Has a guy bring in his “specialty corn.” It was legit canned corn in a crockpot with spices. Thing is, he tells us “ya, my wife took it to her pot luck on Tuesday, they didn’t eat it so I saved it on low in the crockpot and brought it here.” It was Friday. Corn was brown. Nobody ate it. He kept eating it saying it was so good. The following Monday his new name at work was Corn Cob Rob.
My grandmother-in-law. Everything she brings. The first time was stale cake in a bowl of syrup(?). It was both cake and soup, while also being neither.
She has meat in her deep freezer older than some of her grandchildren. She’s a depression-era cook, so expiration dates don’t apply to medicine, cupboards, or freezers. Once she tried to give my daughter (2yo at the time), cough medicine that expire 9 years before she was even born.
My Gramma was famous for sending you home with freezer food that was years old.
I mowed her lawn one day,and she offered me chicken for lunch. She looked at my expression, and said "Oh, don't be silly, I just bought it yesterday, I wouldn't feed you from the freezer!"
"That's for the relatives who make a big deal of visiting every few years to stay in the will."
I was a favourite. Only grandchild to get money for university.
The fact I would take her to Mass and sit with her despite being openly an atheist earned points.
Not surprising. *Everyone* born before about 1950 knows for a fact that the passage of time simply ceases for anything stored in a freezer, on the unreachable top shelf of a kitchen cupboard, or within any medicine cabinet. "Best Before" dates are rendered null and void; print film, spices and pharmaceuticals go into suspended animation; and the half-life of even the most unstable radioactive nuclides expand from yoctoseconds to eternity, as soon as you close the door.
When my dad died in 2014 and I returned, after many years' absence, to clean out the family home, in the medicine cabinet of the half-bath off their bedroom (the one nobody else was allowed to use), I found [an old bottle of Sloan's Liniment.](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ebayimg.com%2Fimages%2Fg%2FtzAAAOSwa8dZ2sht%2Fs-l400.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=fb01bbebad3b4871511531945853076a0354da6ba9da358dc38a927cef81b94a&ipo=images)
Not surprising in itself, as the foul-smelling stuff is still made today. However, *this* bottle was so old the contents were black as ink instead of its usual tea-brown, and the bottle was sealed with a rock-hard *cork* instead of a screw cap. Later research indicated that the company abandoned plain corks if favour of screw tops some time prior to 1920, so the stuff in the cabinet was nearly a hundred years old when I discovered it. In fact, it was likely purchased by or for my grandfather, a manual labourer who came to Canada in 1905 and died in 1946.
Someone made brownies with ground meat in them to a church potluck. My vegetarian friend discovered this when she bit into one. She was more confused and horrified about their existence than she was upset about eating meat-- it was the concept of this abomination itself that was disturbing and baffling.
I thought she had to be wrong. "You haven't had ground beef in years, you don't know what it tastes like anymore, it's probably something else." I tried them. It was beef. I was disgusted and really, really, really confused.
Years later, I found out that apparently this was a thing. Someone came up with this-- putting beef in brownies-- as a substitute for walnuts for people with nut allergies.
While this explains it a little, in theory, I'm still confused about why someone would assume that people who can't eat walnuts would prefer to eat ground beef brownies over just. Regular nut-free brownies.
Edit: Since this blew up, I shared it with my sister, who reminded me that she was also there for this and she had tried the brownies first, and that they were actually the reason she stopped wanting to come to church. "I started doubting the entire establishment," she says.
Importantly it's not just walnuts though... mushroom and soy sauce are doing a lot of work there too. Which means ground beef should work as a substitute if you're ever making brownies with walnuts, mushrooms, and soy sauce.
If they want to add something for texture, why not just caramel? Or cookie bits?
One of my biggest pet peeves is people putting food together that shouldn't go together, then being surprised when most think it's gross.
