Sad to say, these are fake bacteria desserts, made with jello (#1) and rice pudding (#2).
Also, Tumblr tells me that there are no posts tagged “delicious bacteria is delicious.”
One of the worst things I ever ate was… well, it looked like macaroni with a very thin and spotty layer of spaghetti sauce on each piece. So I tried it and it tasted gamey and vaguely nasty, but not too horrible, with a spicy tang. I asked what it was after eating a couple of them and it turned out to be rabbit intestines with some kind of Filipino chili glaze on it.
Ewwwwwwwwwww
At our last New Years Eve party I went to a Japanese grocery and stocked up for what we were calling our “Snack Challenge”. The highlights were:
[ul]
[li]Mochi candy: I liked it but a couple of people couldn’t get past the texture.
[/li][li]Dried squid flavored with vinegar: A couple of people liked it but I couldn’t get past the texture. If it was shredded I’d probably like it better.
[/li][li]Tamago kani: Dried, small crabs. Disgusting in flavor and texture.
[/li][li]Natto: Just effing gross. It wasn’t the worst flavor, but it was definitely the worst all-around package.
[/li][/ul]
I’ve eaten a few caterpillars (loopers that rode along on the home-grown broccoli) in my day, and they were way less gross than boiled okra.
That said, I discovered a couple years ago that okra and tomatoes is not bad at all. The acid cuts the slime very nicely.
I love okra! Maybe that’s because I’m from the south.
Oh, I forgot. There’s some dreadful Scandinavian candy out there to avoid. Crystallized pepper and crystallized salt, basically.
It’s called Tyrkisk Pepper in Norway. Definitely an acquired taste.
Fried okra is great. Boiled, not so much.
What’s gross about tiny dried crabs? They’re crunchy!
Jalapeño beef jerky flavored chocolate bars. Two fundamental food groups that should not be mixed.
And pro tip, okra was meant to be pickled.
No, okra was meant to be fried!
Cuitlacoche.
If you don’t like it, then you’re doing it wrong. I’ve had it done OH SO RIGHT.
I think it’s more a disgust for the basic concept than any kind of objective judge of flavor. It grosses me the hell out too, although I know it’s irrational. Fungus that grows in dirt is psychologically acceptable in ways that fungus with other substrates (for example, I hear there are hallucinogenic mushrooms that grow out of cow pies) just isn’t.
Edit: also for maximum Mexican weirdness, you need to combine cuitlacoche with escamoles. Maybe stick em both in menudo, as that’s a bit dubious as well.
Psilocybin.
I think shiitakes grow out of dead logs. But they’re still mushroomy. Maybe it’s just the fruiting bodies vs the main body of the fungus?
Ultimately, all food is about shit. While some of those mushrooms grow directly in it, all crops are regularly fertilized with shit*. Meat doesn’t save you. Meat comes from animals that have shit coursing through their digestive tracts**. And fish? Fish swim in water. Water that they shit in.
- artificial fertilizers in most of the US, not actual shit.
** That shoulder muscle may be quite distant from the digestive tract, but we’re talking about shit here.
Also:
The guy who died of a heart attack wasn’t a host. He was a random crazy-but-friendly guy who enjoyed passing his time by spending it in front of the restaurant greeting guests, something that is made abundantly clear repeatedly the in the thread and in news articles about the event.
unpopped popcorn
There’s an enormous difference between completely unpopped popcorn – which will by the way destroy your teeth if you insist on grinding away at them – and the sort of aborted semi-popped popcorn you sometimes get. Semi-popped is ambrosia of the gods.
After having been stuck in here for 15 days and counting: Hospital food.