OT - What was the worst thing you ever ate or drank?

[Coldfingers]

I am carefull these days when I am invited to a native potlatch. I can "just" manage the traditional moosehead soup (that is boiled with the hide and hair on). If pressed I can meekly smile and nod at others while trying to chew a piece of muktuk down to a swallowable size, but...

That darn fermented seal stuff is NASTY! Just a passing whiff and my barf glands start to swell up.

Moosehead soup, made with the hide/hair removed PRIOR to cooking is not a bad meal at all. I just do not wrassle anyone for the eyeballs. I salvage a half dozen moose a year for the Troopers and always save the heads and other delectables for a growing list of interested parties.

I am gratefull that seals do not get run over very often

[Hobie]

Somebody mentioned kimchi. Kimchee (alt spelling) is NOT rotten cabbage any more than sauerkraut is rotten cabbage. "Fermented" is the word. One might say "pickled". One can think of it as chunky sauerkraut with Asian chili peppers and some other things. I like kimchee. I eat it about 3 times a week. The very best kimchee I ever ate is what my ex-wife made.

Sushi is another thing. I guess I can eat raw tuna but most all sushi is repellent to me. Bait we call it. I won't try another balut either.

[Ben_Rumson]

Kim mentioned the mistake of too much wasabi. I love sushi. In fact the better half and I have sushi at least once a month. She doesn't like wasabi but I love it. It is a seasoning that is good in moderation. A little goes a long way. From what I have read it is good for the respiratory system.

I think it was on Discovery channel I saw them making Wasabe... It’s made from some kind of horse radish... Anyway the stuff was thrown into a big mixer... The guy attending to the mixer was wearing a for real GAS MASK!

[Rimfire McNutjob]

Back in 1990 I had to travel to Kiev several times on business for a division of American Express. This was back when Gorbachev was still in power and it was still the Soviet Union. The trip was usually about 36 hours and involved going from Houston to Chicago, then to Copenhagen, then to Helsinki, then to Moscow, then taking a cab from the international airport Shermetyevo (sic) to the domestic airport Vnukova (sic), then flying AeroFlot (sic) down to Kiev. On this one particular trip, the pilots decided it was too cold and icy to fly the domestic leg so we spent 22 extra hours in Vnukova chatting with a bunch of Algerians. I had left Houston, about 88 degF, in jeans and a polo shirt and arrived in Kiev in the same clothes at about 3am local time a few days later to 5 degF and snow.

So I'm at the airport and the guys I was working with picked me up in one of those tiny little Russian made cars. It was the one where the Russian bought the plant from Fiat and moved the whole thing behind the Iron Curtain and just kept kicking them out ... the Lada perhaps. Anyway, we're packed in this thing headed into Kiev and there are very few lights along the road and the snow was piled up about 20 feet on either side. I'm freezing and starving. One of the Ukrainians asked me if I wanted an apple ... which, of course, I did. So he reached into a bag and pulls out an apple and hands it to me.

Now, there's not enough light to see but I can feel the stem and I can feel that the apple is about the size of a lemon over here but ... I munch away. Having not eaten for a while for being stuck at the airport in Moscow, I was starving. I devoured this thing leaving only the stem and a few seeds that I spit out. This was the best apple I had ever tasted ... bar none.

So we get to the hotel, and it's warm and well lit in the lobby. Back then, you had to be escorted if you were from the West and you had to surrender your passport and visa to the hotel in order to check in. So the Ukrainians are checking us in and I'm finally warming up in the lobby. One of them comes over and asks me if I want another apple. I'm still pretty hungry and so he hands me the bag and walks back to the hotel counter. My buddy and I are each going to eat an apple before we head to the room so I reach into the bag.

The object I pulled out was black as coal and about 1/2 covered in a furry mold. There were numerous holes and I'm sure it was teaming with worms. All of the apples in the bag were in this state. My buddy and I looked at each other and he says "dude, you ate that sh#t". It was impossible to deny, I had literally sucked the prior apple in ... worms, mold, decay, and all. I put the apple-thing back in the bag and threw them away as I went up to my room. Neither of us would touch them once we saw them.