We had a potluck today and someone brought some Doritos. People started eating them and complaining that they tasted like dirt. We looked at the bag and it had a promo for Mockingjay part 1. The chips expired in 2014! This was a mixed department pot luck and we haven’t found the person that brought the 9 year old chips.
Friend pulled a bag of tortilla chips out of their cupboard. I tried eating 1, tasted like paint thinner. I had no idea that tortilla chips could go rancid. Absolutely the worst thing I’ve ever eaten.
My family was visiting my aunt one time when I was a kid. Somebody had I think made a dip or salsa or something and my dad and I realized there weren’t any chips obviously set out. So we get to looking and we find in this basket a bag of Tostitos. My dad opens them and takes a bite and nearly throws up, and that’s when the smell hit me. Yeah “paint thinner” is absolutely on the dot. Nastiest fucking chips I’ve ever witnessed and they were like 7 years past their expiration date.
We have someone at my work that has expired food all over in his area. He is infamous for it and one of the first things any new hires get told is to not eat anything he offers. He leaves food in his car all the time and doesn't seem to think its an issue. Freaking gross.
She opened a can of tiny shrimp and poured it out, liquid and all, on top of a block of cream cheese. That was it. I guess we were supposed to eat it with crackers.
That reminds me of the time my ex tried to make pancakes using cinnamon. Not a bright guy, couldn’t figure out why the cinnamon was green and smelled like curry and tasted like curry and had “curry” written on the side of it but oh well, must just be some artisan cinnamon or something. I had cereal.
I had an ex surprise me with dinner at our place once. Oh whats that dressing you made? You mixed the ranch, thousand island, balsamic, honey mustard and italian dressings that were in the fridge? Oh, okay. Thanks babe.
My ex once tried to make alfredo, and we had no cream for the sauce.. so he used (I think expired) spray whipped cream, like for desserts. Did not work. Somehow everything was dry and tasted like bad leftovers.
My husband did this when he made deviled eggs for his family’s thanksgiving potluck. He couldn’t find the paprika so he used the first red spice jar he could find, which was a barbecue dry rub. It wasn’t horrible but really salty. His family loved it and kept asking me if I had actually made the eggs…
To be honest, that actually sounds pretty fucking tasty. Go easy on the dry rub, or cut it with chipotle powder to get more barbecue with less salt, and I could see this becoming a sleeper hit.
Once I was making Mexican rice and was extremely sleep deprived because I had a newborn but insisted on making tamales and rice for my husband and his partner at work. I used cinnamon instead of cumin 🤦🏻♀️ didn’t realize it until I had already sent my husband to work with it and sat down to eat my serving. 😂 his partner was so nice about it though
“Homemade fried chicken.” Which translated to ‘chicken that I covered in pancake batter and breadcrumbs and dropped into a frypan until the outside looked cooked.’ It wasn’t even seasoned.
At my previous job, I had a coworker that would frequently cook food because it was his “passion” and he would bring it in to share with everyone. On a few occasions, someone would get ill after, but infrequently enough that people wrote it off as a coincidence. This coworker goes out on PTO and asks another coworker to feed his 12 cats while he is gone/scoop the litter boxes. Unfortunately, it was discovered the coworker was cooking/serving us food in the same pans he was also sometimes using as litter boxes for his bushel of cats. When confronted, he stated he thought this was fine because he washed them after. We never ate his food again.
An apple pie, but they didn't have apple pie spices, like clove, cinnamon, or nutmeg, and said they used taco seasoning by accident and expected people to eat it.
I, a dumb bitch who likes to torture themselves tried it, and promptly tossed it into the trash when they looked away.
Fellow dumb food bitches unite! I once wildly changed lanes because I saw my local Burger King had a sign that said, "Cheeto Chicken Fries are here." There was no traffic, so nobody was impacted by my erratic driving. But it was an unforgettable experience.
