Bad experiences while eating something you've always liked.

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larry_stewart

Master Chef
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Dec 25, 2006
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Long Island, New York
Did you ever eat something you had always liked, then had a bad experience while eating it ( a bug in it, it was spoiled, foreign object ...) and then never able to eat it again ( more for psychological reasons than anything else)?

Well, a few years ago, i ordered morel mushrooms from a very reputable company. Fresh from the field. I got them in a few days, they were perfect. I cleaned them, cooked them up in a pasta ,garlic, cream, white wine kinda way. Probably one of the best dishes I had made.

A few years went by, i came across the recipe again, and decided to give another go at it. Ordered my shrooms from the same company. Got them a few days later. they came in this paper bag with instructions how to clean, and a warning that said they are freshly picked from the field, and may contain some worms, dirt, sticks ... No big deal, Im an avid gardener, and I've eaten my share of bugs, dirt and sticks ( not intentionally, but it happens). I dump the bag, and a pound of shrooms come out, along with some dirt, sticks and what looked like a single maggot looking insect. I grabbed one shroom, kinda tapped it on the counter ( to shake off any foreign debris), and tossed it in my mouth. I then proceeded to wash the shrooms, as instructed, as I was just about to use them. Any time i wash any thing, i try to do it in a white bowl, so i can ultimately see that when the water is clean, what ever Im washing is now clean. So i did this, and scooped out the mushrooms, and I swear there must have been 100 maggot looking insects at the bottom of the white bowl. Ok, so i did it again, hoping that was it, and the water would be clear so I could move on to making the dish. Sure enough, i removed the shrooms again, and another 100 + maggots came out. Now , I was wondering if id ever really be able to thoroughly clean off the shrooms, given the amount of insects I spotted, and the hollow, porous, irregular surface of the shrooms. So, did it one more time, and sure enough, another 100+ insects. At this point, I was done. Even if the water was clean the next time, I know Id be wondering how many insects Id miss. I also wondered how many I ate in my first bite, and how many I gobbled up a few years back when I made the dish for the first time.

I ditched the shrooms ( a significant amount of money), I headed to the store, and got a variety of wild/ exotic prepackaged shrooms, and finished my dish ( as I was already 1/2 way through the preparation, so I had to do something.

Now, as a result of that experience, Im not sure I can ever eat fresh morels again. I don't knock the company, as they warned me, and I've gotten other things from them ( including morels ) in the past, with no issues. Just in my head, I now have linked eat morels with eating a mouth full of maggots.


One other time I had an issue was when I made this mexican style fried pepper. Pretty easy, toss a frying pepper on the grill to char the outside. Let cool, remove the char, seed and slice open so its kinda like a filet. Egg and bread crumb the outside as if you were making eggplant for eggplant parm. Then , arrange ( as if you were making eggplant parm) but instead of marinara, use salsa, and instead of mozzarella , used monkery jack, then back. Or can just serve as individual cutlet, toped with salsa and the cheese. ( sometimes , when breading, I toss some corn meal in with the bread crumbs too. Anyway, i used to love this dish. But many years back, i had gotten Meningitis, was sick for 2 weeks, losing 12 ppunds, fever of 105 for those 2 weeks, only to be broken to 103.5 after motrin. Zero appetite, loss of taste, it was terrible. When I finally was feeling better after those 2 weeks, i decided to make something i really enjoyed eating, the peppers. I found out the hard way , that eating a dish like that, after not eating for 2 weeks ( and i mean literally not eating, maybe a little jello, but thats it.). I got so nauseous and threw up everything. Took me 20 years before I could eat it again, and i still get the heebee geebees everytime i go to eat it, but it sure was good.

Larry
 
I made one of my favorite Polish dishes that had kielbasa in it, the dish came out great
In the middle of the night I got really sick and throwing up all night long and then dry heaves for another few hours high temperature and all. Thinking it was the dish that maybe the meat was bad and I had a bad case of food poisoning but hubbie was fine and eat ate more then I did. It ended up I had the flu and sick for month 1/2. It took me about a year before I cooked anything that had kielbasa in it. Then one day hubbie asked to make his favorite kielbasa sandwich. I brought the sausage and force myself to try one piece. It went ok but still to this day I only eat a little amount of it. At least I can eat it now.
 