This was a very hard time in the Soviet block and food was really hard to come by in Kiev. The trains were still reliably delivering cigarettes though. This is probably the mildest story I have about my trips there. For about every four minutes I spent in the Ukraine, I have about one minute of crazy story. This is but one of the "food" related stories. I went there three times in all. Trust me ... we are blessed to live where we do and have the things we have.

[Modoc ED]

Somebody mentioned kimchi. Kimchee (alt spelling) is NOT rotten cabbage any more than sauerkraut is rotten cabbage. "Fermented" is the word. One might say "pickled". One can think of it as chunky sauerkraut with Asian chili peppers and some other things. I like kimchee. I eat it about 3 times a week. The very best kimchee I ever ate is what my ex-wife made.

Sushi is another thing. I guess I can eat raw tuna but most all sushi is repellent to me. Bait we call it. I won't try another balut either.

I'm the one that said rotten cabbage. You are correct Hobie. It is fermented and the Kimchi I had first hand in Korea was fermented in a crock in the ground. Could be fermented in other ways too -- I don't know. What I do know is that I like it very much.

[Old Time Hunter]

Peas...ain't allowed on my property, nor anywhere near me. Just think what they really are, They come out of a pod that only has a stem for intake of nutrients, no exit for biological waste...which is of course the PEA! That make 'em pod poop!

[John in MS]

"Well its gotta be Budwiesser beer, its the worst tasting beer in the World. No wonder its not in Australia. Thank Christ."


Ahhhh, my friend, but apparently, you haven't tasted "Hasen Pils" from scenic Augsburg, Germany (preferably 1st thing in the morning after having worked a week of midnight shifts.)

"Hasen" is German for "rabbit," and it tastes like the bunny on the lable has a kidney infection and personally contributed to every bottle... For a guy newly arrived in the Fatherland to have the misfortune to try THAT as his first "German beer," was quite a letdown, believe me! (Augsburg's fest beer, however, was awesome!)

Still, the worst thing I ever drank was "Ratzeputz" (sp?) -- a vile shot of some sort of unknown liquor that tastes like jalapeno juice mixed with Drano and packs a thermonuclear punch. On my first visit to a popular, local bar, an Artilleryman came to our table of Military Intelligence guys and ordered a shot of it, then passed it around while implying (not so subtly) how manly he was for being able to quaff the stuff. Each took a tiny sip and avoided retching, but when it got to me, I was determined with all the earnestness of an 18-year old, newly-minted soldier, to uphold the honor of our unit. So, I tossed it back, somehow managed the best acting job of my life by keeping a cool, poker face, and then ordered another for him and 1 for me. After 2 of those, I literally had tunnel vision.

I'm sure that time passed, but my only vague recollection was of making an admiring, if uncultured, comment in German about the spectacular attributes of our waitress (while totally forgetting that we were IN Germany...) that got me hustled out of there at light-speed by my friends... and when I woke up the next morning, I was mortified. In the 3 years that followed, I never again went within blocks of the place, largely from mortal embarrassment, and partly out of concern that somehow I might be identified as "THAT GUY" and beaten to a bloody pulp.

Worst I ever ate was unidentified Korean food brought to us as a present from a Korean lady we'd met, purchased at a local Korean deli. I don't know what it was, but I DO know it smelled of CS gas mixed with decomposing flesh and had some small shrimp in it... On top, there floated a thick, greasy, neon-orange/red oil slick that looked like something from the Exxon Valdez, and I think I saw some tentacles down below. For camouflage, they'd artfully mixed in some inoffensive-looking vegetables that shouldn't ordinarily cause an instant urge to projectile-vomit... Beyond that, it boasted the foulest combination of spices, guano and Agent Orange flavors that a team of mad scientists bent on world destruction could develop after years of intensive research...

The long-suffering wife and I were determined to be properly appreciative of her kindness, and to try not to waste it. (Mercifully, this was after our guest had departed.) We each ate a couple of bites, carefully avoiding the shrieks of our "gut instincts" to RUN AWAYYY!!!, and then mutually agreed that it had to go. I only wish there had been a toxic waste disposal site nearby...

