The worst food I ever had to eat

My infant school also had dinners supplied from elsewhere and even my DM agreed that they were pretty bad. When we did not want to eat it, we were told to think of the starving children in Africa - my view was that it would not help those children if we ate it. I don't remember the food being in dustbins though.

Yes, on a trip to Uzbekistan in 1983 where we were very rare western tourists. I clearly remember one meal where we were served a bowl of what looked like greasy used washing up water minus the foam. There were little bits of indeterminable stuff in it. I don’t think I even tried a spoonful, DS1 was the same. This was the direst of grim offerings. For the rest of our sojourn there DS1 and I existed on rye bread and beer for main meals. Can’t remember what DH and DS2 did…

Durian fruit in Singapore 🤮

Yes, our mid-day dinners were delivered to the school in a van. Huge pots and metal trays of who knows what! I was lucky that I didn't have school dinners regularly - I was a "home dinner" pupil. But on one rare occasion when I had to stay for school dinner, the trays of apple pie that were dished up into individual squares had been liberally sprinkled with salt instead of sugar. Needless to say the "dinner ladies" didn't believe us when we told them, until they tasted it themselves!

Our primary school dinners where also sent from a central kitchen but they really weren't too bad on the whole. They did manage to reduce cabbage to a mushy, gritty fibrous stinking mess, which put me off what is actually a very nice vegetable for decades.

However, I think the first prize goes to my late MiL's mince, which consisted of mince put into a pan of cold water along with a packet of frozen mixed vegetables, brought to the boil and then simmered for a couple of hours. Indescribably unpleasant..

It was her invariable Saturday lunch dish and, because we lived 100+ miles away, we only visited at weekends 😱

When people moan about the younger generations lack of cooking skills and yearn for the 'cooked from scratch' meals of yesteryear, I think of that mince

(In all fairness, my mum was a far better cook...)

I lived in a French school for a while and once a fortnight we had cooked hot tongue and beetroot in some awful sauce. All horrible.( Apologies to beetroot lovers).

I love food and ate anything but I remember one school dinner which was indescribable - some sort of ham in a white sauce but solid.

Sea cucumber, at a very lavish Chinese wedding banquet in Singapore. A fat orange disc with the most revolting texture - not just the taste - I can’t begin to describe it. None of us at the Brit-family table could get it down - it was surreptitiously transferred to napkins/bags/pockets.

Chinese SiL did tell us afterwards that very few actually liked it, but it was traditional. Presumably a ‘fertility’ symbol, since I’ve seen the things live in the sea off Oman. If DDs picked them up - big fat phallic shaped things - they squirted sea water!

I should add that all the many other courses were delicious!

Tongue - I remember going to visit an elderly aunt with my mother and she gave us tongue sandwiches. I got 'the look' from my mother - the 'don't you dare embarrass me' one - but I just couldn't stomach it. If I remember rightly, I managed to sneak the tongue out of the sandwiches and stashed it in my pocket. To this day, even the thought of it 'gives me the boak' as we say here in Scotland.
And when we are in Turkey, my husband absolutely loves the brain soup - the very look of it is enough to turn my stomach!

Reading this thread I’m grateful that all my school meals were cooked on the premises and were pretty good. I was once presented with tripe and onions which was utterly revolting.

When I was at uni and lived in a shared house. We actually used to cook together on Saturdays (in the 70s!) and make a nice meal. One bloke said he would cook for us one Saturday. He served up his dish. It was a hairy pig's trotter in tinned tomato soup. He said he had got them cheap as off cuts at the local butcher but did not know how to cook them so boiled them. They were full of fat with hardly any meat. It was horrible. I went out and got some fish and chips that night.

Not by any means the worst, since it was edible, but I just remembered some cold meat my Yorkshire student landlady once gave me. It looked a bit like tongue, but paler. I wasn’t mad keen on tongue but ate it anyway.

‘D’you like that, love?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ I said politely, having been brung up proper. ‘What is it?’

‘Udder.’

