A lot of people all over the world have weird foods that they eat. I mean, we have entire TV shows that the whole concept is “Dude goes to a place and eats weird stuff” typically it’s like, deep-fried bat or monkey brain or something crazy. Basically, that entire scene from “Temple of Doom” except it’s a TV show.
But just because someone somewhere decided the head was the tastiest part of a fish doesn’t mean it’s not gross. So we took to the internet to find out what the absolute worst things people have eaten, and it turns out, fish heads might not be as bad as you think.
Especially when you consider what some of these people endured.
40. What a weird hobby for a guy who can’t eat normal foods
My grandad had esophageal cancer and couldn’t eat foods thicker than a watery milkshake. He took up cooking as a hobby but of course, he couldn’t taste test most things.
He made this hot pot concoction thing and it was so salty, it was like eating hot ocean. Nobody had the heart to say so we just ate it.
39. Don’t put pasta in a slow cooker
My wife once made a tuna casserole in the slow cooker. She followed a recipe that should never have been published. It had pasta, which of course was no longer pasta after hours in a slow cooker, but paste.
Mixed with canned tuna, and some peas. Bland, fishy, mushy. Terrible.
I was stoically eating it. She said she didn’t like it. I said, “Oh, thank god, this is awful,” and we threw it away.
She still tells people how much she appreciated that I was polite and eating it without complaint.
38. This is just more sad than anything
I once tried to cook an Asian dish, used every pot, cutting board and kitchen utensil I had, sat down to eat it and it tasted like hot vomit with noodles, I tried it, spat it out walked over to the stove and threw the whole big pot of it away.
My boyfriend was like “ it’s not that bad” and I don’t even know how he ate a whole bowl of it. I went and got a pizza.
37. If there’s one thing meat shouldn’t be, it’s hairy
My grandma cooked me “hairy” meat.
That day she had made some sort of special homemade dish for the entire family, but unfortunately for me, it contained a huge amount of onions.
Thanks to my other grandmother, I haven’t been able to eat onions without puking since I was 5. So my grandma cooked me something similar to a steak covered in gravy, with mashed potatoes.
It smelled delicious, but as I was about to put that first bite into my mouth, I noticed the meat had 4/5 small hairs sticking out.
As subtle as I could, I decided to “check” the meat to see wth was going on and I almost puked right there in front of 10-15 family members.
The gravy had masked the fact that the meat was covered in hairs and I mean covered. There wasn’t a single space that didn’t have one or more hairs on top.
And they weren’t even from the same person. Some of them were short and white, others black as coal and the longest hairs I’ve ever seen in my life.
And that’s when it hit me.
My grandma needs to wear glasses all the time because she’s practically blind, but doesn’t like to wear them when she’s home.
That night the meat probably fell to the floor as she was about to cook it and she didn’t feel the need to clean it because she saw nothing wrong with it.
I didn’t want to touch that meat with a five-foot-long stick, much less eating it but my grandma had cooked that especially for me.
She had spent extra time in the kitchen because I was an annoyingly picky eater that hates onions. So I cleaned it the best I could without raising suspicions and ate almost the whole thing.
Just remembering makes me want to puke.
36. Sounds awesome
My emotionally distraught buddy cooked a skillet of rice and ground beef- with 2 packages cream cheese, heavy whipping cream, sour cream, half n half, whole milk, 1 pound cheddar cheese, cream of mushroom soup.
It was… thick.
35. Sometimes, the pepper grinds you
When I was about 7 or 8 I had to spend the night at my aunt’s house. During dinner, I watched her use a pepper grinder to season her food.
The thing was huge, looked like a bed post, and I really wanted to try it out. She offered to do it for me, but it looked fun so I insisted that I knew what I was doing.
I had no idea how to work the thing and somehow got a pile of whole peppercorns in my food.
I was embarrassed at the idea of having broken her giant pepper grinder, so I proceeded to eat all one thousand of the peppercorns with my meal, hiding them as I did so.
It was horrible. She must have known.
34. I hope you have since taught your husband that kissing shouldn’t involve chewing
My husband was on a business trip to Japan when he was invited to dinner by the client.
