Worst thing I've ever eaten....a raw oyster. 36 years later I still have a hard time with even cooked ones.

Jam-filed, crumbly pastries. I friend of mine made them, and usually does them great, except this time he accidentally dusted them with baking soda, instead of powdered sugar. To make things worse, we all wolfed down a few on instinct, and only then noticed something was strange. The stomach is filled with an acid, and baking soda is a base. Anyone curious about how acids and bases react can take a glass, put in a few spoons of baking soda, and then pour in some vinegar. 

A friend took us to a hot pot restaurant in Taipei.  The table had half moon shaped openings where similarly shaped pots were lowered and filled with boiling water and kept boiling over gas flames under the openings.  Plates heaped with enoki mushrooms, cabbage, sprouts, carrots, crimini mushrooms and thinly sliced beef were brought out.  A hot chili oil was drizzled into one of the pots, the other was kept as a 'milder' hot pot, although eventually, that became laden with chili oil, maybe from our chop sticks?  Little by little, we added the various raw elements and then retrieved them with our chop sticks.  It was  the hottest dish we've ever eaten.  The chili oil numbed our lips and throats right away.

After feeling relieved that the hot chili oil was the most challenging part of the meal, a plate was brought out with just a few pieces of ox tripe.  Our friend passed the largest piece to me after cooking it in the boiling water and chili oil.  It turned grey as it cooked.   With everyone looking on, as the foreign guest, I had to rise to the occasion and try this enormous mass of grey webbing.  It was too tough to chew and the texture was something akin to a big rubber band.  After a few attempts, I decided to swallow it whole which was painful because it almost got stuck in my throat.  It wasn't that it tasted terrible, although I don't recall it tasting good, but the thought of it was rather disgusting to me.  It took my body about a week to recover from the hot chili oil and ox tripe.  It had kind of irritated my digestive system, basically swelling in the delicate parts causing constipation and pain.  Sorry for too many details!

Last edited by MsPablo (Wed 09 May 12 3:24pm)

there have been a few grim things I have eaten ..

Tripe .. cooked in milk with sliced onions in it ... Rubbery horrible textured tripe
    my Grandmother used to think of 'meats' and offals that she thought I might like if I tried ..... no no no ...I did not like it.

another really nasty thing was some 'sauce' that my darling made last year , (shortly after I had an operation and he was in charge of the cooking) ..
it was a sort of pot luck super that he cooked... a small baked potato with some cheese , the remains of the aubergine parmagania ...and that sauce 
The sauce was made of a pile of sliced onions that he had 'well fried'  they were fairly greasy and to the onione he added a whole load of preant butter and then he suddenly thought that a can of chopped up plum tomatoes would go well .. and a few herbs as well ... oh dear ,oh dear.. that sauce goes down in memory as no a good thing to eat... oh dear .. BUT he was delighted at his culinary talents and he even had secons and thirds of the sauce .. telling me what an amazing concoction he had come up with ! ... and then he said it ... " Well that sauce was such a sucsess I might make it again tommorrow night" ...
which did make me sort of cringe 
Fortunatly by the next day he had forgotten about hiis magical culinary tallents and the sauce did not apear a second time , but every so often he says... " remember that sauce I cooked.. the one with the peanut butter... that was epic.. I will have to make it again soon " ... I quickly change the topic 

The one overwhelming response is LIMA BEANS. Sorry mom,(rip) but yuck!

Mark