Talk dirty to me
Really, what CAN’T you do with Spam? Courtesy Wikipedia.
To my great surprise, there has been widespread misunderstanding as to my stance on the Secret Treasure Loaf featured in a recent post. For the record, I discovered that particular gem in a search for a truly repulsive recipe (to pair with the most revolting of vegetable dishes, green bean casserole) that would not only turn a foodie’s stomach, but leave deep emotional scars. I believe I succeeded.
Still, the whole experience has left me wondering. If there are people out there who find this appealing, what must they have ingested previously? Is it possible there are worse things than Secret Treasure Loaf, things so vile and stomach-turning that a meatloaf made from Spam and Velveeta APPEALS? The mind reels, the spirit quails, the sphincter puckers. Nonetheless, I’m going there, folks. I am asking the question and as God is my witness, I will address each and every response. Ready?
What is the worst food you have ever been served?
Velveeta fudge squares. Courtesy foodbeast.com
Perhaps it was in your mother’s kitchen during the Atomic Fifties? Or maybe you’re a world traveler who encountered a particularly exotic culinary abomination on the road to wherever. It may be that a recipe mishap was involved, or you simply thought it would be interesting to try tripe. No matter, the more lurid and nauseating, the better.
I’ll go first, and I am really throwing down the gauntlet here. Witness: Velveeta fudge squares by none other than the fabulous Paula Deen. And no, I don’t know what she was smoking.
Talk to me, people. Unburden yourselves. Believe me, you’ll feel better once you get it off your chests. Plus it’ll help me kickstart that New Year’s diet plan I’ve been putting off. Win win!
Posted on February 17, 2012, in Good to know and tagged Drink and Food, Green bean casserole, Humor/Commentary, Meatloaf, Paula Deen, Spam, Velveeta. Bookmark the permalink. 47 Comments.
Kitchen Slattern 
Salted lard which apparently is quite the Estonian treat. It’s uncooked slices of lard with a salt crust. It took me a while to figure out what the taste was as I had ordered the Estonian appetizer platter and nothing was labeled.
Oh my God, and I thought fried butter was bad. I’ll have to lie down now.
Eating salted lard is like watching a train wreck. It’s so terrible and yet you keep eating it because it looks vaguely like bacon and you keep saying to yourself “Surely they wouldn’t give me straight up fat. It MUST be something.” Then you make the horrific realization that, yes, they gave you straight up fat and a part of your soul dies.
Could you hear your arteries slamming shut or did you just feel it?
I’ll admit, I was surprised that I didn’t have a coronary right there at the dinner table. Nothing like eating your monthly supply of saturated fat in one sitting. The whole experience was topped off by the fact that our waitress was dressed like a 19th century French prostitute. Sadly, she didn’t bust out with “Master of the House” from Les Mis.
The absolute worse meal I ever had was Swiss steak! It is just wrong putting all that stuff together on one plate. A close second would be cooked cabbage with cream of mushroom soup served by my penny pinching mom.
I too suffered through some Swiss steak, though I’d have to say the double whammy of cabbage and cream of anything soup strikes me as far viler. The aroma is bound to LINGER.
Though it’s not my cup of tea, my uncle absolutely loved spam any which way. I think some people are just born with the lovin affliction for the mystery meat.
Worst thing I ever prepared was corned beef hamburgers. An interesting idea in principle, but I forgot to soak the beef in water to extract the salt. Long story short, the burgers turned out to be sodium bombs. Yikes.
So true. I had a family member who adored potted meat, which is as close to cat food as you’re going to get without meowing. The cured meats have felled better cooks than me, which is to say everyone, but God, as they say, is in the details. Thanks for stopping in. Love your site!
My grandfather scrambled eggs and pig brains together one Sunday morning for breakfast….so awful. So wrong.
Brains. Gack. I am so sorry.
