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I used to live in Amsterdam, with a flatmate who came from Gothenburg, Sweden. He was a terrible, but oddly innovative cook. One day I came home and he pounced, asking coyly if I was hungry. I wasn't really, but he presented me with a little plate of filled pastries that looked like a Swedish biscuit called 'strawberry surprise' - the 'surprise' being, obviously, that the pastry is filled with strawberry. On this occasion, though, the surprise was a bit more surprising: curried herring! I still live with the trauma.

I went to dinner at my parents' friends who happen to be on a low-carb diet, so for dinner we made our own wraps with their rubbery meat. Dessert was the worst--an apricot pie made of store bought pie crust and apricot jelly baked in the toaster oven. Ick.

I had a friend whose mom used to break spaghetti in half before dumping it in the water. Worst spaghetti ever!

A fatty greasy hunk of roasted meat with no seasoning made by my father-in-law. The funny thing is that everyone else LOVED it. Also along with the dinner, my mother-in-law tried to recreate my favorite squash dish, she borrowed the recipe and somehow made it into an overcooked dry mushy mess. The mashed potatoes were flavorless and waxy. Oh and the salad dressing was non-fat no-brand ranch that tasted like buttocks! But of course I was polite and ate a little bit of everything!

Invited to a co-workers home for "Lasagna" - it turned out to be broken lasagna noodles swimming in Campbell's Tomato Soup!

Invited to husband's colleague's house for dinner made by his spouse who he claimed was an "awsome" cook. Was served Van DeCamp's beans with a pound of cooked hamburger seasoned with yellow mustard. And accompanied by soda pop or Boone's Farm "wine".

Over-the-hill, spoiled lamb chops, cooked by my sainted mother-in-law, with a toxic melange of spices, wines, anything and everything she had to attempt to disguise that they were rotten. On top of that, she actually claimed that she had used Julia Childs' recipe to make them taste like wild boar. She never lived that one down.

Grampa's creamed lettuce. Hey, lettuce is close to spinach, right?

One of the first attempts by my hubby to cook dinner after I had a stroke. A stir fry of chicken, broccoli, onion, and water chestnuts. Wouldn't have been half bad, but to begin with, the pan was not hot enough. He also didn't have a clue as to when each thing should be added, and as a result, the chicken was only half done, the onions were burned black, and broccoli was cooked to mush. On top of all that, he added way too much cornstarch to the slurry, and the whole dish looked like it had already been eaten and rejected by someone else's stomach. But in the name of respect for his efforts, I choked a few bites down.

when i was about 7 a babysitter made me...over cooked spaghetti with ketchup, tomato paste and american cheese. After, I went outside and threw up in the bushes.

Oddly enough, I blogged about this topic two weeks ago.

Unlike most people's grandmothers, mine couldn't cook her way out of a paper bag. One of her worst meals was steak. She would get the round steak out of the fridge and place it in a cold pan which she then put on the burner of an electric stove set as low as it would go, naturally. The steak was seasoned with salt from a flour shaker and pepper dust from a greasy square can. She would then poke a bunch of holes in some very small potatoes and put them on a paper plate, under a paper towel in the microwave and turn that on for five minutes. She would leave the kitchen and attempt to bribe a child to rub her feet, a nastiness that was so bad I'm not even going to try to relate how awful it really was.

After half an hour or so she would hobble into the kitchen on oil slicked feet and turn the steak over. She would then return to her foot massage, and the poor kid who got roped into that little piece of hell would have to rub her feet some more in order to get whatever had been promised. About half an hour later she would return to the kitchen, put our hunks of shoe leather on a plate and open a can of creamed corn and toss it into the black grease in the bottom of the pan and continue heating this on low while the microwave was allowed to incinerate the potatoes for another five minutes at which time the meal was pronounced done. And it certainly was. There is nothing quite like cool creamed corn with slicks of gray beef grease and flakes of something black from the bottom of the pan. *shudder*

And yet, this is not my worst meal. When my son was a new born my ex-husband (he spelled it "husbun") prepared breakfast in bed for me. I asked for bacon and scrambled eggs.

First, he cooked the bacon at too high a temperature and some of it was burnt and some of the fat was still white. Then he scrambled the eggs in the bacon grease-- all of the bacon grease. Then he got the bright idea of making pancakes to go with it, and yes, as a matter of fact, they were also deep fried in the bacon grease. I ate a bite or two because I really didn't want to hurt his feelings, after all, he was trying to do something nice. Then I asked for some more syrup and fed several bites to the dog. Poor thing. I picked at the bacon in between the burnt parts and the rare parts and then asked for more coffee. While he was getting the coffee, I fed the rest of the bacon to the dog. When the coffee arrived I told him that it wasn't sweet enough and while he was away I fed the eggs to the dog. Then when he came back I told him that the coffee needed more cream and fed one pancake to the dog. When he brought the coffee back for the third time I told him that it was now too cool and gulped some so he could add more coffee. While he made that trip I fed the last of it to the dog.

My husband finally got to sit down, I had decent coffee and the dog? He wandered around coughing, groaning and belching, then he threw up and gave me away. Who'd a thunk a 75-pound dog couldn't handle some bacon, eggs and pancakes, all soaked in bacon grease?

How funny! I've enjoyed hearing everyone's horror stories, and they made me remember eating at my favorite Aunt's house. She made bad Italian and fried her steak like Calichef's Gran.. But the worst dish was her attempt at tacos (still a rarity in the 50's). She would fry corn tortillas in oil until soggy, then smear them with canned tomato paste - add browned (or greyed) hamburger, shredded velveeta and lettuce. Yum.

Stewed chicken that was made the night before. It was then reheated and served for lunch; the result was that it came out really dry and quite bland. Normally stews taste better than the day it was made but somehow, she cooked it incorrectly.

The neighbors insisted I come over for some authentic Italian food. The nightmare began with having to help grind up raw pork for the "sausages", large, gross grease bombs of inedible ingredients, and having to stuff them into skins for frying. The other item was "death by calzone", a cement like container filled with a mixture of something grey and white.
For years now, I have not been able to eat anything that remotely resembles a sausage. Not even California style apple-chicken ones.

Pulverized mashed-potato-paste. My brother and I built string-bean forts with it as glue.