Never again!!

John

[Hobie]

Somebody mentioned kimchi. Kimchee (alt spelling) is NOT rotten cabbage any more than sauerkraut is rotten cabbage. "Fermented" is the word. One might say "pickled". One can think of it as chunky sauerkraut with Asian chili peppers and some other things. I like kimchee. I eat it about 3 times a week. The very best kimchee I ever ate is what my ex-wife made.

Sushi is another thing. I guess I can eat raw tuna but most all sushi is repellent to me. Bait we call it. I won't try another balut either.

I'm the one that said rotten cabbage. You are correct Hobie. It is fermented and the Kimchi I had first hand in Korea was fermented in a crock in the ground. Could be fermented in other ways too -- I don't know. What I do know is that I like it very much.

That crock kimchee can be the best. You know they put the crock in the ground so that the freezing juices in the kimchee don't crack the crock. It will get a mold on top of it as well. One lifts the moldy part up like a lid and gets the good stuff from beneath it. Chopsticks are used, at least I used chopsticks.

Worst I ever ate was unidentified Korean food brought to us as a present from a Korean lady we'd met, purchased at a local Korean deli. I don't know what it was, but I DO know it smelled of CS gas mixed with decomposing flesh and had some small shrimp in it... On top, there floated a thick, greasy, neon-orange/red oil slick that looked like something from the Exxon Valdez, and I think I saw some tentacles down below. For camouflage, they'd artfully mixed in some inoffensive-looking vegetables that shouldn't ordinarily cause an instant urge to projectile-vomit... Beyond that, it boasted the foulest combination of spices, guano and Agent Orange flavors that a team of mad scientists bent on world destruction could develop after years of intensive research...

The long-suffering wife and I were determined to be properly appreciative of her kindness, and to try not to waste it. (Mercifully, this was after our guest had departed.) We each ate a couple of bites, carefully avoiding the shrieks of our "gut instincts" to RUN AWAYYY!!!, and then mutually agreed that it had to go. I only wish there had been a toxic waste disposal site nearby...

That's a pretty good description. The first time I ever ate kimchee was outside in January in 17 degree weather. The piece of cabbage I ate was mostly devoid of chilis and was all of 1/4x1/2x1-inches. I broke out in a sweat, my eyes watered, my nose ran (like I'd just come out of the gas chamber) and my mouth burned despite the immediate application of 2 ice cold bottles of beer. I can well appreciate the effect on the uninitiated. I also met one 76-year old Korean woman on the bus (of a Sunday morning, me to church and she returning from church) who volunteered that she hated the stuff. That must have been quite a life as it is served at dang near every meal.

[txpete]

down in austria I had some dandelion wine that was about as tasty as JP-4

+3 on the "C-ration meal we referred to as ham and M@##%^F*&%)R's" followed by a stale pall mall non filter smoke. the guy that dreamed that one up should have been shot .

pete

[Wes]

I'm with most of the other guys who tried balut. Nasty! I was born and raised on a ranch and have a pretty strong stomach but that was purty dang gross. It didn't help that I'd already drank quite a little of that poison concoction they served as a punch at the bar/cathouses over there (PI). To this day I ain't sure which made me sicker, balut or cheap booze.
Nastiest thing I drank was a pop can full of copenhagen spit off the dashboard of my brothers old Ford. I borrowed his truck to go to a party and was more than a little dehydrated from the previous nights fun when I got in his truck to drive home I just grabbed that 7UP can and took a snort. Being hung over, it came back up and then some.
Glad I quit drinking.

[Malamute]

Black coffee. Couldnt actually get it down when I tried it. Tastes like an ashtray that was left out in the rain smells. Whiskey has about the same effect on me, as does heavy dark beer. Warm heavy dark beer would be an automatic barf to me.

I tend not to eat stuff that doesnt look, smell or sound like food. Had Mexican "food" from a non-Mexican restaurant, and couldnt finish it. Unidentifiable brwon goey sauce all over everything, and it all tasted about the same. I was questioning if it was indeed food,....Gag.