that was truly vile without any redeeming features. Growing up with 25 fruit trees, I ate my share of worms, larvae and other bugs; no big deal really.
Possibly the worst thing I've ever had were garden snails cooked by my 6th grade bio teacher. We raised them from snail pups, raced them on cellophane-covered boards, and then she cracked them open and cooked them. She used way, way too much garlic and so they were nasty. In general I don't like escargot but I've had them prepared alone and in cassoulets at a remarkable restaurant on the east side of Midtown Manhattan and they're not terrible there.
In Japan, one of our bento lunches came with whole raw baby squid. Chewy, unsurprisingly. I haven't been tempted to try them since, but I do love fried calamari.
Hrrmmm. Probably a live huhu grub (which is beetle larvae). It's a pretty common thing to do in NZ. They are yummy fried up - taste nutty.
what else? I'm not really grossed out by much in principle (like, there's stuff that I don't like, but that's different). I've eated horse, snails, bugs of many kinds.
some people can't eat eel. Damn, but I couldn't live without eel sushi.
I Love Tacos: That reminds me of elementary school. We used to eat our napkins in the school cafeteria. One kid tried to impress the group by eating his napkin, but to show him we were blase we all ate our napkins too. That day and several times later!
Natto is really gross. I like all sorts of shocking food, but I agree, natto is gross.
Porp, it was at a Mexican restaurant in Austin, and they only had it for a few days. During the season, there are a few restaurants that get their hands on it -- presumably directly from Mexico.
It was fine, although not terribly memorable. Something I'd eat again, but nothing I remember well enough to crave.
Slim Jims. That's some truck-stop goodness, right there... a squishy, fatty stick of mystery meat. I love them, esp. with a Coke.
Other than that, I'm a notoriously timid eater. Don't do seafood, dislike a lot of fruit (but love veggies), can't tolerate meatloaf. I LOVE peppers of all kinds, even the ones I can't eat because they rip me inside out. (It's not the heat... I can eat jalapenos raw, but bell peppers tear me up inside, which sucks because I love their taste.)
My grandmother used to make this tomato/beef flavored aspic every Thanksgiving. God it was gross. The only two people that ever enjoyed it were my grandmother and my father (and this grandmother was his mother-in-law, so it wasn't like he'd been conditioned as a kid to like it). It was always pretty funny when we had new people over and we offered it to them. They would take it out of politeness despite the smell and everyone would watch as they tried it. The grimacing "Oh, that's good" responses were comedic gold.
Agreed. Also not a fan of squishy stuff inside a skin that "pops"... a firm grape is good, a squishy grape is nasty. I like the taste of mushrooms in soup and on pizza, but I can't imagine biting into one of those huge shiitakes... *shudder*
I like liver, too. Oscar Meyer's "Liver Cheese" is so damn yummy- even though every slice has enough fat and cholesterol to kill you dead. I limit myself to two packs a year.
i've eaten some pretty awful things but i'd have to say thin gruel with what looked like brocoli specks or this soup at the Drake that was all dill when i was ten or so.
Re: the aspic, I'm the only child in my family who would eat bitter melon, so if my mom cooked it, it was only for her, my dad, and me.
Re: more commonly-hated foods, I haven't had fresh durian, but I've had durian pastries. They smell like a petroleum byproduct. I've had pig's blood (sauteed), and I like all innards: gizzards, livers, hearts, brains, tripe. Pig's hooves and ears are great (sorry, pigs), and chicken's feet too.
I ate some really foul cheese once at a cheese event (my old college had a Cheesefest every year)- I nearly threw up in my Superhero costume in front of a whole group of people.
In the year 1990, your pal Moonbird had begged his mother to allow his best friend and spiritual guru to move in. This was ultimately allowed, which by default also included his bi-polar Italian girlfriend and several other wandering troubarours. One night, Moonbird was up impossibly late studying for his mid-terms and Amigo and his pals were outside playing guitar and making all kinds of racket' at something like 3 in the morning. A very irritiable Moonbird went to the window, and shouted down for his wily trickster-like friend to shut the fuck up. All was quiet for a moment.
Moonbird tucked his teenage punk self into his crib-of-rebellion and started to nod off. Suddenly, a thundering herd galloped up the stairs to my room, and Amigo and his troupe entered. Amigo ordered me out of bed, turned on the lights, and grabbed my two-foot long beloved forelock of hair in one hand and flashed some scissors in the other.
He then launched into a bit about how important it was to live a little, and said that I'd been failing to live up to the standards of the standardless. So, if I didn't eat this *thing* I'd lose my forelock. The thing was this:
One piece of bologna
Peanut butter
Powdered strawberry drink mix
All lovingly rolled up into one horrid taco of humility.
I obviously chose to eat the Damned Thing, and I'm grateful for it. I kept my forelock, but most importantly, I realized that a little noise at 3am can be a relieving sign of wild, wonderful life in an otherwise routine-infested and worry-soaked universe.
It was taco night, and we'd laid out the making across our kitchen counter and after a few soft tacos and a few more Coronas we'd settled in to watch a movie. It was a long movie, and about halfway through I had a yen for another taco.
Now, during the film, we have our bitchin' Dolby 5.1 Kickass Sound System going, so I hadn't heard any commotion in the kitchen, but when I flipped the light on, it was obvious that at least one of our three evil cats (yes, we have three, yes, all are evil, if charming) had gotten into the taco fixings. The meat looked like it had been munched at (one cat picks her food up with a paw and eats off of that, and there were telltale scoops, replete with clawmarks), the tomatoes were savaged (I don't know why the other cat loves tomatoes, but he does), and the only thing seemingly untouched were the tortillas. So I constructed a taco out of the untouched side of the meat, added some shredded lettuce, and topped it with my homemade patent-pending roasted poblano guacamole.
It tasted funny. I mean, really funny. And not funny ha-ha, funny BAD.
So, of course, I handed it to my wife.
"Taste this. It's terrible," I said, thereby perpetuating some comedian's best riff.
She is wiser than I am, so she sniffed it first. And grinned.
"You just ate cat puke," she said.
Reconstructing things after I finished vomiting, we discovered that kitty had yurked directly into the guacamole, rending judgment on my culinary skills, evidently.
And it's hard to distinguish cat puke from guacamole.
Some kind of goat's head stew or something - I'm still not exactly clear on just what it was. In the early '90s My husband and I were visiting the island of Ikaria, which is an unbelievably gorgeous place with an interesting population. During the Greek dictatorship it was an exile island (which seems funny to me - "And for your punishment, we are going to exile you.... to PARADISE"), which means that a lot of people who were very passionate, independent, and way-left-of-center ended up there. Also, in some ways it was quite a "closed" population... unlike other islands that were wooing tourists, Ikaria was still pretty private and sort of suspicious of outsiders.
Nevertheless, when we at one point trekked to the high mountain village we ended up in the middle of a big celebration (the name day for the village's patron saint, I think) whereupon the villagers set us down with food and drink. The food being this... whatever it was - and the basic laws of courtesy being what they are, I was obliged to eat at least one bowl.
Even though it was summer, it was night and high up and it became quite chilly, and the thing I was eating seemed to be mostly floating congealed mystery animal jelly, and the fact that I also couldn't see it very well didn't help matters, since in my imagination I was eating goats' eyes and stuff. Anyway, nice people, beautiful place, semi-bacchanal weird fun... but, ew, the stew.
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
photo by ethylene
