Students, gotta love them
While living in Leeds one of my friends (The mighty DJ Ruckspin for those in the DnB scene of Leeds, which will be, what...me and two others on here?) was not known for his house skills, cooking even less so. So it was a surprise when he cooked the house a dinner. SO it was only a pasta and tomato jobby but fair play was the general consensus. Tasted okay if a bit bizarre. Which is when we found out he had put pine nuts into the mix, and bananas.
(The_Greyhound wrote www.luckymcdanger.blog.co.uk on, Fri 18 May 2007, 11:48, Reply)

Worst thing I've eaten *recently*
is the cake I just spent three hours making.

It tastes like stale rubber.

Usually I'm a pretty good cook, but this one was doomed from the start.
(EasilyRecognisable I’m back baby, Fri 18 May 2007, 11:44, Reply)

the worst thing...
I have ever eaten was a 'toastie topper' which was the most revolting thing ever.....
(archstanton The gold is next to me....leave me be, Fri 18 May 2007, 11:43, Reply)

My mate Ray...
Who is now sadly departed had the culinary expertise of an earthworm...Smash was boiled with onions in a sort of 2 layer sludge, normal fry chips were oven cooked..When we decided to have a 'House' christmas dinner Ray volunteered to cook it...I replied in no uncetain terms for him to f@ck off as I wanted something edible and wasn't prepared to waste money on food.....
(archstanton The gold is next to me....leave me be, Fri 18 May 2007, 11:41, Reply)

Fine Norwegian delicacies...
Two stories from two unrelated experiences with Norway's fine foods...

The first one occurred when I was in a youth choir that had ties to another based in Norway. They visited us once, and brought an abomination that they claimed was 'cheese'. I can't remember what it was called but it was the worst 'cheese' I have ever put in my mouth. It was sweet - and I mean really sweet - and the texture was both soft and slimy. It was much like eating a sugary snot cake (not that I'd know what that's like).

The second was some years later at a Norwegian girl's house. She brought out horse salami. I was slightly disturbed at the thought of eating horse but being the foolhardy... fool I am, I tried it. It was like chewing the tongue of a boot with added salt. Bleeeeuuuuugh.

Apologies for length, it's my first time... I was nervous.
(T.A.F.K.A. doctorsax http://www.badphorm.co.uk, Fri 18 May 2007, 11:41, Reply)

Spaghetti
with an improvised sauce made of yoghourt and a few spices. It was green :/

The worst thing is, I only lived 10 minutes' walk from Morrisons and I could easily afford to make better food - I just couldn't be arsed.
( The Mock TurtIe ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Fri 18 May 2007, 11:39, Reply)

The joys of a hardup student

Me and my mate waiting to be paid as students had £1.23 between us for a day and no food so we decided to buy a loaf of bread from the union shop and a bag of salt and vinegar discos for sandwiches. why discos? because we knew that they had the strongest flavour of all the crisps...
(nevermindtbc, Fri 18 May 2007, 11:33, Reply)

Fishy Story
Second year at Uni, and we all used to cook at one time or another. Except Dave. He'd happily eat everyone else's cooking though.

So, one time, we managed to convince him to cook for the rest of us. Our favourite recipe was slop - basically, chuck anything and everything you can find into a big pan and heat. Corned beef slop was always my favourite.

Dave locked himself into the kitchen for a couple of hours, and then produced several large plates of food which he proudly presented. We each managed one forkful - before spitting it out all over the floor.

"What the Hell's in this???"

"Tomatoes, lentils, chick peas, tuna, onions, mussels..."

"Mussels?"

"Yeah, there was a jar in the cupboard"

"You did drain the brine before chucking them in, didn't you?"

"No. Should I have done?"

Dave ate three plates of salty slop (which sounds like a euphemism, but isn't).

We never let him cook again.
(Steve The Monkey, Fri 18 May 2007, 11:28, Reply)

Not really 'cooking' and not actually me but.....
Handful of mud, grass and vomit?

I have posted this previously as an aside to the personal hygiene QOTW, but it's possibly more relevant here.

My brother tells the tale of legendary Manchester squatter Carlos, whom he once witnessed gagging on his Special Brew and spewing onto the grassy mound on which he was sitting. He then scooped a handful of muddy vomit up and then ate it, stating 'I'm not wasting that, I've just eaten'.
( Monty Boyce, My cheese game is strong, Fri 18 May 2007, 11:09, Reply)

Fruit Salad
Decided to make me own fresh fruit salad, so I pop to Tesco and buy fruit:-
Orange
Lime
Apple
plums

Chop em up, put them in bowl and stir.
By Jimminy was it sour - added a pint of water and some sugar and it was still sour.

