Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Child-safe in minutes.

Meet the Other Phone.
Child-safe in minutes.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Chat

Join the discussion and chat with other Mumsnetters about everyday life, relationships and parenting.

Original poster

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

647 replies

LadyCampanulaTottington · 06/08/2022 18:48

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? 😂

OP posts:
Thread gallery
6
midlifecrash · 07/08/2022 19:39

JeanMarie · 07/08/2022 19:29

@midlifecrash yes the egg and sardine was meant to be there. I did eat the egg but the sight of the sardine was enough for me. His family did turn out to have extremely strange eating habits.....sausage rolls covered with creamed rice out of a can.....a memorable Xmas dinner....instead of gravy there was condensed chicken soup poured over the whole meal. Also....arranged artfully along the edge of the plate....Rolo sweeties. Sitting at the table with them was surreal....if it was meat , potatoes and say two veg.....none of the items were allowed to touch. The meat was eaten first then the potatoes and then each of the veg....never a mixture . I'm sure they were planning a Wicker Man for me in the garden when I ...shock horror....had potatoes AND meat together on my fork.

Thank you! Wow, not touching, but with soup all over it… interesting

CrappyJob · 07/08/2022 19:43

Antarcticant · 07/08/2022 19:15

Only on Mumsnet could a lighthearted thread descend to pistols at dawn over the definition of an 'all day breakfast' Grin

I don't know about anyone else, but I think it's pretty funny. Especially the bit where I need to apologise and get over myself. I'm having a lovely time 😁

Georgeskitchen · 07/08/2022 19:56

Can everyone PLEASE stop banging on about the all day breakfast!!

DuesToTheDirt · 07/08/2022 20:03

"A lovely friend of ours thought any salt was very bad for you so wouldn’t salt pasta water."

One pancake day recently I asked a friend if she'd be making pancakes that evening. She said, "Oh no, that's too complicated." I said pancakes are pretty straightforward and only use a few ingredients, basically flour, eggs, milk. She said she wasn't much of a cook and didn't keep flour in the house, and until recently didn't keep salt either - and she's in her 60s. All those years without salt!

KohlaParasaurus · 07/08/2022 20:09

My FiL passed away in the first summer of the pandemic, when funerals had to be small and distanced. After the service we adjourned to the house of one of DH's siblings for a buffet lunch in the garden. They had put on a decent spread, but everything had egg in it. Everything! Even the tuna salad baps had a slice of boiled egg hidden in the middle. Scotch eggs. Egg mayo sandwiches. Several types of quiche. Egg custard tarts. I can't eat egg, the taste and texture make me heave (yes, this annoys me because eggs are so versatile and nutritious). I picked up a slice of what I thought might be apple pie, pastry top and bottom, and bit into it. Blech! The pastry was salty and the filling was like cold scrambled egg. Manners, schmanners, I spat it straight back out on to my plate in front of everyone.

SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius · 07/08/2022 20:13

My mum decided it was too much hard work to peel the shell off boiled eggs to make egg mayo (which she made with salad cream, not mayo - and I thought was delicious), so started making cold scrambled egg sandwiches instead. Blech.

WhereTheLightningBugsBlaze · 07/08/2022 20:15

StillHappy · 07/08/2022 16:34

But it’s not everyone else. You’re reaching now, I gave an example that showed it wasn’t served all day; just admit you were wrong, apologise, and you can move past it.

Show quote history

You really are clutching at straws here @StillHappy

Maireas · 07/08/2022 20:26

I went round to a friend's house and they'd just had a holiday in Thailand and got a taste for that fish sauce. They made a few dishes, all liberally doused. It smelled horrendous as soon as you entered the house. They didn't do a salad or any sides, so all I could eat was plain rice. The smell just turned my stomach. My friend thought I was being picky, but we didn't fall out over it!

SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius · 07/08/2022 20:43

This cafe near me has an All Day Breakfast on its menu, that is only served until midday.

CrappyJob · 07/08/2022 21:02

SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius · 07/08/2022 20:43

This cafe near me has an All Day Breakfast on its menu, that is only served until midday.

But it's not just on the breakfast menu. It's also on the lunch menu...

stuntbubbles · 07/08/2022 21:05

SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius · 07/08/2022 20:43

This cafe near me has an All Day Breakfast on its menu, that is only served until midday.

The all day breakfast also appears on the non-midday, non-breakfast part of the menu. And I bet if you ordered it all day, they’d serve it. But regardless, one cafe’s definition or caveats doesn’t overrule the widely accepted definition that an all-day breakfast is called that because it’s served all day.

Ionacat · 07/08/2022 21:13

I have two! First, was on an exchange to the Czech Republic in the 1990s before Prague had been discovered by stag parties! The sandwiches the host family served up - bread, then butter cut so thick it was thicker than the bread and filling. The amount of butter I had to remove…..

One of my relatives is not a great cook but the worst from memory is chicken part boiled with lemon, aunt bessies’s roast potatoes that were over done on the outside and hard in the middle, grey overcooked peas and carrots that were so mushy you couldn’t put your fork in them plus a weak beef oxo cube as gravy. (We weren’t told about the lemon until half way through…..) It was a McDonald’s on the way home!

SpindleTurning · 07/08/2022 21:16

CrappyJob · 07/08/2022 21:02

But it's not just on the breakfast menu. It's also on the lunch menu...

Show quote history

Yes, and it's the same price on the breakfast menu as on the lunch menu, and is another café where food is served till 4pm.

BlancmanegeBunny · 07/08/2022 21:25

MiL served up a chicken curry..... It was bits of chicken covered in a packet sauce mix that still had powdery bits in it. No rice, no naan, no chips....... Just that on a plate!!! I was 10 weeks pregnant and suffering from terrible sickness.

