What’s the worst food someone ever gave you when you visited?

[LadyCampanulaTottington]

This week I was invited to friends house. She’s just moved in and wanted me to see the place. She said she would provide lunch and not to bring anything.

So I rock up hungry as it’s already 1:30. We start with a couple of pieces of baguette with some sliced salame and prosciutto, liver pate and some cheese. There is also a small bowl of salad leaves.

I take a small portion of each thing except the pate and my friend has some too. After a while it becomes apparent that this was not the starter but the entire meal. I was debating taking more when my friend started to clean up. I was still hungry!!

So I had to sit there with my stomach rumbling for another half an hour before I could leave and go get something to eat!

I’ve had meals in her house before but this is the first time she’s served such a small meal, she’s usually generous with portions. Does she think I’m fat and is trying to help? 😂

My mother cooked lasagne ... knowing full well I'm highly allergic to tomato. I think she enjoyed knowing I just had to watch her eat.

Andouillette.
It's a pork sausage that smells like someone has peed on it.
It's partly made from intestines including pigs colon.
Tastes like it too.

But their last breakfast order is 2pm and their last food order is at 3pm. That's clearly more to do with logistics than not serving breakfast after breakfast time.

I grew up in another European country and can confirm the skin - complete with taste buds -is eaten there. As is the even more horrible looking back of the tongue 🤢

I love this, though the liver needs onions and gravy, and must be properly cooked, i.e. not a great flat slice like shoe leather.

DH got hold of some very ripe Stilton and used all of it to make a “posh cheese and potato pie” as a surprise. Soooo strong. It made the DC's eyes water and me cough. It is now remembered in the family as “Stilton Shock”.

I was at a ball in a hotel in the town where I worked and had lasagne. It tasted as though it was made with canned dog food. Unbelievably horrible, I couldn't eat more than a mouthful.

Worst meal ever was a simple carbonara in a five star hotel, that tasted delicious but gave us salmonella.

Worst disappointment? Brother in laws bacon sandwiches, with almost raw, floppity bacon.

When I was young we visited friends of my parents for Sunday dinner. We had roast chicken - one of my absolutefaves at the time (still is, when done well). Well, the chicken was bone dry, all the juices in the tray were presumably binned and the 'gravy' was made using a packet of instant creamy vegetable soup. The potatoes were boiled then stuck in the oven in loads of veg oil for nowhere near long enough to be classed as roasties - instead they had a sort of tough, pale, greasy 'skin' and the veg was frozen mixed veg served straight from the microwave, all mushy and swimming in the defrosted ice. Though pudding was a shop bought chocolate fudge cake & the slices were large & microwaved to be all melty and served with loads of ice cream so 10 (ish?) year old me was happy enough!

The potatoes were boiled then stuck in the oven in loads of veg oil for nowhere near long enough to be classed as roasties

You've reminded me of my dad's method. He'd cut the raw potatoes, then coat them in melted lard (no parboiling or anything) sprinkle flour on them and put them in the oven for an hour or so.

By this method, granted they were soft inside but the outside was like leather, you had to saw into them with a knife.

I used to wonder why people raved about roast potatoes - until I realised that my dad's method was seriously at fault.

Did you not have lunch? Are you one of those people who considers meals optional and doesn’t realise that most people are used to and require breakfast, lunch and evening meal?
if I’d been her I probably would have specified something like “well why don’t I come over and we have a quick lunch before we go” but on the other hand I can see why she might just have presumed that you would be having lunch and therefore serving lunch, not just eating biscuits until after your appointment!

My worst is everything my MIL makes. She’s unfamiliar with the concept of fresh vegetables, fresh anything.

Ths s my MIL!! I have learned (the hard way) never to mention liking something or she will attempt to cook it.

I love runner beans. I think dh must have mentioned it to her for which Ibtold him off. She said she had got them specially and had never cooked them before. First time were the pre-sliced fresh microwaveable ones from the supermarket. I have no problem with that as I've bought them myself. Except they were served up mburned. And I mean actually brown and charred Almost like they had been on a barbecue. How? Another time she said she had bought some from a man down the road who grew them. Goodness knows how long she had boiled them for as they were actually grey.