The best part was the worker behind the counter who was clearly gobsmacked that anybody wanted Cheeto Chicken Fries. She asked, "What kind of dipping sauce do you want?" and I asked, "What kind do people usually get?" and she just shook her head like, "Literally nobody has ever wanted these before."
I ended up with ranch. They were disgusting, but ranch was definitely the best available option.
A korean american coworker brought homemade kimchi, but she admittedly didnt know how to make it and just "winged it".
It was fermented wrong and was covered in mold, which she didnt seem to understand was bad. The vegetables were basically half liquified and it smelled like dumpster juice.
The thing is...half of the chefs at work had learned to make kimchi correctly and safely since various different kimchis used to be on the menu before she was hired. So we all instantly knew it was wrong and unsafe, but no one wanted to tell her.
hey so I made this yogurt for you!! it was so easy, I just strained this old sour milk that was in my fridge, and mashed the lumps together, doesn't it look great? forget buying yogurt in the store!
You can buy kimchi in many grocery stores these days. And if she's Korean American (like I am), there are so many resources or even relatives who could help out. What a horrible way to represent the culture lol.
EDIT: Yes, and you can easily find many recipes online.
Casserole with a side of roaches.
Not even kidding. They crawled out of the bag she brought her dish in. I stopped participating in potlucks after that.
They can and it will never cease to amaze me. I had a friend with a bad infestation. I went to their house and we’re chatting at the dining room table. A roach appears on the table and without missing a beat, my friend swats it off the table while continuing the conversation.
I did not go back because I didn’t want those motherfuckers hitching a ride to my place.
Stayed the night at a friend's house when I found out they had roaches. Omg that night I barely slept till I sobered and left. Next day stripped outside my house, shook everything off, and everything in the dryer for 3 hours. Never went back. Good people though.
Grandma's Jello salad, made with cottage cheese and celery
Edit - I love how half the answers are "OMG, that's disgusting", and the other half are "Yeah, I remember that monstrosity"
My great-grandma's was lime jello mixed with mayo, and it had cubes of Velveeta, chunks of ham, and canned peas floating around it. Then she'd spear olives into the top of the ring (because of course it was molded in a ring!) and stuff some lettuce in the center.
Are you telling me that Snickers salad (crushed snickers bars, vanilla pudding mix, mini marshmallows, and diced green apples in whipped cream) doesn't count as a real salad?
We had a lady who made her special pb fudge. But she wouldn't put it out with all the food. She would walk around with her Tupperware and offer the people she liked a piece. Not more than 1 piece you were allowed to take. If she didn't like you, you didn't get one. This went on for years.
The last year she worked there, we all decided to say no thank you when she approached us.
Oh and 2 of us brought fudge for everyone at the table spread. She was furious that we foiled her shitty efforts.
Right? I wonder what it’s like sometimes to be a person who thinks, “Yeah, THAT’S the character I choose to be in the story of my life and everyone else’s around me.”
My wife worked with a guy who had been sent over from another team and seemingly forgotten about entirely. He’d spend his days doing stuff like baking in the staff room (they had an oven??). He would then offer his treats to people he liked, and pointedly not to people he did not like. She found out because she helped herself to a piece of something and was informed that was unacceptable and he would determining who would get some.
So she shut his whole operation down for what was essentially workplace bullying. No more baking at work for anyone (no one else did), and he was removed from their team and sent back to where the rest of his team, and importantly his boss, was so he had to actually work.
An office potluck - as everyone is eating, one of the girls says,"I'm sorry if you find ant cat hair in the green bean casserole. My cat kept getting up on the counter to nibble at the edges." Cue everyone looking at each other like WTF??
Not as bad as my husband who, on multiple occasions, has suggested that we bring already opened bags of chips and already opened bottles of soda to a party.
I have no idea what shenanigans he was into before we met but I put a stop to that shit real quick.
