What is the worst side dish you ever tasted, or at least witnessed??

[LarryPQ]

When I was in college I had two male roommates. In exchange for playing "house mom" (doing all the cooking & cleaning, sometimes drunk housemate care) I paid very little rent.

I am a decent cook, and the guys never complained. Once I was making tacos, and the top of the Costco taco seasoning popped off, dumping a HUGE pile of it in the middle of the pan. The meat was spared, so I just scooped all the meat out, washed the pan, and finished cooking. Well, I guess I forgot about how quickly the grease would absorb the salt in the seasoning---I served up the boys' dinner, got distracted, and 10 min later sat down to eat. One bite and I almost threw up--it was like chewing on chalk and a salt lick.

My housemates had cleaned their plates, and when I asked why they hadn't said anything they said, "We didn't want to hurt your feelings". It took me 10 minutes of rinsing my mouth to get the taste out! I ended up going out for Taco Bell, and they spent the night sick on the couch.

 

[michickenwrangler]

A friend of mine from middle school, her family was from Lebanon and they served an awful cooked spinach dish that was more like green slime. Just awful!

 

[Crazyland]

Oh wow! I know what Balut is, lived a couple years in the PI. Also ate dog there but really was to young to understand the concept of DOG, tasted good to me. I still like rice and squid.
Lived in Europe for a couple of years, oh yes some very strange things you just don't ask what it is. Still won't touch Oma's horseradish she makes for new years.
But from the sailors on the sub from Australia, Onion and Watermelon salad.

They also brought plenty of Vegemite to share.

 

[Cara]

I am not ashamed of my jar of Vegemite in the fridge.

 

[SarahBeth9394]

The one good thing I got from my step father was the love of having a garden. He grew a huge garden every year. We would pick 12 paper grocery bags of squash at least three times each season. Way to much for us to eat so he would take squash to his coworkers and the rest homes in the area. Our squash was famous. One year he decided to grow summer squash which we called UFO squash. That same year my mother wanted him to grow some gourds as dried gourds were a popular decor item at the time. Well he planted the UFO squash next to the gourds. Time came for harvesting and he took several bags to work and passed them out. The next night my mother made the UFO squash. It turns out that you don't plant UFO's next to gourds. Either the roots mixed or they cross pollinated because we all about vomited at the first bite. And the juice that spread all over the plate ruined whatever it touched. Meal destroyed. So he goes to work the next day and his coworkers all had a field day with him "GD Bob what are tryin to do, kill us". We all laughed so hard about this for years.


Then there's was my hubby's grandma. She had a dog. A spoiled rotten cockapoo that nobody liked especially my father in law because that dog wouldn't poop on the grass. Instead it would poop on the driveway where he was always tinkering on a car and he would always step in it. That dog was so fat that the vet put it on a diet. It was a mix of hamburger, cottage cheese, canned green beans, and canned carrots. Time went on and the dog got old and it passed. Grandma moved and had us all over the new place for dinner to say thank you for helping her move. Guess what she made. Soup with hamburger, cottage cheese, canned green beans, and canned carrots. We all knew it was what she had left over from before the dog died. We all pretended to eat and dumped it. Just the thought that we were eating the dead dogs left overs was stomach turning.

 

[Chieftain]

Good Lord! I was three pages behind on this thread, I had no idea!! What a great thread!

Sorry about that Istanbul liberty story...it's probably the only funny one I have that I can come close to repeating on a family BB like this one...believe me, I have other tales of Navy liberty parties that would leave you howling on the floor and get me banned here for good...

I'm quite sure that others here could do much the same...

There used to be a little dive restaurant in The Gut in Naples, Italy called "Mama Lina's". It had 2 tables, and Papa Lina who was at leadt 70 was the waiter and busboy, while Mama Lina did all the cooking. No kidding, it was some of the best Italian food I've ever had, and she only had a few menu items. It was all good.

I really liked the bus tours we could get in Italy too. $50 day trips all over the place, all kinds of things to see and lots of small restaurants to eat in. Everyone had their own family label of red wine, because everybody with a little land has a vinyard and makes their own family wine. It's great stuff with meals and I can't recommend any labels.

Join the Navy and see the World through a porthole...

 

[Crazyland]

LOL You don't need to join the Navy to do that. Traveling isn't as expensive as people make it out to be.
But I agree that the best wines are the local wines. I still have a bottle from 6 years ago that I bought from the Mosel. Just haven't found the perfect time to open it.

Be very careful what you plant next to each other... How many people have planted pepper plants next to each other? Then they went to eat a green bell pepper and tasted a jalapeno?

 

[babylady4]

I have been rolling the entire time!!!!! Some of these are just priceless!!!

The best I can come up with is another jello disaster; lime jello and cottage cheese with crushed pineapple. Looks like green curdled milk.

Oh yeah, one more. Orange jello, shredded carrots and raisins. Who thought THAT would be a good combo? Crunchy carrots with sickly sweet jello and the addition of little black raisins???



Keep the stories coming folks, this is priceless stuff!

 

[Feathered Wings]

I had a Nasty experience just this past thanksgiving when I was invited to a dinner.

Lets just say to this day I have no idea what it was, But it looked like a casserole dish with some sort of green sliced vegatables swimming in what looked like Whale Snot or a Gallon of Human Phlem

But the Snot/Phlem and Mystery Vegies were covered in some bread crumbs that i did recognize

 

[jojo54]

Years ago we went to a supper put on by a group of Pakistani students who were finishing a 3 month stay in our community living with host families. The students made all the food and it was HOT and SPICY. My two young boys kept trying things and drinking lots of water because everything was so spicy. They saw the fruit salad and decided to dig in. Both stuffed a large spoonful in their mouth thinking it would cool off their burning mouths and the fruit salad was spicy too. Poor guys, I think that;s the first time they ever went home hungry. They couldn't handle the spice.

Another

but not a meal was when I was young and my younger sister took a big bite of baloney and bit a tooth!