Our school lunches were abysmal, a nasty nun and a lunch monitor who was probably trained by the SS stood over us whilst we ate.

I once left some food and was hauled out of a lesson to sit down and eat the congealed remains.

At home wasn’t much better my Mother was a resentful and poor cook.

My Grandmother made melt in the mouth pastry, cakes and pies.
I have never tasted anything like her Lancashire meat and potato pie.

I loved her so much, I wish she was in my life for more than 9 years.

In Hong Kong we ate at a restaurant that served their food buffet style. There was a huge 'cauldron' on the buffet table that contained a clear soup of chicken feet, skin and claws still on! Couldn't bring myself to sample it, but DH did, said the feet were inedible (just gristle🤮). I couldn't believe that customers were actually voluntarilly choosing to eat it 😵‍💫.

*voluntarily

I am mildly lactic intolerant, but years of being forced to drink milk at school has given me a trigger response to even seeing milk if it is really close to the cow - DD's unhomgeonised green top milk, makes me ill to even look at it.

Like EkwaNimitee I have holidayed in Uzbekhistan, and, generally thoroughly enjoyed everything we were given to eat. The exception was at breakfast each morning. Pride of place for every laid place setting was a beautiful large stemmed glass beside the coffee cup, full of the local plain yoghourt, it was blue/white and almost translucent and just the sight of it made my stomach turn.

That I have eaten. In Belgium, the catholic army chaplain was an English speaking monk at the local monastery, my father as senior officer got to know him well and the family were invited over to one of their visiters lunches. My mother was ill, so just three of us went, myfather, sister and myself. The first course was a sweetcorn soup, but for some reason it was sweet, despite the chicken stock in it. My father and sister took one mouthful and ate no more, so after that I felt that it was up to me to eat it, otherwise it would seem rude. So I did. To me it verged on the nausiating but I got it down. Thankfully the main course was delicious so I was ableto overlay the soup with the delicious main course and dessert.

Primary school dinners!

I went to stay with a student friend at her parents house for a whole weekend (Friday to Monday) and her mum made us a huge pot of liver stew. It lasted from Friday night to Sunday night for every meal except breakfast. It was horrible. I hated liver at the best of times. Also, their house was so cold, I slept in their guest room fully clothed with my coat on. Her mum brought me a cuppa in the morning and knocked on the door. I had to take my coat off and pretend I had just got dressed. Or, the friends wedding we went to at a Castle where they ran out of food and the guests who had not been served were given cheese Hula Hoops to eat. The minstrel band refused to play anymore as they were given no food or drink for three hours. Oh, yes, and it was freezing, so I kept my big puffa jacket on over my wedding outfit. You could not make it up. We went back to the pub we were staying at and stuffed our faces with fish, chips, and mushy peas, then jam roly poly and custard.

Pheasant - I was pregnant at the time - my lovely hostess wanted to treat/introduce me to a special dinner. I was sick all over her carpet 😂

My mum was a fabulous cook and baker, however once, in the 60s, she wanted to offer more exotic food, so we got hawaian mince. This was mince with added tomato paste and pineapple chunks. It did not go down well, literally and metaphorically with dad nor us kids.

Lumpy mashed potatoes and liver at Primary school. We weren’t allowed to leave any food and I can still remember sobbing my way throughout lunch and playtime and only being allowed to go when lessons started.

I hated school!

Andouillet, a tripe delicacy here in France. It smells and tastes disgusting but a favourite here.

I have a memory of shiny black mince served with white bread at my Primary school,

I worked in an Oxford college and the morning after the Christmas do, the chef was still rather ‘refreshed’. She announced that lunch was rubbish. It was basically lumpy mashed potatoes with a few gratings of cheese. She was sacked forthwith. I think she had been rude to the Principal the night before as she was poured into a taxi.

Liver and onions. My mum used to make it and would not let me leave the table until I ate every bit. My stomach would heave. Also anything with kidney in it, the smell of it cooking made me throw up when pregnant.