My most horrible food mistake so far...

[Phil Pascoe]

I remember the last meal at a scout camp when I was about fifteen. As was the custom we ate everything that left after the camp for breakfast on the last day. Fried mackerel, cornflakes, porridge, sausages fried together topped with cold canned custard.

 

[SeeO2]

Tripe. Just...don't.

I used to be a butcher and selling some tripe to a customer once, remarked I’d never tried it, she cooked it and brought me some in.
I agree with you, just don’t.

 

[SeeO2]

Well, my first one, as a teenager, was thinking putting marmite in coffee might be nice... Nope!
My second one, recently, was accidentally making tea with the descaling water from the kettle, full of citric acid and dissolved limescale. Truly horrible.

This evening, I found something worse than these. Worse even, than if these things in some nightmare scenario, were combined!

Ready?

Rancid ramen. (You know ramen, those instant noodles that come with a packet of mysterious but nonetheless delicious powder)

Apparently my nose doesn't detect "rancid" and only registers it as "a bit stale". Not that I checked in the first place - why would I? So the noodles were only a year past their best before date as I found after the event. Not something that would normally bother me.

So I'm munching away, thinking, these really do seem rather on the stale side. I must have eaten half the bowl before I decided that actually they had a horrible chemical taste and seemed to be burning my tongue slightly and I could not bring myself to eat any more. So the remainder went in the bin. I like a fried egg with my noodles. Even the egg had become inedible!

Well I've eaten crisps, prunes, Gorgonzola, various biscuits, drunk strong coffee, eaten more biscuits, shortbread, and it must be 4 or 5 hours after the event and I can still taste it! Even worse, I keep getting er, "reminders" every so often. And I know I'm not going to sleep well after that coffee...

So take it from me, don't ever eat rancid ramen! You will regret it, I promise. Even more than your other bad food mistakes.

We put out of date packet suet into dumplings in a beef casserole once, tainted the whole thing, had to dump the lot.

 

[Bingy man]

We have so many different things to eat these days most look quite delicious and I’d have no problem trying some of the more exotic foods but why on earth would you eat these disgusting and not fit for human consumption foods . You could understand it if your country was ravaged by war and the infrastructure was destroyed and it was a case of eat it or starve but people are eating the most disgusting food just for likes and followers on social media . Rats, roadkill , wild birds etc

 

[John Brown]

I love meat of many types and I’ll try anything- my latest was ostrich ( very nice ) but I don’t do offal- force fed liver as a child( cooked for hours ) nasty kidney , heart , brain, liver etc are not for me ,, and not wanting to offend any vegan members but does anyone know why given their resentment of meat eaters like myself and rearing animals for food - why do all of their foods contain words like vegan - bacon, vegan sausage rolls, vegan chicken , etc just wandering…

I think it's because some people stop eating meat for ethical reasons, not because they don't like the experience.

Albanian liver in Turkey is delicious. I've tried without success to cook it at home.
My father ate tripe, and I tried it once, although I did eat some when I was working in France many years ago, and it wasn't so bad. Sheep's brains, also in France. It's risky when you overestimate your linguistic abilities.

 

[AJB Temple]

I must admit I do find it odd when, as popped up in this thread somewhere, people say they don't like eating animal innards such as liver. It's quite common. Everything we eat as carnivores is animal innards: why differentiate a bit of rump from sweetbreads or liver? It's all bits of a body. I am quite partial to calves liver, sweetbreads and such like - yet others find the very thought of this repulsive, yet will happily gnaw the flesh off a rack of rib bones. Must just be societal conditioning I suppose.

 

[Jester129]

Had to tell my dear old mum that I no longer liked liver, because she used to cook it in the oven for hours! I personally love it fried quickly, with some fried onions (lightly salted) and buttery mashed spuds. Wonderful!

 

[throbscottle]

We put out of date packet suet into dumplings in a beef casserole once, tainted the whole thing, had to dump the lot.

Yeah. Rancid is a horrible word for a reason...

 

[Cozzer]

Liver.
Kidney.
Anything with garlic in.
Buttermilk.

The first three are my father's fault. He loved 'em, so as a then-rebellious teenager, I didn't.
However, I did try them when a little older.
I was right, first time.

As a kid, we used to visit a relative in the wilds of Galway, a farmer's wife who "knew what was good for you".
I used to dread going. You could see her farmhouse "moving" from yards away...countless millions of daddy-longlegs used to be crawling all over the outer walls. And then there was the buttermilk she used to give you in a tumbler....in effect, warm milk that had gone off.
Disgusting.

 

[throbscottle]

I love meat of many types and I’ll try anything- my latest was ostrich ( very nice ) but I don’t do offal- force fed liver as a child( cooked for hours ) nasty kidney , heart , brain, liver etc are not for me ,, and not wanting to offend any vegan members but does anyone know why given their resentment of meat eaters like myself and rearing animals for food - why do all of their foods contain words like vegan - bacon, vegan sausage rolls, vegan chicken , etc just wandering…

I've been a vegetarian since about 1984 - my mother's doing initially but eventually it's because I just don't like meat now. I actually believe in mixed farming, if farm we must.