Mine is a meagreness story rather than bad food.

A friend was visiting from abroad, and staying with a couple (who I didn't know) in another part of London. They invited me to join for dinner, I got there 6pm maybe. Huge bohemian ramshackle house, they lived next door to one of their parents, also huge house. 7pm, then 8pm rolled by, no food. 9pm came, still nothing.

Finally, at 10pm they produced a single, very thin pizza to be shared by about 7 of us. I mean it was delicious, very handmade, but just so little and so late. This was followed up by about 2 tablespoons of handmade icecream each from their very expensive ice cream maker.

Kind of them to invite me but they seemed to have no recognition of the fact that they were barely feeding us! The opposite really, they seemed very pleased with the 'spread'.

@LaMarschallin yes it was fish egg pate sandwiches 🤢

Thank you @BerylBird , I like the sound of that

That sounds ummm unusual to say the least and I am not sure I would like it but if you think about it a very popular dish in the uk ( and other places ) is rice simmered in sweetened milk then baked in the oven for a hour often topped with sweetened fruit . AKA rice pudding and dollop of jam .

Goat is pretty horrid tbf. My kids are dairy intolerant so I once made lasagne with goats cheese and used goats milk in the white sauce.

It was average at the time but we were all burping goat for about two days and wow that was rough!!

My mum calls this chicken myers. It's made with chicken soup tho and leftover roast chicken. And she puts cheese on top and served it with boiled potatoes.

When I was a kid I ate it and thought it was ok but I could imagine the horror of anyone else she might have served it to.

My mum calls this chicken myers. It's made with chicken soup tho and leftover roast chicken. And she puts cheese on top and served it with boiled potatoes.

That actually sounds rather nice. Think I'll try your mother's recipe.

New Years dinner at friends. Where the host told us how many times she had frozen, defrosted, recooked the turkey in the pie she had made. We were ill.

Invited to a BBQ. I hate BBQ. Host kept telling me she had ordered burgers/sausages from a speciality butchers which lessened the blow. Gets there and they show us the fancy meat and put it next to the BBQ, then proceed to cook very very cheap burgers and sausages which we had to force down.
I don’t know if they planned to cook them for a second course but I can’t eat more than one hamburger anyway. It was rank.

The last Christmas dinner at MILs. I refused to go again. She was bad tempered about making it so ruined it on purpose. She overcooked everything, and served tinned veg and bisto beef gravy made so a spoon stood up in it.

Regarding ‘All-day Breakfasts’ - it seems to me that this is one of those concepts that hasn’t got one correct definition - instead it is defined by whoever is using it - so if somewhere serves a full breakfast at any time, that is an all-day breakfast, but if somewhere serves a breakfast that they think will keep you going all day, but only up to midday, for example, then they will also call it an All-day Breakfast.

Either way, I want a fry-up for dinner one night!

That actually looks quite nice!

My worst was when I visited a friend (who in her defence is a self-professed terrible cook) who served this weird pasta and mayonnaise dish. I don't like mayo anyway but I was so hungry I forced myself to eat some. It was so sickly and gave me a stomach ache.

Not food but I was given a glass of water that had crushed tablets in the glass, clearly they had mistakenly filled the wrong glass and didn’t realise. Luckily I looked inside just as I was about to take my first sip! 💊🚰👀❗️😳

At a relative's home, a curry.
Made from pork chops which had been fried and cut up, covered in gravy granule made gravy which had some curry powder added to it.
Sat on top of a bed of microwave garlic rice.
It was um, different.

Sounds grim & reminded me of when my ex and I were invited for Christmas dinner with two freinds. The whole meal was fabulous apart from the homemade cream of turkey soup which was tasty apart from the fact there were dramas making it, then the lid flew off the blender and the soup went everywhere including all over the host who scraped it off surfaces & himself into individual bowls, microwaved it & served. We were trying not to laugh as my freind & his husband had a blazing row. It was like a sketch from 'Vicious'.

Spaghetti bolognese which was actually just plain spaghetti and a jar of spaghetti sauce. No meat, no seasoning whatsoever, no cheese! It tasted of nothing.