Also, when first seeing the future Mrs. Kite I decided to cook her a meal, which involved making my own stuffing. All was OK til I read in the recipe "Add 2-3 cloves of garlic". Now, I didnt realise that a segment of garlic was a clove - I thought the entire bulb was a clove...I gave up after putting about 6 cloves in, and resigned myself to thinking "Oh well, if its a bit mild she'll have to live with it". I also didnt realise the oven was in Fahrenheit, not Centigrade...so after 20 minutes we had lightly toasted pork with INCREDIBLY garlicky stuffing.

And we had a blazing row :-(

Length of bitterness? never ending.
(kitescreech still here, Fri 18 May 2007, 11:05, Reply)

My old flatmate
actually the one who was the window cleaner, bookie's assistant and gravedigger from last week's QotW, used to make chips every night.

We were at university for 10 week terms, and at the beginning of term he would change the oil in the chip pan. Then he would use it every night until the end of term. By about week 3 it had changed chemically into something which would have been too much for Quatermass audiences. The oil used to foam right up to the top of the pan but, as if it had its own intelligence, it would come no further.

By some stroke of luck he never caused a fire. Maybe the oil had been rendered incombustible or something. By a bigger stroke of luck, he's still alive 15+ years later.

He's a fat bastard now though.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Fri 18 May 2007, 11:02, Reply)

wok bread
My brother had a notoriously tight mate who considered food an outrageous financial impostition (he once bought a huge sack of brussells sprouts just after Xmas and was still eating sprout curry at the end of January).

This made him somewhat creative in the kitchen, and led to the invention of the gourmet delight 'wok bread': fill wok with entire bottle of cooking oil. Switch on heat. After a few moments (long, long before the oil could be considered hot) dunk pieces of abandoned stale bread acquired from the back of the bakers. Eat, and enjoy...

He also ate salt sandwiches. No butter. Just salt. And stale bread (see above).
( Monty Boyce, My cheese game is strong, Fri 18 May 2007, 11:01, Reply)

oh and tomato ketchup sandwiches
again, why?

Don't even get me started on tomato ketchup flavoured crisps. There is absolutely no need for that. No need at all.
( sneep used to date Freddie Starr's hamster, Fri 18 May 2007, 10:49, Reply)

my cousins used to eat sugar sandwiches
just two bits of bread, butter and sugar.

Why?
( sneep used to date Freddie Starr's hamster, Fri 18 May 2007, 10:48, Reply)

Lamb tongue stew
Not the most disgusting of things, but it cannot be eaten none the less.

An ex served this to me once after talking at length how nice and nutritious it was. Shame she didn't cut the tongues up so they couldn't be recognised.
She brought the pot to the table, lifted the lid to present me with about 30 lambs all poking their tongues out through the top of the broth.
She sat down and enthusiastically started eating.
I just stared at the tongues that seemed to be waggling at me as they drifted around in the liquid.

I've never eaten tongue since.
(EvilMeister, Fri 18 May 2007, 10:31, Reply)

Smelt nice.
We had no food in the house hardly, and so decided to make a leek and potato hot-pot.

Only, the only ingredients we had were leek and potato and not much else.

Cut the spuds up and the leeks, looked up a recipe on the interweb thingy, and it said we needed milk.

Had about a thimblefull of goats milk (which I can't stand, but No.1. daughter is lactose intolerent) and a bottle of Baileys. Baileys is milky, so I mixed it with the goats milk (about 1/3 of a bottle of Baileys), added some mixed herbs, and about half a bottle of white wine - all this tasted a bit sweet, so I added some lager and some pickling vinegar.

I was trying to impress my new GF with my culinary skills you see.

Anyway, put it in the oven (for nowhere near enough time, spuds were rock hard still when they came out), took it out a while later.

Smelled really nice.

Took a spoonfull and nearly spat it out everywhere - it tasted like dog shite basted with cats piss and baked in an oven over a warm bowl of hells angel sick.

That's when we had toast for dinner.
(dchurch bah, Fri 18 May 2007, 10:20, Reply)

More student cuisine
I ran out of money three days before pay day. Literally no money and no food and my housemates were away so I couldn't scrounge off them.

All I had was a box of Ritz crackers, a small pot of Mango Chutney and water from the tap to sustain me.