During the meal, he is presented with a platter of raw cow tongue. Everyone is looking at him to see if he’ll eat it.
He hesitates, then tentatively takes a bite, and while chewing on it, my husband, being quite the joker, says: This must be what it feels like to french kiss a cow.
33. Thanks! I hate it!
First time out at a restaurant in Korea. Sliced raw sea cucumber.
Imagine going to your parent’s house, down to the basement to the laundry room.
Going to the old, dirty, galvanized sink next to the washing machine, room smells of damp and mold, sticking your finger up the spout and pulling out that old, rotten, brownish-grey, nasty rubber washer that’s been stuck up there for ages.
And popping it into your mouth.
32. Aww poor sad tacos
When I was in high school I went over to a friend’s house out in the suburbs. His mom had heard that I was Mexican and decided to do her take on tacos for lunch and served tacos with ham.
I really appreciated the thoughtfulness of the gesture, so I ate them with a smile even though they were really weird.
31. Anytime someone tells you it’s “tradition” to make visitors eat something, expect it to be disgusting
I was once on a business trip visiting the Philippines and at the end of a meeting we all went out to dinner.
Then once dinner was over, my associates told me that it’s a tradition that everyone in my company who visits must eat balut. For those of you who don’t know, balut is a developing bird embryo, so it’s basically a hard-boiled egg with a partially developed bird inside.
It actually wasn’t so terrible, but seeing that bird inside was absolutely difficult to overcome. The worst part was that after I ate half of the egg, my associates all laughed and said that it’s not actually a tradition, that they just were busting my balls and wanted to see me eat balut.
Jerks.
30. Did you get the stuffed crust
I once attempted to make pumpkin ravioli. It took 4 hrs and destroyed my kitchen. I sat down with my husband of less than a year and we both took a bite.
He didn’t say anything. I swallowed, looked at him and said “Do you want to call Papa John’s, or should I”? He just went “Thank God.
It was awful but I didn’t want to hurt your feelings”.
29. The spiders are the best part
I was about 13 on a trip to Samoa. My mom had somehow arranged dinner with a local chieftain.
The home had no walls, just concrete pillars and a roof with fluorescent lighting. Spiders and other bugs were raining down on us while we were trying to eat mutton soup.
I got smacked for trying to pick a spider out of my soup and so I just… ate the soup, raining bugs and all.
28. Aww now I want some curry
I had a dental implant fitted.
I came home from the dentist with gums stitched and the painkillers wearing off.
My other half greeted me and said, “I knew you’d be sore, so I’ve made you one of your favourite dishes to cheer you up”.
It was a delicious fish curry. A delicious, spicy fish curry.
I was touched at the thought, so ate it all, asked for seconds and stoically pretended my gums were not on fire.
27. This hurts me physically to read
It was a chile relleno, which instead of being stuffed with cheese and/or meat, had canned tuna mixed with mayonnaise and Veg-All. That was bad enough, but they were trying to cook too many in too short a time.
The fryer couldn’t get hot enough to fry the egg batter. Instead of making a crust, the egg turned into an oil sponge. I pressed on the “crust” and oil just oozed out.
I lifted the fork and it reabsorbed the oil. Fascinating but not something you want to eat.
The reason I had this meal was that when I was a kid, my parents were part-time missionaries with a focus on Mexico.
We were in Monterrey, doing repairs on a church. The pastor and his wife ran a restaurant for their primary income.
They offered the missions team, 33 Americans, dinner at their restaurant, to say thanks for the effort.
The wife announced that they had prepared her special recipe, her own creation, for everyone.
They said that anyone who didn’t like her special dish could have a ham & egg omelet.
A good half of the group started to raise their hands, until my mom (the group leader) said, “Oh, no! Of COURSE not! We love it!
Right, everyone?”? Because she has manners, and everyone realized she was right. We all ate as best we could. I managed to eat about half.
26. You can’t just throw a bunch of random crap into a pot and call it chili
Worst thing I’ve ever had was Vegan Chili
Its not so much that it was vegan, although the chef considered it to be one of his best recipes, it had more to do with the dish barely constituting chili. It was made out of sweet potato, quinoa, corn, tomato paste, beans, and barbecue sauce.