My hands down worst of the worst is actually a tea. It is a chinese medical herb tea, used to strengthen the immune system before cold season. Every year, my father would go to chinatown, buy this bag of herbs (it looked like twigs collected from a park), and boil it in a big pot for 2 or 3 hours. I think you knew the “tea” was ready when it looked like tar, I have my suspicions though that tar might taste better. Nothing improved the taste, and I tried everything. Best (or worst) of all, was the threat that if I didn’t gag down this concoction immediately, it would only get worse and thicker as it cooled (one year I tested this theory, and they were right).
For the record, I never caught colds as a child. Perhaps there’s something to this medical brew, but I’m not convinced it just wasn’t fear that he would make me drink something even worse if I actually got sick.
And I thought the seasonal castor oil treatments my grandmother handed out were bad! At least that was only a spoonful and always happened on a baking day. Nothing like a hot donut to take the sting out of it, though even that couldn’t prevent the gagging. You have my sympathies.
I am wracking my brain here. I am having difficulty trying to figure out what the worst thing I ever ate was…though I feel like Taco Bell in general is up there. My husband thinks Taco Bell is God’s gift to his stomach, but it makes me want to vomit. They serve meat out of a hose! A MEAT HOSE!!! That should be illegal.
However, I would be interested to know if those who have tasted aspic put that on their list of worst. I have never had it, but there is an abundance of aspic recipes in my vintage cookbooks and the thought of it makes my stomach churn. Jellied meat stock? HOW was this once so popular?!
I think the aspic craze was part of a larger consomme movement. I have had both and the aspic was far FAR worse. All I could think of was, “I am eating hoof byproduct.”
Taramasalata. No, really. It’s made with cod roe. I mean, I’ll eat fish eggs (salmon caviar is my favourite) with as much pleasure and in as many different ways as bird eggs – but I have to draw the line at eating another female’s ovaries (with the eggs still filling them).
AARGH. Organs and offal. I’m gagging. Thank you. I think.
I. Adore. Velveeta. I could bathe in it. That said, Velveeta fudge squares are an abomination. That’s like saying pink could be blue. Or a rock could be a pillow. Not so!
Last night I tried a coconut flavored tofu dessert. It was appallingly bad. I’m still wondering how they managed to make coconut taste like a metal substance.
It is so devastating when dessert disappoints. For what it’s worth, I think the metallic flavor might have been cause by coconut water. It can have a funky aftertaste.
Velveeta fudge squares? I just shuddered.
If you had eaten them, you would have just vomited.
Velveeta Fudge? Oh sweet mother of GOD that sounds disgusting.
I would have to say that the grossest food I’ve ever been served.. would have to be a soup my family calls Kapusta. It’s a family recipe with Polish roots. It’s fat back and pork ribs that have been boiled in water with lima beans and sauerkraut. But it’s boiled for almost 8 hours so the lima beans just kind of disintegrate. The texture makes me gag, and there are NO redeeming qualities about it whatsoever. PS – It fuels my hatred of lima beans, and only through years of therapy am I able to love sauerkraut.
I’ll bet the grease gobs on the surface are EPIC. Sounds like it might be very effective as a paint remover, though.
Oh.. skimming the funk off the top is an integral part of the process. It’s fat..and hell we gotta remove as much flavor as possible out of it to make it really authentic.
*shudder* Haven’t eaten it in 20 years and it still invokes a gag reflex.
Hmmmm, revolting food brings back not-so-fond memories of my great aunt Ethel (not that I have any FOND memories of her really: a born-in-1900 New England teetotalling Baptist battle-axe, straight out of central casting). Her specialites:
– what she called “jello salad”: it had specimens from all your food groups floating in red jello, congealed in one of those circular jello molds. How did she get the slices of hot dogs NOT sink to the bottom? Served with Miracle Whip “salad dressing”.
– baked squash (or sweet potatoes or whatever they really were; I remember orange mush) with marshmallows on top.
Though it pains me to admit I know this, she kept the dogs afloat by dropping them in only once the jello was soft-set, that is, semi-gelatinous. And I’d like to say, Frankie, that though I have encountered some really exotic variations on the jello salad, nothing, and I mean NOTHING, even comes close to putting hot dogs in it. You, mon vieux, take the prize. (After that the sweet potatoes with marshmallows seem quaintly gourmet.)