Mil is lovely and we get on well, but she can't cook.

antelopevalley · 07/08/2022 21:39

DuesToTheDirt · 07/08/2022 20:03

"A lovely friend of ours thought any salt was very bad for you so wouldn’t salt pasta water."

One pancake day recently I asked a friend if she'd be making pancakes that evening. She said, "Oh no, that's too complicated." I said pancakes are pretty straightforward and only use a few ingredients, basically flour, eggs, milk. She said she wasn't much of a cook and didn't keep flour in the house, and until recently didn't keep salt either - and she's in her 60s. All those years without salt!

There were big health campaigns about 30-40 years ago telling us all to reduce our use of salt as it is very bad for you. I do not really use salt either as I got so used to not having it.

BlancmanegeBunny · 07/08/2022 21:40

Actually I have had a worse meal than tbe chicken curry!!!

Ex took me to meet his parents in West Wales, his mum offered me some cawl (welsh thick veg and meat). My mum always used beef for cawl and its one of those recipes that every family has their own version of. The bowl in front of me looked nice and I tucked in, second spoonfull in and I saw what I thougjt was macaroni..... not what I expected but it was tasty so I scooped some up on my spoon, as it entered my mouth I discovered that it wasn't macaroni, it was the gristly tubes and innerds of the neck of lamb. I thought I was going to vomit but was trying to make a good impression on the lovely hosts. I grabbed some bread and forced myself to swallow.

BMW6 · 07/08/2022 21:47

I am old. I know stuff.

All Day Breakfast means the meal is available all day, NOT a meal that will take you through the day without needing to eat till the next day. That meal is called Skint.

achillestoes · 07/08/2022 22:06

Crying with this thread. 😂

LydiaBennetsUglyBonnet · 07/08/2022 22:07

That meal is called Skint.

😂😂😂 I love it when a thread is funny for reasons other than those intended

Rose789 · 07/08/2022 22:26

I stay with my friends in America quite often. One thanksgiving we were invited to go to her brother and sister in laws for 3 nights. I love Thanksgiving!

We drove for 7 hours to get there arriving around 5pm. The SIL told us she had been cooking a chicken surprise for hours. Turns out chicken surprise is chicken thighs with skin on placed on top of some sliced lemons and microwaved for hours.
No sides, no seasoning. It certainly was a surprise.

Breakfast was a packet of bacon microwaved until it crumbled it was that crispy. Nothing with it just a plate of bacon embers.
Thanksgiving dinner- oh god. They cooked the turkey in a deep fat fryer which was homemade out of essentially a metal dustbin outside. It was simultaneously burnt and raw and was so greasy.
Mashed potatoes that had been mashed so much they were liquid, mixed with pickled onions and liver. And a bowl of peas.
Nothing else
Dinner was a crescent roll from a can cut in half with a layer of left over cold grey mashed potato, onion and liver smeared on it. At least it had solidified.
We made the unanimous decision to cut the visit short and leave early the next day and drove like the clappers to the nearest Dunkin’ Donuts for breakfast.

mindutopia · 07/08/2022 22:29

Agree that sounds like a total normal lunch.

But my worst meal as a guest: went to visit a friend and her husband after they bought their first house (it was a very nice house, we were proper adults in our early 30s at the time).

First thing she said when I got there was ‘are you still a vegetarian? Great, I made you salmon!’ 🤔 I had actually started to eat fish on occasion so was fine, but still.

So we had my ‘vegetarian’ salmon with instant mash and frozen mixed veg. It was, er, like the sort of thing I would have made for dinner when I was 15. Bless her. She’s lovely and had plenty of wine, but cooking clearly is not a strength.

bruce43mydog · 07/08/2022 22:34

Mangos with ice cream. I was 11 at the time and had to eat it so i didnt appear rude. The ice cream was lovely the problem is i dont like mangos.

Marcipex · 07/08/2022 22:39

A boiled kidney on a slice of white bread.
I was six. And hungry.
I burst into tears and they kindly cut the crust off the bread for me.

Winkydink · 07/08/2022 22:42

OP’s lunch sounds perfectly reasonable - half serving of the below (except pâté which wasn’t eaten) is c. 500 calories at least : perfectly adequate for an adult female. “There were two thin slices of baguette (sideways cut not lengthways) each, then 4 slices of salame, 4 slices of prosciutto, 4 slices of cheese and the pate. Plus the leaves. Between 2 of us”

colouringfoxes · 07/08/2022 22:55

My worst was something called "bowl cake" on my french exchange (and yes they said it in English too). It was a favourite breakfast of my exchange partner, and as such much hyped for three days when we didn't have time to make it. It turned out to be oats mixed with a beaten egg, cream cheese, and raspberries, microwaved until solid and then topped with fruit. I'm not keen on porridge to start with but this was like solidified porridge, it was so rubbery and awful and she was so happy she'd been able to make it for me bless her. I didn't quite finish it but I had a good go. Tbf she also gave me raclette, which was delicious even if the amount of molten cheese I consumed gave me a stomach ache.

A different French exchange partner, her mum did me a packed lunch for a day trip. I was 17 and she gave me half a ham sandwich made with that very sweet French white sliced bread, with a mountain of chocolate biscuit bars and apple puree pouches. Not bad, just weirdly unbalanced. And then she suggested her daughter let me try a piece of her baguette at lunch time to see if I liked it, turned out she'd done "English Bread" specially. I wouldn't mind, but they came here first so her daughter had seen French sticks in the supermarket in the UK 😂