What it didn’t contain was onions, peppers, garlic, spice, salt, and/or pepper.
It had a paste like consistency because it was both overcooked and didn’t contain enough liquids while also being unpleasantly sweet from the barbecue sauce.
The host informed us that next time he makes it, it won’t contain beans because one of his guests isn’t a fan of legumes and as a vegan he understands food concerns.
25. Ahh yes, what a good and professional work environment, good job everyone
When I was a young lad serving in the USAF it made the most financial sense to eat at the chow hall. Me old Gaffer, also having served in the US military, had given me some advice before leaving for basic training.
“Son, never volunteer for anything, and don’t mess with the cook or the paymaster”. Good advice, that.
One fine morning I asked for SOS.
For the uninitiated, SOS is biscuits and gravy. When I took a bite that fateful morning my SOS was so salty it almost made my eyes water.
Somehow I got it into my head it would be a good idea to let the cook know the SOS was oversalted. You know, so others wouldn’t have to suffer.
Heh.
ME (a one-striper): “Hey Sarge, this SOS is too salty”.
HIM (a clearly annoyed non-commissioned officer with many stripes): “What”?
ME: “This SOS is too salty”.
HIM (looking over the top of his glasses): “What’s ‘SOS'?”
ME: “…[gulp]”
At this point, I had a vague feeling of unease, as if some unseen danger approached. Sadly, it was not a strong enough feeling to prompt me to STFU and walk away.
ME: “You know, the biscuits and gravy”.
HIM (still deadpan): “What does ‘SOS’ mean”?
ME: “Uh…stuff on a shingle”?
HIM (face lights up with a smile):
“You mean [bleep] on a shingle”?
ME (totally failing to see the trap): “Yeah! SOS. It’s too salty”.
HIM (smile gone): “So you think the food we make for you in the dining facility is bad”?
(Note to self: Don’t ever call it a ‘chow hall’).
ME (now realizing I’m SOL): “Uh…that’s what everybody calls it”.
ME (having not yet learned when in a hole to stop digging):
“Not all of it, just the SOS. Today! I mean just today the SOS is…too salty. The rest of the food is fine. I mean great.
The food here is usually GREAT”!
HIM (still not smiling): “Thank you, Airman, I’ll take care of it”.
He took care of it by making sure the SOS was too salty to eat for the next week.
I don’t know if it was too salty for everyone, or just for me. But I had learned the lesson me old gaffer had tried to teach me.
I just ate my SOS, chewed with my mouth closed and a smile on my face…
24. Just another reason to never trust Vegan food
I have been a vegan for a long time, and I now make fantastic vegan desserts that you’d never know were vegan.
This has not always been the case. The first Thanksgiving I was a vegan (about 18 years old), I insisted on making a vegan pumpkin pie.
The recipe called for silken tofu (the kind that’s basically unflavored pudding). Well, my small-town grocery store didn’t have that, so I ended up using firm tofu (the kind generally used as a meat substitute).
Even when blended thoroughly, it was like a pumpkin-and-scrambled-egg pie. I had never had vegan pumpkin pie before, so I thought “Well, it doesn’t look much like the picture, but I guess this is it”?
My Grandma is the single most supportive person in my life, so when she heard I had made a pie, she requested the first piece.
I anxiously served it to her and then cut a second slice for myself. As you would expect, it was TERRIBLE. I immediately ran into the dining room, took my Grandma’s plate, and just said “Sorry, Grandma.
I’m really sorry”. She patted my hand and said, “It was a good try, darling! You’ll get it perfect next time”.
23. This is a sad time
I’d just gotten all four of my wisdom teeth pulled and I was starving.
However, my pain killers had kicked in and I could not feel my face. I also couldn’t eat any solids, obviously. Cue me, sitting at the table, surrounded by pudding cups, crying, with pudding smeared all over my face.
Not being able to feel my face meant that I had no idea where my mouth was and couldn’t actually get the spoon in there, so I just cried until sometime helped me to bed.
I was 17.
