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? 😂

I can answer that. Everywhere.

But they don't serve all day.

You've found one example of an all day breakfast that stops at 2pm and think that proves anything. It really doesn't.

I know I'm irrational annoyed about this.

Very undercooked pasta with tinned mixed veg stirred through it with a melted plastic cheese slice on top of it.

I didn’t eat it, I was 8 months pregnant at the time so feigned feeling very nauseous!

Bowl cake was rock solid and rubbery! I understand some people like the texture of porridge, but solid rubbery porridge? Really?

So am I.

I'm trying to do StillHappy the courtesy of believing they're having fun winding up the grown-ups and aren't just a bit dim.

Two spring to mind:

Tomato soup at my friends nanas house - hot summer day back in the 90s. The skin was so thick I could have cut it with a knife and fork.

In laws when I was in the first trimester - we were keeping it a secret. After a long drive they served up salmon en croute and fish dumplings - two foods that I cant stand even when not pregnant. I was so so hungry I ate it and then felt violently ill for days. In my head I imagined my mum as a kid telling me if I was really hungry, I would eat it, which turned out to be true. Just not the feeling sick part after!

🤣🤣

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.

😂

Reminds me of the 'Andouillette' sausage I had in some bistro in Toulon. Got a bit carried away at the time with the whole 'lets get down with the local cuisine' thing and ordered said specialty sausage which upon arrival looked like a grey transparent partially melted condom stuffed full of the contents of a hoover bag and the coarsely ground up lungs of a mid-18th century pit pony. The smell of this thing was utterly rancid and I remember various locals looking at this specimen as it was carried across the room wondering what daft c*nt stank the place up by ordering such a foul dish.

It tasted as good as looked.

I soldiered on with the Gallic Bush Tucker Trial while simultaneously trying not to lose face in front of DP and being acutely aware that someone in the kitchen was probably taking bets on how much I could eat before ejecting. I had to stop when a particularly stubborn coarse black hair unraveled from within the sausage to form an unlikely umbilical cord between the remaining half on the plate and the piece on my fork. In hindsight I would not have been surprised if there had actually been a mashed animal fetus in the sausage mix. I think my old collie who was particular fond of eating other dog turds would have passed it up.

My brothers, young teens then, were learning independence and cooked us a whole big washbowl of meetballs (like several kilos of good meat), only instead of adding pepper they had added a half a jar of cinnamon…! Something about our mum recycling jars and not labelling them correctly apparently.

I also remember, years ago, when I worked at one hospital they had a specific children’s menu in addition to that served on the rest of the wards (think nuggets & chips, burgers and fish fingers at lunchtimes and, in the evenings, macaroni cheese, hot dogs etc).

One day we’d ordered 7 portions of macaroni cheese for patients who had requested it - what arrived was 7 bowls of tinned spaghetti with grated cheese sprinkled on top. The ward manager sent it back asking for what had been ordered - the second serving consisted of overcooked pasta shells, so salty you could almost smell it; with grated cheese sprinkled on top. We weren’t sure whether the kitchens were missing a chef or had asked someone on work experience to cook the food but, sadly that night, a load of kids ended up with jam on toast for their tea (it was all we could rustle up on the ward!!.

After that, we invested in a freezer and kept some frozen ready meals in it that we paid for out of staff funds!!

I'm old, & this happened a long, long time ago - perhaps before you were born.

In those days/ my country/ my class, 'a proper Christmas dinner' was a whole, roast turkey. Nothing else qualified; & widely-available turkey crowns etc were a couple of years into the future (& 'not really Christmas' when they first arrived). DH & I would cook a small turkey with loads of roasties & veg for Christmas Day & then Boxing Day would be cold turkey, chips & bubble & squeak made from leftover veg & potatoes. There would still be turkey left over after that.

We only had a fridge with a small freezer compartment & I didn't know how to home-freeze stuff, so if we'd cooked a turkey the day before quitting the flat for a week, we'd have had to bin all that meat. I couldn't do it.

