To ask what is the weirdest most bizzare concoction of food ever served to you?

[HarrietKettleWasHere]

I've just mentioned this on another thread and am bored on this miserable rainy afternoon so would love to hear some of yours.

My mum is a terrible cook, but still insists on experimenting with various meals. A few of the things we were served as a child:

Tinned mandarin and vanilla muller yoghurt poured over chicken breasts. The yoghurt curdled.

'Risotto'. This was made by leaving the basmati rice in its water, stirring through tomato purée and throwing some plastic cheese on top.

At Christmas one year she basted the turkey in lime juice, and put pineapple rings on top.

She stirs through primula cheese in a tube into mashed potato.

'Tropical rice'- boiling it in tropical fruit juice or squash.

It's been YEARS since I braved a meal at hers but my brothers tell me not much has changed. Looking back these dishes fasincate and horrify me in equal measures. I made sure I knew what I was doing cooking-wise from quite a young age.

Anyone got any horrors or just plain strange ones to add?

My worst food experience was in a restaurant for a friend's leaving do. We were served spaghetti with tiny brown shrimps stirred in, no sauce at all or anything else for that matter, with a side of khaki coloured cooked and shredded cabbage in gravy! Urgh!

I thought it was one of the most disgusting things I had ever tried to eat. Some of the others said they liked it! Could never understand that.

A single microwaved tunnel tomato on a full sized plate, served as lunch by my mother. Not even hot all the way through.
The one year since I was about 12 that I wasn't able to shop fie and cook the Christmas dinner as I was away for work until the 24th, I left her to buy the food. I arrived Christmas day ready to cook. There was a small turkey. Nothing else.
No food in the cupboards, fridge, freezer.
I ended up driving to a friend's house who gave me some potatoes and parsnips, then picking the vegetables out of one of those pre-mix frozen rice and veg things I dug out if the frost in the freezer.
After this crap repast, I was given the "poor little me"look and asked where the Christmas pudding was.
If she had anything as useful as a carving knife in her kitchen I'd probably be doing time.

I might find this more palatable as an adult but on a school trip to France in Y7 we were given baguettes filled with what we thought was grated cheese and slices of hard-boiled egg. It was grated carrot.

Tinned not tunnel.
Even the memory is stressful!
32 years I have been shopping for, paying for and cooking Christmas dinner. Up until then my Dad did it and I helped cook. Just shopping once isn't that big an ask is it?

Pancake soup. Enough said.

Made by myself - chicken marinated in captain morgan & stuffed with orange. No idea what I thought would happen. It was like a chicken super split. Vile, would not recommend.

exMIL once served up lasagna with mash and soft boiled broccolli, everything covered in thick beef bisto. I was hungover and nearly cried.

At a hotel for a training course, where the only veggie option was baked avocado stuffed with lychees in an orange and malibu sauce.

Safe to assume the chef hated vegetarians.

This reminds me of the episode of Friends when the pages of Rachael's cookbook got stuck together and she ended up with a half shepherds pie and half trifle concoction

I'll confess that in my student days I used to buy the economy cans of beans and economy pasta, then use the beans as a pasta sauce. If I was feeling rich a can of economy sweetcorn would find it's way in

Perfectly acceptable.

Baked potato, but ran out of butter for it. So decided to add a fried egg and vinegar. Gross.

Once flew Club with BA and my veggie breakfast was baked beans and asparagus. Staying at a hotel in Russia my veggie meal one evening was carrots.

DH once made a cheese and potato pie with the majority of a whole very ripe Stilton. It made my eyes water.
In the odd vegetarian food category, I give you fruit ravioli, served with veg and potatoes, in Poland years ago..

In Singapore, jelly cubes, ice shavings, kidney beans and sweetcorn with coconut milk poured over.

At home, DM brought me a bowl of tinned oxtail soup with a raw egg cracked into it, when I was ill in bed. I'm not sure if the soup was supposed to cook the egg. It didn't, it just got cold...

Grapefruit (had to be pink) sprinkled with brown sugar and grilled was our regular Christmas Day breakfast! Loved it. We even had little serrated grapefruit sooons.

DH once gave me tuna pasta as planned but he'd added crispy bacon. I cried. I was pregnant though TBF.

Spoons*

The bananas wrapped in ham with cheese sauce and the grilled grapefruit with brown sugar are both Good Housekeeping recipes from the 70s and I actually quite like both

My dad once made us soup while my mum was away and added the leftover rice before he blended it. We still tease him about glue soup. In his defence he is now an excellent cook and has been doing all the cooking for decades.

Once went to a friend's for lunch. She had spent all morning making a very complicated beef stew. It looked AMAZING. Rich, thick gravy. Perfectly cooked beef. But it was some celeb chef recipe with orange juice and zest in it. It was very light and citrussy. Barf.

Curried eggs...

FIL won't eat anything without boiled potatoes. So at the PILs we get curry and boiled potatoes.

My mum used to buy a selection of tinned soup flavours, but only ever one of each at a time.

There were four of us. Rather than asking who wanted what & using more than one saucepan, she would open two cans of different flavours & mix them.

Cream of mushroom mixed with cream of tomato is particularly horrible.

Grapefruit in creme de menthe as a starter. eeeeewwwwww

School dinners were pretty bad (I went veggie just to avoid deciding which meal looked less bad, and to avoid food poisoning), but the worst was when they started doing veggie crumble. Tinned ratatouille, should have been edible, but they used the sweet crumble topping.

In Japan I selected a donut with green icing which looked like the melon-flavoured one I'd had before. It was indeed melon icing, so I assumed there would be melon-flavoured custard or jam inside.

The filling of the sweet donut was in fact tuna and spring onion.

42andcounting It sounds tasty doesn't it, Think I will have to try it

As a first year student, my staple dinner was microwave smash mixed with curry sauce (from a jar). I thought it was the best thing ever... Haven't had any for about 16 years now, but actually tempted to try...

Ooh, and a friend once served me lasagne with cauliflower and peas in it. It was bizarre, but not actually bad. In her defense she was 17 and had recently turned veggie and been told by her mum she needed to start doing her own cooking, and was going through some enthusiastic experimental phase.

I went for a tasting menu last year and was so disappointed that the monkfish and banana was just as horrible as I had imagined. What was I thinking?