22. Hot Take: Meat isn’t supposed to come in loaf form
Dad learned to make a meatloaf from the TV and screwed it all up. He was going through some cancer treatments (he went into remission shortly after, no sob story) and couldn’t handle dry food too well, and he ended up making the most watery, ketchup-y meatloaf I ever had the misfortune of eating.
The way mom makes meatloaf, it’s just hamburger cake. Ground beef, onion salt, smashed crackers and a couple eggs. It was delicious and I always wondered why meatloaf had this stereotypical hate against it.
And then I had dad’s, and I understood. If other people made meatloaf like this monstrosity, I’d completely understand the universal hate for it.
21. I love Indian food
A college friend and I were returning home for a break. I dropped him off at his house. He tells me that his very traditional Indian mother has invited me in for a meal to thank me for driving her son home.
He says that to turn her down would be an insult. He apologizes for putting me in this situation but appreciated if I would just come in and have a quick bite as a sign of respect.
Ok. No problem.
His mom is very pleasant and welcoming. Since she doesn’t speak English and I don’t speak Hindi, my friend translates. His mom is so eager and excited to give me a huge heaping plate of home cooked food.
It smells warm and exotic. I’ve never had Indian food so I don’t know what anything is.
I start to eat. It’s delicious. A few more bites in and I realize something odd is happening.
My tongue feels like it is burning.
Then my lips feel like they have been set on fire.
I realize then why my friend always douses his pizza in red pepper flakes.
Now I’m sweating.
But I’m still shoveling in the food. My eyes start tearing but I’m nodding my head and thanking them for the food.
My nose is dripping.
Everything inside and surrounding my mouth feels like someone lit it on fire.
Finally I hear the mother yelling at her son and he runs over to the fridge and grabs sour cream and milk.
He tells me that his mom is so sorry and she can see that I’m not used to spicy food. I rub the sour cream all over my lips.
Then the 3 of us look at each other and laugh. The mom and I hugged on the way out.
I don’t know if I’d say it’s the “worst” thing I’ve ever eaten but it’s the only time that I ever felt like I was on fire.
20. I’m guessing this particular fish failed to load up on pineapple ahead of time
Significant Other took me out for a fancy meal when we lived in Japan.
They served a lot of delicious small dishes, and the waitress did a good job describing each one. Except for shirako. It was white, milky, and soft.
Significant Other and I both ate it and didn’t talk about it until we left the restaurant. Finally I had to speak up. “That was a fish sperm sac, wasn’t it”
“Mhmm”.
19. Nothing beats a nice big slab of Southern Style BBQ Ribs
My parents love ribs.
However, being from New Jersey…they really had no idea how to cook them properly.
They’d get so excited. “We stopped at the Amish market and got those big country ribs….
.ribs for dinner tonight”! I never complained…and I felt really bad for not liking the ribs because my parents were so excited to make them.
They’d put them in the broiler and cook the life out of them…it was like eating a catcher’s mitt.
One day, some friends who knew how to do real southern bbq were making ribs and asked if I wanted some.
I said “No, thanks…I just don’t like them”. They were really surprised. “Who doesn’t like ribs”?
After some prodding…I tried them and was amazed.
THIS is what they’re supposed to taste like”?!
18. Not gonna lie, Chili’s got me through college
Went to Chili’s order chicken dish that was served raw. Asked for a manager. He told me it was fine.
We left. Three weeks later I won a gift card and we gave it another chance. Ordered a different chicken dish. Which was served raw.
Asked for a manager and was told it completely cooked. Left and called and the health department. And corporate. Corporate said it was independently owned and they wouldn’t do anything. Health department came and they were fined for a bunch of things.
Many years later a corporate director came into my current job and because I was super helpful offered me a gift card which I politely declined and said I would never step foot into a Chili’s again because of the horrible horrible service and experience. He told me I should go to a corporate store.
I declined.
17. The land of the rising sun and odd foods
I went to Japan earlier this year (been on my bucket list forever) and one of the things on my Japan bucket list was to try natto.
The reason being that I love new experiences and I saw it on a vlog once – it looked like nothing else I’d seen (with the cheese-like goo stuff) and being from Britain getting it at home would have been a pain.
We went to a cool little karaoke bar/club where I told the owner I really wanted to try natto because she had asked what we wanted to do in Tokyo.