Also, it would've been odd to have a full Christmas dinner two days running & I don't know about you, but if someone invites me to a big family Christmas I'd expect there to be a big, blow-out dinner. Not a slice of supermarket cold meat, a slice of plain white bread, a lettuce leaf & a tomato.

The era is also apparent in the sales starting at New Year, not on Boxing Day, so we had nowhere to escape to with a reasonable cover story. And not only was there no internet in those days, there were only 4 TV channels with limited/no daytime viewing & not much of interest on. Videos were a novelty & I don't think either we or BIL/SIL had one. The week didn't exactly fly by...

"You can't have assumed the baguette was a starter . For lunch? The mind boggles at what you thought might be coming next!"

I think the OP meant thin, sliced rounds from a baguette.

I've got to say I'd be pretty disappointed with such a meagre lunch. I usually eat a lot at lunch. In all seriousness, that'd be a few mouthfuls. Very poor.

This is what she says they had: 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.

How is that radically different from providing each person a sandwich made with two slices of bread and filled with salami, cheese and salad?

@gasp. Yeah. Sideways. Not lengthways. Picture it.

How is that radically different from providing each person a sandwich made with two slices of bread and filled with salami, cheese and salad?

Portion size. A slice of baguette is probably about a third of the size of a slice of bread.

My mum once served us an ox heart.
Honestly, it looked gross, smelt worse, and had the consistency of a fireman's boot.

I should have read op properly. We weren't visiting we were living at home so no escape!

The worst when visiting was driving 400 miles to visit grandparents and being served cold spaghetti hoops on charred toast.

That's what i thought! And why would they not split their potato with you on the jacket potato occasion?! That's odder than the pea thing IMO.

My mum used to make casseroled lamb’s heart - she stuffed the hearts with sage and onion stuffing then casseroled them, long and low, with stock, carrots, onion (but only a bit, because she hates onion). We got a heart each, and it was actually quite nice - the cooking kept the meat quite tender, and lamb’s heart isn’t as tough or strong tasting as ox heart. Plus you god to dissect the heart and got a biology lesson as well as dinner!

The era is also apparent in the sales starting at New Year, not on Boxing Day, so we had nowhere to escape to with a reasonable cover story. And not only was there no internet in those days, there were only 4 TV channels with limited/no daytime viewing & not much of interest on. Videos were a novelty & I don't think either we or BIL/SIL had one. The week didn't exactly fly by

There were no newspapers either. Literally everything closed. I remember my father hating not having a newspaper - I mean, on Sundays we had about four but nothing over Christmas. One year my stepsister was there and someone had given her toddler a toy that needed a battery. Her DH jumped at the chance to disappear for hours driving around the countryside looking for an open petrol station to buy some batteries.

But luckily (for me) living in the country meant we still had plenty of countryside stuff to do and visits to or from neighbours etc. I imagine it was quite different for people who didn't have outside activities to keep busy with.

I've spotted StillHappy on another serious thread and I agree with what she's saying there! Definitely not dim at all.

I suppose that's why MN is so addictive. Because it's a bit bonkers.

My DS gets an all day breakfast when we go to our local for DINNER. AFTER 5PM. AS IN ALL DAY.

Give it a rest. You were wrong.

My mum a boiled a pig head to make brawn, dad's treat . I was around 10 years old & screamed at this head with snout, ears and eyes bobbing about in a huge pot of boiling water. I declined it for tea.
One lunchtime with my sister and bil mum cooked celeriac along with other overboiled veg + spuds & meat cooked the previous day. Bil remarked out of politeness that the celeriac was nice so mum dumped a frozen lump of it on his plate as seconds.
She was an inveterate forager & tried to serve us up a dead fish she'd found on the beach (but failed). She came a cropper when some 'hippies' gave her some wild mushrooms, they weren't poisonous but the experience was a bit 'magical'.

First meal with Mother-in-law to be, served up whole, boiled sheeps tongue (one each) taste buds, roots and all 😖

Investigating inside the fridge as kids do opening a carrier bag to find a raw cows tongue in it. Still gagging at that one