Cross-posted from Top Comments at GOS
I was having a tough time finding a topic for my Top Comments diary (on the GOS, as linked above). My Eureka! moment was when I looked through the Spam folder in my email account, just for laughs. “Spam,” I thought, “what a truly horrid food substance.” And then I had it! I should write about all the bad food I’ve eaten in my 30-something years on the planet.
Having been born in the 70s, I’ve had my fair share of food with low nutritional value. The 70s and 80s seemed to be the era of junk food, and my family was far from immune. I’m not sure if it was a matter of convenience or whether it was because junk food was cheaper. Both are reasonable possibilities: my mom was the parent who worked AND did everything around the house (until we kids were old enough for household chores) and our family didn’t have a lot of money.
My mom was an excellent cook, albeit non-adventurous – at least during my childhood. Though we ate better than most of the families in the neighborhood, our meals often included processed foods. We would have Minute Rice instead of jasmine or basmati – I’d never heard of those until I was a grad student. Even worse, there was always junk food in the house, Twinkies being but one frightening example. We typically had soda at dinner and our standard lunchtime sandwich was comprised of Wonderbread, Velveeta (which we actually thought was cheese) and ketchup. School lunches weren’t much better. What passed for pizza and burgers continues to amaze me.
My diet now is considerably healthier, though I admit to having a weakness for poutine and fried tofu (not at the same time). We try to buy as little food as possible in a box or can, and we make every effort to buy local foods.
Despite this improved diet, I recently had the second worst meal of my life (not counting college or when I was a baby and my great-aunts decided to slow roast a turkey on low heat). The first bad meal memory was when I was five. I somehow had thought it advisable to make our standard sandwich, but added peanut butter and liverworst. To this day, I’m not sure how I survived.
The more recent event occurred when we stopped for lunch during a road trip. 
We try to avoid chain restaurants; instead, we typically head for something unique to whatever town we’re passing through. Mr Pickle wanted a burger, so we passed over the standard chains and ended up in a local hotspot for the over-90 crowd. I was wary of a place that only had four living customers at noontime on a Sunday, but I pressed on at the behest of my dear hubby. I don’t eat meat, so I ordered a veggie burger with cheese, no ketchup and mayo on the side. Mr Pickle ordered a cheeseburger, and we decided to share some onion rings.
The veggie burger looked like it was a reject from the Vancouver Canucks. It was also slathered in mayo and ketchup and had no cheese. The bun could have passed as cardboard. The onion rings tasted like bad sushi. All in all, not a very appetizing meal.
Well, I guess I shouldn’t complain too much, because there weren’t any bugs or debris in the meal. And it wasn’t as bad as the meals in Better Off Dead. But that’s not exactly a ringing endorsement for the food. I prefer the bar to be a bit higher.
What’s the worst meal you’ve ever had?
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roof with large hole & tarp, no power, kids gone to school, hubby @ work: mushroom soup straight outta the can.
The first time I made chili the kids were about 6 and 7. My son looked at it, and said “What is this? Toxic waste?”
Well we all got a good laugh at that.
A few years later I went to a xmas party with my Hubbys coworkers, one of them looked at me and said “So, I hear you cook toxic waste for dinner.” He was a real joker and I really loved him by the way. He wasn’t being mean.
Oh, and the chili wasn’t bad. My kids were both just picky about trying new things. Neither of them have ever liked chili.
(late 50’s/early 60’s?) my mom thought she’d found Nirvana. Those tasteless Salsberry steak combined with something that was supposed to be mashed potatoes. blech.
the fifties, and my mom was into a wonder bread, processed, high undercooked (her roasts quivered) meat diet. My worst meal ever was something she made called cheese goo,(my Dad’s name for it) it was a Cheese Whiz, sauce, with what seemed like martini olives, and hamburger meat served on top of a Wonderbread English muffin. It texturally alone hardly resembled food. Both my brother and I became ‘health food’ nut vegetarians, upon leaving home.
As my mother (who I loved dearly and miss very much) was a singer – as in part of a sister act which performed in the Catskills, hmmm) cooking was not her thing. Still we had dinner every night at 6:00pm. Here is the menu:
Monday: roast chicken. recipie: take chicken out of poultry bag, wash it, put in pan, add one can of cut up tomatoes, cook for an hour and half. Voila
Tuesday: spagetti and meatballs. Take left over tomato sauce from chicken made the night before. Add to it contents of one package of ground meat – preferably from a cow – contents broken apart into bits. Cook sauce. Prepare pasta by boiling a large amount of water and throwing spagetti into it. Cook until noodles are very limp. Voila!
Wednesday: Tuna Cassarole – you know where this is going so I won’t go on. Yes the idea is to recycle from the previous night while using no spices whatsoever.