She gave me this “really”? look and I explained why as per above. She then rang a member of her staff who due to start their shift and asked him to pick some up on his way in.
She chopped some scallion into it and added soy sauce, then stirred it vigorously until it (what I can only describe as) gooped up real good.
I wish I could say I enjoyed it but it tasted like strong off cheese with a weird mouthfeel. Glad I did it but it was a difficult eat.
16. What a fun time
I used to work at Six Flags Great America, I worked the teacup ride by Raging Bull. This group of girls come in and are like “which cup spins the fastest?”? And I pointed out which one, check the cups, and run the ride.
They came up to me afterward saying that their friend didn’t realize how fast they were going to be spinning…
I went to take a look it was like someone made a pot of oatmeal and dumped it all over this cup. I literally had oatmeal for breakfast that day….
and that’s the last time I’ve ever eaten it. You couldn’t even pay me to touch oatmeal ever again.
15. No, no, I’m good, you guys need this more than I do
It was my first few days in Mali (Peace Corps) and it also happened to be Eid Al Fitr.
The locals, all desperately poor but serving their very best, had bbq’d/stewed a goat. When it came time to eat, they let me know that I was the guest of honor, and as such I would get the very best meat.
This was a very big deal to them, as again they were desperately poor and this was meat, so I knew I was going to have to eat whatever they brought out.
Something you may not know- in much of the 3rd world, the nicest cuts are NOT the steaks or what we would normally go for.
No, the most desired pieces of meat are the (more nutritious) entrails. In retrospect then it was no surprise that I was served a big bowl of intestines, stomach, and other entrails topped with a singular eyeball- sitting there like a maraschino cherry.
The worst part of it- eyeballs pop in your mouth- like very gross grapes.
14. I don’t measure spices, I just keep going until my ancestors tell me to stop
My dad once made this chicken dish I absolutely loved. Chicken wrapped in a red meat (maybe prosciutto)?
on a bed of asparagus in a rich cream sauce. He always guesses ratios when he cooks, so when he tried to remake it for my birthday, it tasted like salt.
The whole thing, just differently textured salt. He had spent 3+ hours making it for me so I ate every disgusting bite, since no one else would, and told him I loved it but we should make it less salty next time so everyone else could try it.
13. It could be worse, visit Finland and ask to try Hákarl
Lutefisk. Terrible, terrible Scandinavian white fish. It is stored in lye so you have to rinse it for several days before cooking and serving it so it is super mushy when served.
My in-laws fed it to me my first Christmas Eve with my ex-wife and everyone watched me very carefully when I took my first bite.
It was horrendous but I soldiered through and swallowed it. They all burst out laughing at the face I made and informed me that Uncle Dave had spit it out.
They then proceeded to bring me out the steak they had prepared for me. I will say the sauce they serve with the lutefisk is very good, I think it is some kind of mustard sauce.
12. Yo this story is nuts
I once had Chicken testicles. I never thought chicken (roosters I guess) had testicles before this. I knew mammals had testicles.
So it was a huuuge plate of like 30-40 balls.
Chicken balls. Literally. Each testicle was pretty big too. I think the host ordered it to really gross us out.
You know when you feel it in your balls when you see someone else’s balls being kicked?
You might feel the same too when you see a plate of 30+ balls. At least 15 roosters were sacrificed for this.
It’s supposed to be a pretty expensive delicacy.
So out of politeness we popped 1-2 balls each into our mouths and chased it down with tea.
Urghhh
11. Never had a good liver
Had Dog stew in Korea.
Boss for a new job invited me out to lunch with the team, his treat.
He warned me we were having dog stew, said I could decline if I want. I took one for the team.
At first, it was actually not bad.
The broth was good and not oily, the meat lean with a peppery taste, I kind of enjoyed it.
While listening to the boss tell a story, I sunk my spoon into the pot and, without looking, spooned a whole intact dog’s liver into my mouth.
There it sat, on my tongue, a whole, soft, slightly mushy, cooked liver, about the same texture as mashed potatoes. I dared not chew it for fear of getting that awful taste between my teeth.
All I could do was mash it against the top of my mouth and swallow.