Many years ago, I had a crab cake sandwich in a restaurant that had several shells in it, which made me gag. The next couple times I ordered it, I had a really hard time eating it, so I just stopped. I didn't have a crab cake for over 10 years. Finally I tried one at a place that has a really good reputation for seafood (they also have a raw bar). It was *delicious* and I loved the sauce. The curse was broken :LOL:
 
Mine is raspberry drinks. When I was little my neighbor used to make raspberry syrup for us kids to drink, it common thing to do but he also made raspberry liqueurs. He died while re labeling the bottles since the labels had fallen off. His dear wife was deadly allergic to raspberries , keep this in mind. We kids of the neighborhood picked her , her favorite flowers and berries to cheer her up as kids do age 3- 7 . She in return gave us saft ( raspberry syrup + water) to drink and rolls to eat. We got drunk, because it was liqueur.
No one blamed her, but I do remember laying in the potato patch laughing at potatoes.
Since then my brain says anything tasting raspberry and is drinkable gives you a head ache and I cant drink it.
 
Not something I liked to eat but....

When I was in high school a good friend of mine who at the time worked graveyard at a Jack-In-A-Box told me all these horrible things they used to do to the burgers for their late night, rowdy, drive-thru crowd. And I regularly drove through that restaurant.
Since hearing his story I did not go to another Jack-In-A-Box for at least 30 years.
 
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When I was in first grade, we ate in the school's cafeteria. I got a chicken leg with the foot still attached. Toenails and all. I wasn't a big fan of chicken at the time, and that made me much less so.
 
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Scallops. :evil:

Even the thought of them makes me cringe. :yuk:


My mother served them one night and I took one sniff of them and said, "If I eat those I'll be sick".

Well that was something you didn't want to say to my mother.
All it did was cause her to make me eat them. No if's, and's, or but's about it. :furious:
Well I choked them down to keep my bottom from becoming red.
Later that night I was sicker then a dog. :sick:
Yorked up scallops for hours on end. 223427.gif
The only good thing to come out of it was that I didn't ever have to eat them again when she fixed them. :mrgreen:
We both learned a lesson from that one. ;)
 
Eating any bug (And I've eaten quite a few in my lifetime) sounds better to me then eating a scallop. :chef:
 
I love love love greek salads, still do.
So I go into labor, doc says, go out and eat and try to relax. I do. Later, I'm in the hospital and I'm nauseous, the intern tells me that I shall puke in this little dish. I told him, no, I need a big hefty bag. He is the doc, he says, no, I'm wrong. I threw up all over his white coat, oops.
 
I love love love greek salads, still do.
So I go into labor, doc says, go out and eat and try to relax. I do. Later, I'm in the hospital and I'm nauseous, the intern tells me that I shall puke in this little dish. I told him, no, I need a big hefty bag. He is the doc, he says, no, I'm wrong. I threw up all over his white coat, oops.

Good for you. :clap:

I'll bet he learned a lesson that day. :LOL:
 
Lately, Lay's Classic Potato chips have this awful hard crunch to many of their chips. They're normal looking and all, but when you bite into one, they're really overly hard and brittle. Also, in recent years, Lays has included chips that are grossly folded over, when as before, these folded over chips would have been eliminated from going to packaging. I went to Lay's site and filled out a complaint form they provide and filled in the package bar code, exp date, where and when I bought them, etc. This has been happening with the last two bags I've bought over the last couple of months. Same thing. Hard brittle chips that look normal. They're almost like kettle chips, but not in a good way.
 
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Happened to me with fried liver with bacon and onions... except in my case the bug was already in me. I ate a nice meal of liver one evening, no probs. Went to bed and awoke a few hours later violently ill...barfed everywhere. I discovered the next day that a stomach flew was going around and it wasn't the food. Ever since then, even the smell of liver can trigger my gag reflex...
 
In 1989 one night I decided to buy a bite sized piece of filet mignon just to see how it tasted. I went into the ER later that same night for appendicitis and have never been tempted to sample filet mignon again.

A couple years ago I again ended up in the ER, this time with an aneurysm. Before surgery the next morning, one of the nurses offered to let me eat the last breakfast they had left - black bean chili. He didn't know I was going into surgery and I never thought twice about it because I was starved. So I ate the whole thing.

I think I was under for at least 4 hours and when I woke up and was being wheeled back to ICU, I felt like I had to throw up. One nurse quickly got me a pan but before she could get back to me, I already had thrown up all over me, the doctor, and the other nurses.

I will never, ever eat black bean anything again.
 
A couple years ago I again ended up in the ER, this time with an aneurysm. Before surgery the next morning, one of the nurses offered to let me eat the last breakfast they had left - black bean chili. He didn't know I was going into surgery and I never thought twice about it because I was starved. So I ate the whole thing.