Anyway, being vegan is the big trendy thing with certain celebrities doing it, manufacturers of convenience foods really jumped on the bandwagon to sell stuff to this newly expanding customer base - not so many years ago vegans were very under-catered for in this arena because they were a fringe group and generally regarded as a bit mad.

What really gets my goat is that people are becoming vegan and simply buying meat-substitutes as though it's completely natural, they .don't have to make the effort that my vegan friends did long ago. They are buying into something artificial in the name of being more eco friendly.

So it's great that there are more meat -free convenience options for me, but some of these really are supposed to have some cheese in them and not it's fairly terrible substitute.

Also, I always worry about the consequences when big companies muscle in on this sort of thing. What nasty tricks are they up to to put on this "ethical" front? Not to mention it's yet another pressure (albeit a small one) to increase arable farming, which is not good.

 

[sploo]

As a younger and (much) less worldly wise man I once made an Italian tomato and sausage style casserole for a group of friends. I couldn't find the usual bag of weaker-than-nun's-pish Jalapeño chillies at my local supermarket. So I bought a bag of these cute little pumpkin like chillies and dumped them in. They were Scotch Bonnets.

It did not go well.

 

[Diver Fred]

Courgettes! Every time I've had them I've been violently ill (read projectile vomiting!).

But being serious - Chinese food in the Chinese countryside. Their stomach bugs are different to western ones and hence much of their food is not that edible for westerners.

 

[mudman]

Semolina. I still vividly remember a school dinner lady who had very red hair done in a huge beehive and pointy 'Far Side' glasses. I would refuse to eat the muck and she would force feed it to me. Wouldn't be allowed nowadays.
And school milk. some have fond memories of it. I hated it. It was always gone off and rancid and would insist us kids still drank it. Vile. Not matched until many years later by my mother in law who wouldn't throw any food away and would use the cream no matter how old it was. I soon learnt that pudding was to be avoided.

 

[AJB Temple]

I have to admit, despite my comment above, that Andouillettes don't float my boat. The colon smell makes it through all cooking processes and although some people find the sausage to be a delicacy, I don't.

By far and away the most challenging thing I was ever served was as a young man at a banquet hosted by Bank of China for the Chinese Embassy. We were served sheep eyeballs. You were meant to fish them out of a broth, with chopsticks, and suck the aqueous innards out. I think it was a bit of a test for me, though a Director of the bank demonstrated first and appeared to enjoy it, so I gave it a go. It was actually no different really to the jelly in a pork pie, but I am sensitive about eyes and so it was the thought mainly that made me queasy.

I've tried jelly fish in Japan and that made my wife heave, but it was not much different to eating oysters, which I like.

 

[AJB Temple]

Semolina. I still vividly remember a school dinner lady who had very red hair done in a huge beehive and pointy 'Far Side' glasses. I would refuse to eat the muck and she would force feed it to me. Wouldn't be allowed nowadays.
And school milk. some have fond memories of it. I hated it. It was always gone off and rancid and would insist us kids still drank it. Vile. Not matched until many years later by my mother in law who wouldn't throw any food away and would use the cream no matter how old it was. I soon learnt that pudding was to be avoided.

Our school milk came in tiny bottles and was delivered fresh every day. Loved it. Always ice cold. Not a fan of semolina really, but the cream thing is surely just on a passage towards cheese?

 

[mudman]

Our school milk came in tiny bottles and was delivered fresh every day. Loved it. Always ice cold. Not a fan of semolina really, but the cream thing is surely just on a passage towards cheese?

Ours was in the small quarter pint bottles too. I guess we are both 'of an age'
In the winter it would often be frozen and be doing the little milk volcano thing. The crates would be put by the radiators to defrost.
Cheese I love, all cheeses, except maybe that one with the maggots in it, but the bit in the middle of the process is not nice.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Ours were third pints, yours probably were.

 

[mudman]

Ours were third pints, yours probably were.

Oh I didn't know that, always thought they were quarters.
Third of a pint would be an odd measure in imperial days though, 6.405 fl oz.

Edited to add: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1262904/school-milk-bottle-united-dairies/

 

[throbscottle]

Our school milk came in tiny bottles and was delivered fresh every day. Loved it. Always ice cold. Not a fan of semolina really, but the cream thing is surely just on a passage towards cheese?

Indeed. I once made cheese whilst camping, from milk that had gone off! It was actually nice

 

[niall Y]

Oh I didn't know that, always thought they were quarters.c
Third of a pint would be an odd measure in imperial days though, 6.405 fl oz.

Edited to add: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1262904/school-milk-bottle-united-dairies/

I remember them as 1/3rd pint bottles. I have a lactose intolerance so being forced to "chug" this down was a nightmare. For folk like me, Margaret Thatcher did something that was actually beneficial .

I believe you can still legally buy draught beer in 1/3rd pints - not that I've ever seen it offered as such.