And so I did, spreading that horrible taste and texture all across the roof of my mouth while feeling the slightly oval shape of one end of the liver tickle-nudging the back of my throat.
10. Cheddar Bay biscuits are life
My high school crush made cheddar biscuits in home-ec. She needed to have people try them and write a review for a grade. She looked super proud of them but, dog poop on a pig fetus would have had a better presentation.
The biscuits looked like they never left ball-form and were raw as while somehow still being burnt; they looked like dollops of cheeto mud. I tasted no cheddar or bacon in them whatsoever, just weird burnt-raw dough.
My eyes are twitching like I drank toothpaste and sour milk while I’m saying “oh, eez er pweddy guh”.
I write my fake review of giving it perfect stars and she leaves to get more people to try them.
The second she was out of the room, I puked it all back up in the trashcan. No warning gag or cough, just straight regurgitation.
My dad had to come to take me home by the time the next class ended.
9. What would you do for some good Phở
The entire head of a duck, other than the beak.
This was one of the first times I had dinner with my Vietnamese soon-to-be in-laws. They had a whole duck and told me that it was customary for the guest of honor to share the duck’s head with the host.
I was savvy enough to realize that, while that was probably true, it was also a test on their part to see if ol’ round-eyes would eat their food.
I’ll eat virtually anything, so it wasn’t bad at all. (The eyeball texture was a little bad, though). Fortunately, my in-laws also make the best pho in the universe!
8. If there’s one day to throw healthy cooking to the wayside, Thanksgiving is it
I went to a Thanksgiving meal with my wife’s (then girlfriend) extended family. I love Thanksgiving, that meal has all my favorite comfort foods.
My wife and my parents neglected to tell me that this particular family was full of awful cooks.
Apparently, they’re health fanatics, they refuse to add anything unhealthy to a dish that isn’t “necessary”.
The result was bland Turkey, watery gravy with no flavor, and bland stuffing. Now that wouldn’t be too awful, if not for the mashed potatoes.
They refused to add any salt to the potatoes because “it’s not necessary”. They also didn’t add milk, or butter, or cream, or anything with any flavor whatsoever.
They just added a few cups of tap water, and mashed up the boiled potatoes.
I knew none of this going in, so thinking that this was going to be a great meal, I heaped potatoes on my plate.
The first bite told me how wrong I was. Since we were still dating, I didn’t feel I could toss anything that was on my plate, so I ate every bite of that nasty potato mush.
Didn’t even have table salt and pepper to add.
7. What, you don’t like sage?
I used to get invited for Christmas with some friends of my wife. It was a large affair, with 24+ people and most people brought side dishes a la potluck.
Nobody was allowed to bring stuffing for the turkey, as that was Linda’s chosen for all time side dish to provide. I like stuffing of many types as the perfect side dish to go with turkey.
How bad could this be?
Linda’s special dish was handed down from her beloved deceased mother so it could not possibly be criticized.
It. Was.
Terrible. It was as though it consisted of 40% dried sage and the rest was dry dark bread. None of the usual moisture providing things were present.
There was so much sage. It was expected that EVERYBODY would eat some and most should compliment it. It was an affront to food. Worse, we went there several years in a row for Christmas so the stuffing was inescapable.
6. Mayo is a condiment, not an ingredient
I do not like mayonnaise very much at all. If something comes with it, ok, but it’s not something I’d ever willingly put on my food myself. I remember when I was younger, my friends mom made us some sandwiches while I was over at their place, and these things were absolutely swimming in mayo… like much more mayo than meat or lettuce.
I managed to stomach it despite wanting the puke every bite.
5. Pineapple is amazing though
I went to a good high school friend’s birthday party when I was sixteen.
His mom is an awesome lady, works really hard, single mom, the works. We were all given the heads up that it’s a really big thing if she cooks, and she’d busted her butt for his birthday.
There was this blueberry-lemon crumble that looked really good. About three of us jumped on it, loaded big helpings, and then took large bites. Two conclusions were immediately made.
1) My mouth was breaking out. 2) There was a distinct cheese flavor. Instead of a blueberry-lemon crumble, it was a blueberry-pineapple-cheese-loaf. I’m allergic to pineapple, so I spat it into a napkin as quickly and discreetly as I could.