I think I was under for at least 4 hours and when I woke up and was being wheeled back to ICU, I felt like I had to throw up. One nurse quickly got me a pan but before she could get back to me, I already had thrown up all over me, the doctor, and the other nurses.

I'm shocked the anesthesiologist or one of the other surgical team members didn't ask before the surgery when was the last time you ate. And it sounds like that nurse didn't read your chart before offering you food!

In the hospitals I've been in here, the staff won't give a patient food unless it's specifically ordered by the admitting doctor, and they put a sign on the door indicating that a patient is NPO, or "nothing allowed by mouth" (it's an acronym for a Latin phrase).

This is not only because anesthesia can give people an upset stomach but also because food in the system can interfere with imaging test results. Crazy.
 
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In 1989 one night I decided to buy a bite sized piece of filet mignon just to see how it tasted. I went into the ER later that same night for appendicitis and have never been tempted to sample filet mignon again.

A couple years ago I again ended up in the ER, this time with an aneurysm. Before surgery the next morning, one of the nurses offered to let me eat the last breakfast they had left - black bean chili. He didn't know I was going into surgery and I never thought twice about it because I was starved. So I ate the whole thing.

I think I was under for at least 4 hours and when I woke up and was being wheeled back to ICU, I felt like I had to throw up. One nurse quickly got me a pan but before she could get back to me, I already had thrown up all over me, the doctor, and the other nurses.

I will never, ever eat black bean anything again.

Your blackballing a food based on coincidence is understandable and human.
 
Never have been a fan of oysters. Went out to eat with coworkers one night and got a fried seafood platter. Asked for more scallops in place of the oysters that were supposed to be there. When I was eating, one of the bites of seafood seemed too squishy to be a scallop, so I figured it was a random oyster. Wrong. Sick overnight, and still sick when I went to work. So much so, in fact, that the head bossy-boss took pity on me and sent me home. Still eat scallops, still won't eat oysters.


When I was in first grade, we ate in the school's cafeteria. I got a chicken leg with the foot still attached. Toenails and all...
No wonder you prefer white meat, and not the part with the ookies! :LOL:
 
I'm shocked the anesthesiologist or one of the other surgical team members didn't ask before the surgery when was the last time you ate. And it sounds like that nurse didn't read your chart before offering you food!

In the hospitals I've been in here, the staff won't give a patient food unless it's specifically ordered by the admitting doctor, and they put a sign on the door indicating that a patient is NPO, or "nothing allowed by mouth" (it's an acronym for a Latin phrase).

This is not only because anesthesia can give people an upset stomach but also because food in the system can interfere with imaging test results. Crazy.

Also because under anesthesia, a person can cough up their food and have it block their airway.

I'm shocked I didn't pick up on it. I'm usually pretty alert to those things. But given every other stupid thing I'd done in connection with this aneurysm, I guess it was just was par for the course. Like a dummy, I drove myself to the ER (after having gotten lost looking for the first hospital) and then walked in calmly stating that I thought I was having a stroke. For that, I spent two hours in the waiting room where a family came in with their coughing kid, saw me sitting there all by myself in the room, and planted themselves in the chairs right next to me. I moved, but not quick enough and a week later, I had the first cold I'd had in years.

I also didn't get to take the Life Flight helicopter to the other hospital (despite a massive headache, I still would have enjoyed that). Instead I went by ambulance and we got stuck in traffic.

In retrospect, I guess tossing black bean chili all over everyone was just the icing on a bad cake of a day.

It's OK, I had great nurses, recovered extremely fast, and got revenge by being the healthiest sick person in ICU. Did you know that when you move the beds, you can accidentally unplug them and then an alarm will go off? If that ever happens to you, jump back into bed and act like you don't know what's going on. Don't just stand there and look guilty like I did when everyone rushed into the room (I was only trying to move the bed so I could see the TV better).


Your blackballing a food based on coincidence is understandable and human.

Thank you. Not to mention that not wanting to buy filet mignon saves me a ton of money. :LOL:
 
Also because under anesthesia, a person can cough up their food and have it block their airway.

I'm shocked I didn't pick up on it. I'm usually pretty alert to those things.

Or aspirate the food and get pneumonia.

I'm wondering whether medical procedures are really that different in different parts of the country, or if you were in a particularly bad hospital. I mean, SO many people dropped the ball there and really endangered you - the nurse, the anesthesiologist and at least one other team member.

I've had seven surgeries since 2002, in three different hospitals, and they all follow the same pre-operative routine. It's not the responsibility of a sick patient to make sure hospital staff follow correct procedures.
 
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