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? 😂

Sandwiches on white processed bread, margarine, thick rubbery ham and pease pudding. Grim.

Did he serve himself a proper sized lunch?

This one sounds OK as long as the top was crispy rather than soggy.

You do know moussaka is made of slices of aubergine don't you?

I had terrible morning sickness and food aversions when I was pregnant. I could only eat very plain food and could not touch meat at all. Bil and SIL invited us for a family get together. SIL asked was there anything I could/couldn't eat. I explained I really could only Eat very very plain food so something like a pasta pesto or cheese sandwich would be perfect.

I arrived and they served up beef sausages and onion gravy. I couldn't touch it, honestly wasn't being rude but Why did they ask me in the first place.
I think they though I was faking the food intolerance and morning sickness

Spaghetti with tomato ketchup. It was inedible.

I have no idea what the intention was! I was only a kid and I remember my sister & bil suppressing laughter, but sis looked embarrassed too. Bil sometimes brought it up and I rolled eyes & said "yeah I know!" I think it partially melted, he didn't eat it & mum was a bit miffed! My mum was very eccentric & I was used to her odd ways. Heston Blumenthal has got nothing on my mum!

Sounds like a pretty nice lunch to me! I can’t imagine I’d expect to be served a full on meal for lunch, especially with my friend just moving in.

My first day as an au-pair for a well to do French family. I was v. tired after a long journey and everything was very unfamiliar. The first meal was bone marrow - literally a boiled bone on a plate that you were supposed to scoop out the jellified inside and spread on bread 🤢 It’s still a mystery to me how they thought that would be a reasonable thing to serve to a foreign visitor.

Lovely neighbours newly arrived from Hong Kong, knocked at the door and proudly held up a live crab. Sadly sure of it's fate but not understanding what was going on, husband and I just nodded and smiled. Some time later, they knocked again and held up same crab, hot and freshly boiled.
They struggle a bit with the English language, but gestured to come in and use our kitchen. There then followed a demonstration and running commentary on what is what in a crab's body and how to dissect it into portions, which we were to then eat at our leisure.
Lastly, the crab brain was presented to us as a delicious delicacy. Not wanting to hurt their feelings, my husband stepped forward. He did gag a couple of times but actually managed to chew and swallow it.
Everyone applauded, me included.
He has never forgiven me and claims he can still taste it to this day.

Ha, I had a boyfriend tell me he’d do breakfast in bed once for my birthday. At the time I was having fruit and yoghurt for breakfast: summer, and I’d chop strawberries, pear, banana, nectarine, etc, with raspberries and anything else knocking around. Not fussed, just a fruit medley and some Greek yoghurt, honey and nuts if I had them, not if I didn’t.

He brought me up a single, whole banana on a plate. Unpeeled. Fully brown. Shrugged and said, “I don’t really know how to make fruit”.

MiL once served up a ‘curry’ - chicken breasts in some kind of vile, gloopy orange sauce from a jar, accompanied by sprouts, carrots and roast potatoes. Totally bizarre.

Two even worse restaurant experiences though: lamb’s brains, ordered accidentally on a school trip to France. Watery, grey, tiny brains in some kind of gruel - makes me gip thinking about it even now, 40 years later, even though I didn’t touch it! And pike. In a really good, chi chi London restaurant. Basically tasted of mud and shit, and was presented in a thin gravy with a few bits of veg. They really must have fucking seen me coming - DH laughed himself sick whilst choffing his steak and fat chips …

Visited a friend recently and she gave me shrew ice-cream.

When I first met my OH he'd make cheese on toast by toasting bread, adding cheese and them melting it in the microwave. It went very soggy. Grim.

The first dinner he made me was mince, tinned tomatoes and rice all mixed together with no onions or seasoning. Not disgusting but just soooo bland.

He's a much better cook now!

I was once given boiled pasta with booked carrots and thd tiny amount of cheese was served which we had to share
I felt guilty and wanted to ask if she needed financial help.
She once said she handed all her wage to her DH ( their business) but l felt as a well paid medical she seemed deprived.

What?!!

A old work colleague that I continued to meet with (usually at a pub of restaurant) after they left our place of work invited me to lunch, then suggested meet at her house as she had a toddler in tow.

I was presented with 1/2 a boiled sliced courgette (slimy), with fridge cold single fillet of mackerel. Nothing else except a plastic beaker of water.

I like courgette, and I like mackerel but it was such an odd meal to serve.

Friend of my DH invited us to supper. He'd made a brussel sprout curry that you could stand a spoon in. Afterwards, he said, I suppose you want pudding? And slapped half a packet of Jaffa Cakes on the table.
Once, on a village twinning trip to Brittany we were served, as a special treat, andouillette crepes. I may be spelling it wrong but believe me, it was the worst thing I have ever smelled, let alone (not) eaten.

What? No it doesn't mean that. It means a breakfast that's served all day long, not just at breakfast time. That's why pubs/cafes sell them till close, because they are all day dishes.

As a young couple we were invited to a fellow couples house for Christmas dinner.

We got there to be served up, on our laps (despite them having a perfectly serviceable table and dining room) what amounted to a microwave meal. It was gross.

We left as soon as we could and on Boxing Day now DH cooked us a proper Christmas dinner.

Or there was the time when I was around 7 months pregnant with DS, and we were invited on a rare night off from toddler DD, to a friend's for a curry.

The curry turned out to be, Tesco value chip shop curry sauce from a tin, microwaved with some value chicken chunks. And some steam bag rice. We blamed morning sickness and left, stopping for fish and chips on the way home.

I don't like going to people's homes for dinner, it never ends well

I have a friend who serves a massive table full of nothing to eat!
white baps, sweeties, stuffing, Iceland type limp sausage rolls, crisps. It’s awful, she’s adorable and I love her, she throws a lot of soirées like this so we always eat before we go. Stuffing bap anyone?

Mash creamed with margarine and cabbage, sausage on top and lard gravy. Hot lard, poured as a gravy. Ex-MIL, who didn't believe in vegetarians, who always served me meat at her table. Awful.

Christmas dinner at MIL's. Cold chicken salad! She didn't cook on a Sunday and Christmas day fell on a Sunday!

Cheesy mash with overcooked prawns studded through it.

Served as a side dish for a roast dinner

My Dad's pickled onion omelette.....