Turns out, what had happened was that my buddy’s mom had been under high stress at work. She was late in getting started on the food, and ended up getting a couple of ingredients confused.
The first was the Bisquick, which got a surprise substitution with Red Lobster Cheddar Bay Biscuit mix. The second was pineapple juice for lemon juice.
Not sure how that last one happened, but bless her heart… it did. Everything else was amazing though.
4. This story never seems to stop
I once had some fermented camel milk while living in Mongolia.
I was staying with a lovely host family and they were serving tea as well as camel milk in the afternoon. They passed me a bowl of the milk and since it is considered quite rude to say no, I took a sip.
Tasted like rotten yogurt. It just made me instantly feel queasy. But I swallowed it. Thanked them and tried to move on. But it didn’t end there.
Later that night another girl that was with me (who tried the milk as well) pooped the bed in the middle of the night.
I woke up to her cleaning her bed. I was delirious and sick as well but wasn’t aware how bad I was yet. Then it the need to poop hit me.
I could tell I was about poo my soul out so I ran out the ger (Mongolian home) and ran to the giant hole in the ground that was the toilet.
To paint a picture, this toilet was just a big ol hole full of poop, pee and blood with two wooden boards over it for balance.
It had a short mud wall around the hole so that when you would squat your head would stick out. You could reach the sides of the wall when balancing on the wooden boards.
I dropped my pants in this hole and proceeded to release the demons pent up inside me from that milk.
It didn’t end there. I began to throw up (apparently the locals call this the double dragon).
I was now emptying my body on both sides and holding onto the mud-brick wall for dear life. It didn’t end there.
A thing I failed to mention was that I was with several people who also tried the milk.
They were also very sick but you see there were only 2 toilets. I got one and another dude got another. Everyone else that got the double dragons just had to run out into a field and drop their pants.
One girl who didn’t get sick for some reason was going around trying to help people. Passing out hair ties and such.I’m holding onto the walls, throwing up, pooing a storm and just praying for my life to end, but I think to myself “at least I got the toilet right”?
Well, when I feel something crawl over one of my hands I begin to think otherwise.
It’s pitch black outside and I can’t see anything. I called to the girl helping out people to bring a flashlight real quick so I can see what just crawled over my hand.
I honestly didn’t know what it was. Well, she comes over and shines the light on the mud walls. I’m greeted with the sight of at least a dozen large brown spiders scuttling in and out of the cracks of the wall. At this point, I want to cry.
I start hugging myself because the walls are literally crawling with spiders. But the double dragons didn’t care. It didn’t care that there were spiders and I knew couldn’t hold my balance at this rate. I knew I would fall in if I didn’t hold onto something. Well, the girl that came over to shine her light knew this.
Just as she shined her light on me like an angel, she reached her hand out to me like an angel too. She grasped my hand and held me in place until I was done about 10 mins later.
I have never felt so close to another human being since. I have never been the same since this incident.
I will never drink camel milk again.
3. Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal
I grew up very poor, and I’ve always loved potato salad.
So Baptist church potlucks were great days when I was a kid. I’d load up my plate with a couple of thousand calories of starch and mayonnaise and that full feeling would last almost a whole day.
At one potluck when I was maybe 10, there was this amazing looking potato salad, kinda reddish in color. I could smell mustard and pepper. I filled my floppy paper plate with that and a slice of ham then sat down next to my mom.
Her old lady friend was sitting across from us and smiling at me. I crammed a big spoonful of the salad into my mouth so I wouldn’t have to talk.
I bite down. Something’s very, very wrong. Alarms start ringing in my head. OOOGA! OOOGA! OOOGA!
Old lady, absolutely beaming, says, “How do you like my turnip salad”?
It was awful. Bitter, unnaturally crunchy, sort of acidic in a way that gave me my first experience with heartburn. I’ve accidentally ingested gasoline in my lifetime.
This salad was worse.
To this day it stands in my memory as the most awful thing I ever ate. And I ate every bit on the plate.
I just couldn’t get myself to squash the old lady’s happy moment.
And, lucky me, she gave us all the leftovers.