Funny enough my submission should have been delicious. A little old lady we know made us wade through the slush in her driveway to get a special package she had made for us. It looked like chocolate caramel turtles. You know they have pecans, caramel and chocolate. My husband can never wait so he grabbed a piece as he was driving and pretty quickly said “Oh, you can have these” I thought he was using reverse psychology on me, you know….these are terrible, you won’t like them. Until that is he opened the car door and spit it out. This was serious, how bad could they be? Rotten rancid nuts, too much salt, sorry I can’t tell you more than that because I didn’t let it sit in my mouth much longer either. It’s terrible getting old…..
More than one fine cook has been undone by rancid nuts. Which brings me to an important food safety tip: Keep your nuts in the freezer (insert husband joke here) to avoid spoilage. Really.
Tater Tot Casserole. That was by far the most vile. My blood congeals at the thought of it. Tots, velveeta, Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup – its all so wrong…
Ack. Thank you for the diet support.
Is it wrong that nothing comes to mind? I’m sure I’ve eaten terrible things. Surely I have! Yet I wrack my brain and…Oh! The molé enchiladas at one local restaurant here had the worst molé ever. It looked and tasted like mud. Mud! Not appealing. Still, i wish I could think of something truly revolting…
Muddy mole? Yup, that qualifies.
HAMBURGER HELPER but the tuna version. The first meal my daughter-in-law prepared. I ate it all and I thought I would die. Little did I know that when I was not looking they threw theirs in the garbage.
My heart breaks for you and everyone else who forgets about the option of slipping the dog their dinner. So much suffering could be avoided.
There is a wonderful Indian restaurant where I used to live, quite an upmarket one, in a posh part of London, food was always unique and amazing, and the crab and mango salad read really well. Unofrtunately it had the funkiest taste and the crab meat was blended into blended mangos so it kinda looked like how it would come back up if you were sick from eating it.
Couldn’t agree with you more. Any ABC (already been chewed) foods should come with a HazMat suit and a stomach pump.
Hah, love that term, ABC!
We aim to please.
This will require some deep thought, but off the top of my head, I must offer up “Pepper Pot Soup.” I’m not sure if this is still a Cambell’s staple, but it used to be when I was starting out with my apartment. I thought it sounded dee-lightful. Pepper pot…I mean, I like pepper. It sounded adorable. And it had something called tripe in it. What’s tripe? Looked kind of like curling pasta, but the dictionary definition quickly sent a shiver down my spine and the can was poured down the disposal.
For the record, I love Velveeta. And Velveeta Mac n’ Cheese. With chicken season sprinkled on it. See, that would probably make your gross list and it’s one of my favorites.
I wish I could say “we don’t judge” here in the Slattern’s test kitchen, but we do. Still we all have our dirty little secrets. Mine involves Pop Tarts and a blow torch.
Out of consideration for the other readers, however, I am not even going to ask what “chicken season” is, though I’m guessing hunting is not involved.
chicken seasoning…I thought you had agreed to correct my typos. McCormick’s, btw.
My bad. I just figured it was a southern specialty item. Actually I like “chicken season” better.
I love you, cristy! Another Velveeta fan! I tried Pepper Pot soup, too, because I loved the smell. But I couldn’t move past the fact that those weren’t cute little noodles. They were a beast’s stomach lining. Nasty.
I once ate nutty rice at a potluck. It was doubtless the WORST thing I have ever eaten (not counting the everything-in-the-kitchen mix-up my sister used to serve me to TRY to make me gag). The sad part was that I didn’t know who brought it. I had to choke it down for fear that the person standing next to me was the one who had toiled to make it.
Nutty rice doesn’t sound so bad. Unless of course the chef was using “nuts” in the vernacular (or testicular) rather than the literal sense. Scratch that first comment.
It tasted like it had been made with dirt and rocks. I can still feel the sand on my tongue.
I am so sorry.