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 was staying at a friend's house after a party, woke up starving and hungover. She offered me a bacon sandwich which sounded like the best idea ever. Took a bite and found it had brown sauce in it. I don't think I have ever been so deeply disappointed with food I've been offered.

I always have HP sauce on a bacon sandwich!!! Heaven.

To be fair, I wouldn't put it on for someone else, just offer it.

You wanted a dry bacon butty?!

HP sauce is a thing of the gods

HP sauce is a lovely thing. But I’d never assume someone else wanted it.

The only ingredients for a bacon butty are bacon and bread, perfection. No butter, no sauce.

And brown sauce is (to use a MN cliché) vile.

I was invited to dinner at my boyfriend's parents for the first time, and the meat was beef heart! I am afraid I just couldn't eat it. I had been asked before hand if there was any meat I didn't like and I said liver. It just didn't occur to me that I would be offered beef heart. This was in about 1971.

I remember receiving a really, really tasteless 'bean chilli' once, too. I've had bean chillis before and they've been very nice, although not my first choice, but this one appeared to be a pile of beans with a few sprinkles of chilli paste. Some of the beans were really hard and undercooked and some almost mush. Don't know how they managed that!

Cinnamon in meatballs is ace, and in lots of recipes (e.g. Ottolenghi)

This reminds me of when my Mum mixed up cinnamon and cumin. NOT recommended!

Thinkingblonde

It sounds like pate made from fish roe (fish eggs) usually cod

Thanks for that.
I'm aware that cod roe (which I know are the eggs of the cod) are used in a pate - although I'd call it a "dip", personally - called "taramasalata".
That would be why I asked if it was taramasalata in my post.

Asked if I liked tuna pasta bake, said yes and when it was served it was a tin of tuna heated through with a tin of tomatoes and put on top of cooked pasta.
It was strange

Many years ago , I cooked a quiche (I am an ok cook )
I wanted to use brocilli and thought "brocilli and cheese is nice so is cauliflower..."
So my quiche had (home made) pastry , lightly steamed brocilli florets and cauliflower . (Just to take the raw edge off)
Cheese , eggs , salt pepper .

It taked nice but for some reason the cauliflower went PINk and DH called it Monkey Brain Quiche (he did eat it though)

Personally I think that lunch was fine, but I don’t really eat lunch as my appetite is non existent these days, so that could be skewing my judgement.

I remember years ago my MIL invited us for roast chicken at their house (literally the only time we have ever been invited to dinner in the 22 years we have been together, despite us hosting them countless times). She had cooked 2 whole chickens in water to make a lovely stock. Brilliant I thought, I love a proper “meat juices” gravy. Then (after I offered to help her serve up and she declined) I sat and watched her pour all that beautiful stock down the sink and boil the kettle to make some Bisto instant gravy (I have no problem with this, but if you have the meat juices at least use those as your base). I didn’t say anything of course, and made all the usual comments about how delicious the meal was etc - in reality the whole meal was just tasteless/bland. The strangest thing was my husband swore that she would normally always use the meat juices for gravy so I suspect it was all done on purpose to make sure we wouldn’t come back!

My in-laws invited us for a planned well in advance BBQ. Rolls defrosted out of the freezer. FIL placed the raw meat directly on top of one plate of rolls. We had to explain to him why we couldn’t eat those.
MIL was very impressed as she has made some fried onions to go with the bbq. She had precooked them and just needed to hear them up which would have been fine if she hadn’t precooked them in tons of oil and 8am for a 5pm bbq. They were a grey mushy mess. Fortunately she dropped them bringing them so nobody was subjected to that.
Sausages and burgers were cooked in the traditional bbq disaster was as FIL had the old style bbq on max and didn’t wait for the charcoal to be ready so everything was raw on the inside and charcoal on the outside.
I think we are buffet food - crisps, quiche etc and just had a couple of alcoholic drinks instead

One of my uni friends had Iranian parents. When I'd stay with her for the weekend we would either have the most amazing food or food with ocra in it. I just can't get the appeal of slimy, mucousy, vegetable slugs in food. I can eat anything put in front of me, but ocra tests my gag reflex. And tea and coffee would always be infused with cardamom pods. Why? Just why? But they were amazing, loving, generous hosts and as I say, ocra aside, incredible cooks.

In France large radishes served with a bowl of salt to dip them in.

One ex boyfriend invited me around to his house and told me he’d ordered Chinese take away so advised me not to eat anything because he’d ordered lots. I hadn’t eaten since midday and it was around 7pm when I arrived at his after a long day at work so I was tired and absolutely starving. He knew I was a vegetarian, we’d only been dating for a few weeks but he was definitely well aware of this fact. He hadn’t ordered one vegetarian item at all. You’d think he’d have ordered something I could eat- be it chips or rice, something along those lines. The only rice he’d ordered contained meat and he hadn’t ordered chips so there was fuck all I could eat.

He actually seemed to find it amusing if anything, you know that he was sitting eating lots of food in front of someone who hadn’t eaten for hours and was very hungry… I’d brought him some fancy chocolates and wine so I just ate the box of chocolates to myself and drank most of the wine feeling sorry for myself.

I was miles away from home and had got the train there so couldn’t get home till the next day. As soon as I could get home I did and I think by the time I got to McDonald’s I hadn’t eaten for 24 hours aside from the chocolates anyway so I gorged myself on loads of food till I felt sick. That was the last time I ever saw him. So yeah, the worst thing I’ve ever had at someone’s house is nothing!

It was me!!!! Had the in-laws round for Sunday lunch. Had acquired some venison from my game keeper uncle. Hours went by and it was still very very pink......turned out I had cooked stewed plums instead!!! 😂😂😂😂 Oops

My mum used to serve up hearts or liver when I was a child. My mum was a good cook and it always tasted OK but I couldn't touch it now 😫
My mum was WW2 Child and grew up on liver, hearts, tripe(yuk) and sardines, I believe that these were foodstuffs that were widely available when.food was rationed, so everyone ate it!!

How?

DELICIOUS and a very common snack to have at apéro. Often served with butter too.

That makes no sense at all. Didn't happen, did it?

My grandma gave me a bowl of microwaved watermelon. Then microwaved ritz crackers.

Served with white wine from a bottle opened 2 years previously with the neck hole stuffed with a Brass-soaked j-cloth like it was a molotov cocktail.

She went in a care home not long street that, but still insisted I consumed it all

I was just about to name this.

the worst thing is, that every region, sometimes it seems like every town has their own version. So if you confide to a French friend that you are not keen ( hoping tactfully that this will signal your yearning not to be served them) they will tell you that that is just because you have only had the wrong sort of andouillettes and thé andouillette de Tours, or Vouvray or Bourgogne or wherever is far superior and will convert you to lifetime of andouillette consumption.

They are mistaken