It wasn't very nice, but I ate like a king the day I got paid. Best curry I've ever had.
(MrKipling43, Fri 18 May 2007, 10:11, Reply)

They filter piss
As a student in the mid 90's, I was in the shitty position of my parents earning 'just' enough for me to NOT get a grant, but not enough to be able to help me out financially.

Basically I was poor and had to be creative with my cooking. One example is I would make myself a sweet & sour stir-fry, but instead of using chicken breast (which is expensive) I would use cheap sausages or liver (which is dirt cheap).

One day I accidentally bought a pack of kidneys by mistake (pretty stupid for a biology student). I was so poor and hungry I made a sweet & sour stir-fry with them. I hate kidneys, they taste horrible and they filter urine. The sight of those flobbiddy-dobbidy internal organs winking at me through the thick orange "Uncle Bens" sweet & sour stir-fry sauce will haunt me forever.
( Colonel Dracula Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf, Fri 18 May 2007, 10:00, Reply)

Barry :-)
3 Stories, (shared student house)

1. Kitchen, Sat Morning - Barry has grilled a slice of bacon. He has it cooked and laid out on the work surface (note not on a plate or chopping board), he is cutting thin slices off one end of this single slice of bacon, working his way to the other end and eating the slices..
"watcha doing" I asks.
"I think this bacon is off.. I'm just not sure where the off bit starts"


2. My Room - Thursday evening. Barry walks in.
"when did you last have a cooked chicken" he asks,
"Hmmm.. 3 months ago... you had the last one about a month ago", I reply..
"oh".. is his response and heads off downstairs. I follow.
He proceeds to pull what looks like an intact roast chicken out of the oven. The only problem. It is covered in grey fur.. At least he threw it away.

3. Last day in the house.

When we had moved into the house we inherited a n intact 2.5Kg bag of TVP mince (soya), and a can of ex-army self heating Irish Stew (3 years past its eat by date).

We left an intact bag of TVP mince. Barry said the stew was very nice (at least the self heat bit worked - 10/10 to the British Army on that one)
(bigdave40, Fri 18 May 2007, 9:52, Reply)

wild food
my wife bought me a weeks course with tv's ray mears. this involved living in a tent, building shelters and lighting fires with bits of stick. excellent fun and a prolly the best present i've ever received.
anyway, ray made us harvest various roots, scraps of leaves and bits of twig - the thing that stood out the most was the root of the bullrush. we had to gather these roots from the bottom of a pond and then roast them on a fire. they tasted exactly like something hauled up from the bottom of a pond a burnt, much to our surprise.
and what did ray and the staff eat while we dined on this? the fucked off home and had a chinese. bastards.
(localhost, Fri 18 May 2007, 9:49, Reply)

Worst chef
The worst chef I’m aware of was a really chaotic sort. He’d wave kitchen utensils around before throwing them over his shoulder and “serve” food with a tennis racket. His techniques included:

- Pouring melted chocolate over a moose (chocolate mousse)
- Shooting holes in muffins (to make doughnuts)
- Playing basketball with chickens (chicken in a basket)

All the while he’d do this by babbling and singing gibberish in a mix of English and some sort of Scandinavian dialect. He was a real muppet that one.
( abefroman skating on the thin life of modern life on, Fri 18 May 2007, 9:47, Reply)

Hidden in the cavity of the suspended ceiling of the kitchenette/canteen room
are various items that have been removed from the fridge and are past the use by date.
It smells quite bad in there now, but nobody has worked out where the smell is coming from. Although most people thinkt hat the bad smell is from the kimchi.
Also up there, is the missing cutlery, tin openers, various annoying people's favorite glasses/mugs/plates/bowls, etc.
( turb0t, Fri 18 May 2007, 9:45, Reply)

BLOODY SPANISH ALL INCLUSIVE
holidays.

The food in the restaurant was clearly made up fresh every day.
Only out of the previous days leftovers.

And each dish had a picture of whatever animal it was supposed to contain.
Only the pictures had been drawn by a heavily brain injured, two year old, radiation affected, bad-aids baby.
There was no way of telling, and I am convinced that it was a donkey on that picture, and not a cow, as my now-ex suggested.
(UnstableDan Bah, Humbug! ooooh, humbugs, nyom!, Fri 18 May 2007, 9:40, Reply)

In Switzerland
We were told to try out a certain cheese that our hosts were raving about, so we
went and bought a decent stock of the said cheese, only to find out that it had brown specks all through it.
"Can't be!" Thought I, imagining the type of sickos that would put poo in cheese. But it was. Poo Cheese.
That's the Swiss for you, turn their noses up at war but would kill for a bit of Poo Cheese.