So the first thing my mom said when we left was how surprised she was that I liked turnips, that she had tried it and didn’t think it was very good at all, but maybe if I wanted she’d buy some–
“Mom, I hated it. I thought it was potato salad”.
Eh? Why’d you eat it then?
I told her. She looked shocked at first, then started grinning, then giggled and laughed uncontrollably all the way home.
We put it in the fridge because she knew my dad (who didn’t go to church) would try it later.
Mom and I were in the living room that afternoon when we heard, “Blech!
What is this”?
Laughing again. Lots of it.
2. I don’t particularly like my melons “horned”
African Horned Melon.
When I was young, my mother went to the store and I said I wanted a cucumber.
She found this weird, green bumpy thing, so she decided to get it.
Come lunch, I have it, and I see this weird, slimy inside.
I can already tell that it is not a cucumber, and I wouldn’t like it.
I eat it, and begin to gag from how rancid it tasted.
I revolted back in disgust. There were still around 10 more mouthfuls of this thing.
I didn’t want to tell my mother, because she bought it and I didn’t want to waste it or seem like a brat, so I kept eating it until my mother found me in the living room gagging on each spoonful (yes, spoonful).
I don’t remember where we shopped, or how it was there in the first place. I just remember it was that.
1. In the immortal words of Admiral Ackbar: It’s a trap!
Basically, my high school boyfriend was going through some troubling times with his parents, so we were invited to his aunt’s house for Christmas or Thanksgiving supper.
(I can’t remember which but I remember the food).
His aunt and uncle, and their 2 sons are huge people. They are tall. And wide.
And loud. And scary. They’re all 6ft or taller and if it wasn’t for the fact that I knew from previous experience that they’re just such nice people I wouldn’t have gone.
They’re only scary when it comes to how loud they are – a quick snap is more like a thundering boom when they wanted to give you crap for something.
Anyways, from the minute we come in the door they are just going on about the stuffed mushrooms that mom makes. Her 2 sons were counting the mushrooms on the pan, and the number of people in attendance, to ensure there would be an even share of mushrooms among people.
Because these mushrooms were supposed to be so heavenly, they made an abundance. There was something like 4 or 5 mushrooms per person but remember: this is a big family.
Per person, there was a restaurant appetizer order of mushrooms. But that was nothing but a section of their plate.
My ex and I were getting very excited about these mushrooms.
She’d never made them for us but with the way everyone was talking – and good stuffed mushrooms are always appreciated – we were getting excited.
You see where this is going.
The mushrooms themselves weren’t even bad. It was whatever she stuffed them with. That was the most god awful disgusting thing I’ve ever put in my mouth.
I thought, hey, I’ve eaten cold ravioli out the can when I’ve been stoned, I could choke down this nastiness inside my mouth.
I was wrong. My body physically rejected it. You could have put a cooled off deuce inside my mouth and my body would probably have had an easier time accepting it as food.
I actually thought it was a joke. I thought they made them this horrible on purpose just to see how I would react because they always joked about how I was so tiny and didn’t eat “hardly anything”.
(I’m an average height and size, they’re just big people).
I remember quickly taking a drink to swallow this stuffed mushroom whole and glancing around the table.
Watching that family pound back those mushrooms and almost fist fighting about the extras had me stunned. There was no way in my mind these could be good to any normal human being.
But you gotta do what you gotta do. If I refused those horrible stuffed mushrooms they would make a big deal out of it and I had no reasonable excuse as to why I wouldn’t eat them because with all the hype leading up to supper I couldn’t shut my stupid mouth about how much I truly love stuffed mushrooms.
I choked down all of the mushrooms I had been allotted. One by one. Spaced throughout the meal because I thought the rest of the otherwise delicious food would wash the taste out of my mouth.
It didn’t. A whole dinner ruined.
Ex-boyfriend and his grandmother wholeheartedly agreed those mushrooms were awful. The theory is that the wife – who married into the family – made them and her husband pretended to love them to make her happy.
When their children were born they either were bred into the taste for disgusting mushrooms or he had to have a pep talk about the mushrooms to them, hence the hype.
We were just sorry fools caught in the middle.