Actually tasted alright...
(alwyn Professional Whittler since:, Fri 18 May 2007, 9:34, Reply)

Old milk
Just found a pint of milk in the office fridge dated 29th September 2006. Poured it away down the sink in the lab. It was still remarkably milk-like. I was impressed.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Fri 18 May 2007, 9:29, Reply)

Gruel
Spent a week in the Grand Canyon once. We experimented with various cheeses, and we ate those fast, but the only food we had in real quantity was bulgar wheat and the only flavoring we had was curry powder. Large bowls of curry-flavored gruel, morning, noon, and night, for a week. Yum!
(Perv With A Dog had his eyes pecked out by scrub jays on, Fri 18 May 2007, 9:26, Reply)

Mmmm Fiery
I once had a taste of a firelighter. It was a bit petrolley.
(ShockerMocker, Fri 18 May 2007, 8:54, Reply)

University... Short of money... (More likely drunk)... Yada yada....
... And I fancied some italian. Lasagne. Haven't had lasagne in aaaages....

Lasagne Ingredients:
Beef.
Tomato.
Spices.
Pasta.
Cheese sauce (Which I've since been told 'Should be Bechamel', but I prefer it cheesier than that)
Flatness rather than squiggliness or tubeness. (Shape of the pasta. Come on, keep up.)

None of these items were present in the cupboard, so I improvised.

- Take one king pot noodle, beef and tomato flavour. Remove lid, add boiling water to just under the line. Stir and leave to stand.
- Tip old washing up water out of small casserole dish. Rinse and dry.
- Unwrap 8 Tescos Value cheese-style food-product slices
- Place a layer of now-goopy pot noodle in base of casserole
- layer 4 cheese-food-prdouct slices over the sauce
- repeat last two steps with the remainder of the pot noodle and slices.
- Microwave for 1 minute on full power, or until cheese-food-product slices start to bubble. Or get a skin tougher than plastic.
- Serve in the dish, on a TV magazine on your lap, with a slice of bread with the mouldy crusts cut off.

It's got beef. Ish. Certainly tomato-esque with spices. Well, salt, anyway. There's cheese, pasta and flatness in there. All the elements of a good lasagne, without actually being good. Or lasagne.

Looking back, I can't see how I managed to come back from Uni the size I did. I should have been in a permanent state of malnourishment, or possibly the poster child for amoebic dysentry.

To be fair, I also invented the wonder that is fish-finger and blackcurrant jam sandwiches. It's surprisingly nice.

[nob gag]
( moogthedog, Fri 18 May 2007, 8:44, Reply)

The Worst Pizza in All of Christendom
I took a school trip to Eastern Europe once. The day we left Budapest--which had only recently ceased being Communist--we ran short of time and found ourselves unable to stop for any sort of tasty comestibles. So, at the train station in Budapest, I made the mistake of purchasing a piece of "pizza".

Lukewarm, soggy, and limp, there was absolutely no part that was edible. Cheese? I don't think it was actually cheese, as it had the consistency of candle wax. Sausage? Oh dear. I'm not sure what animal it came from, or, indeed, if it was even of biological origin. Sauce? I'm fairly certain it was watered-down ketchup. Crust? Good lord. Let's not even mention it.

It was so bad, dear reader, that when I threw it down in disgust, the ubiquitous pigeons scurred towards it, but after a moment's perusal, they backed away in distaste.

That's right: Food so bad it was disdained by Eastern Bloc railway pigeons.

That's bad.
(herbivorous, Fri 18 May 2007, 8:09, Reply)

Wahey, pease pudding!
What is it with Geordies and their bizarre pride in their local "delicacies"? More than once when I've been travelling through their godforsaken thatcherised wasteland i've been offered, with great fanfare, stotty bread and pease pudding.
What the fuck, just what the fucking fuckurating fuck are these people on about? Stotty bread is just a lump of bread, kneaded into the most boring shape imaginable. And pease pudding? For the innocent, this is a puree of split peas, butter and eggs. If you think that sounds disgusting, you're wrong. It is in fact OBSCENE. Imagine something that looks like a quantity of rancid snot with the consistency and texture of softened lard. And while these bumpkins hand this slop over to you, you can see they're literally bursting with local pride as if they're natives of Parmiggiano and they've just produced the greatest vintage cheese crop ever.

Don't mind the pork scratchings, though ...

No apologies for length, you ho's secretly love it
(mudskipper, Fri 18 May 2007, 7:48, Reply)