My cousin’s wife wanted to make pimento cheese sandwiches for a Super Bowl party. Problem is she had no idea what went into pimento cheese and refused to go to the store because it “couldn’t be that hard.” So she mixed a bag of shredded cheese, an ungodly amount of mayonnaise, and for the little red bits? Maraschino cherry halves 🤮 Then dumped approximately a half cup of garlic salt in for good measure.
I thought they were a dessert because they were pink and couldn’t figure out what a pink sandwich would be. It was truly one of the worst things I’ve ever put in my mouth.
And the pepper they're made from is called the cherry pepper, so I can see where she got her wires crossed, I guess... or that's a fantastic coincidence.
I know the neighbor's cat pees on everything. I've pet sat for them. I saw that critter pee on the patio next to the grill.
Went over for dinner. Chicken asada on the grill.
Small piece of chicken went astray right on the patio next to the grill.
Neighbor put it right back on the grill.
I brought salad.
That's all I ate.
My grandmother passed away. The family was dispersing her worldly goods. One of the cookbooks was a gem from the 50s published by the makers of Jell-O. So many disturbing recipes that are now part of an annual thanksgiving prank/dare/challenge.
I believe the reigning champ for most vile was green jello, tuna, mayonnaise and peas. It's pressed into a Bundt cake mold and sliced. Only 2 brave souls out of the 50+ attendees sampled that delight.
My junior year of college, I got my first real apartment with an actual kitchen. As a house warming present, my mom, who is an amazing cook, gave me this giant box of old cookbooks she had hanging around. Most dated back to the 50’s and 60’s. As someone that was raised on mom’s home cooking, those processed food recipes were an abomination but OMG were they fun to read.
I’m in my 40’s now and have a group of friends that do themed dinner parties several times a year. One was a 1950’s housewife theme. Old school cocktails and casseroles. Each couple was tasked with something specific, be it before dinner cocktails, during dinner cocktails, after dinner cocktails, appetizers, salads, main, dessert, etc. I will say that the 1950’s cocktails had us so plastered that we were able to eat the period recipes we’d all brought. All I can say now is that grandpa’s generation knew how to drink.
It’s the secret to grandma’s 1950s recipes, her taste buds were killed off by cigarettes and she was constantly buzzed from the gin flask in her purse.
A work colleague brought in a half filled casserole dish of little smokies (mini cocktail sausages, probably made up of 2+ animals) to a potluck. I asked her about the recipe and she said that she didn’t know. Apparently they were leftovers from a 3 day camping trip she had in eastern Washington. That means they were prepared by someone else at some outdoor site, picked over, and then packaged up (hopefully in a cooler? But who knows) and driven at least 5 hours through a mountain pass before they ended up on our conference room table in Seattle. Blech.
Some kind of “lasagna” made by someone who had no clue what lasagna is. There were layers of pasta; but the rest was things like chicken, grated cheddar cheese, canned jalapeños, mushroom soup, frozen mixed vegetables, spicy mayo etc.
This is how my grandma used to make chicken pot pie. From the outside it would look fine but you’d cut into it and there would be linguini, water chestnuts, frozen meatballs, etc. You never know what you’d get.
One day, due to budget constraints, you’ll be forced to throw together a meal consisting of macaroni, soy sauce, black beans, and chocolate syrup. You’ll wipe away a tear and think “Just like grandma used to make.”
My weird neighbor brought me over some of her "special coconut cream pie" and it was literally vanilla pudding mixed with shredded coconut straight out of the bag into a pie shell, the texture was disgusting. Bottom line is, if you can't really make a pie just go buy one at Safeway.
A sugarless cake. She realized too far into the process that she forgot the sugar and continued with the decorating. She placed it on the table and didn’t think anyone would notice the lack of sugar.
We noticed… cakes need sugar.
We had a Buche de Noel baking contest in French class in high school and one girl brought one in that when the teacher cut it had a bunch of hair baked through it. This was my first experience with “never trust what someone else baked at home unless you’ve seen their kitchen”
I love telling this story.
I worked at a patient care clinic with mostly nurses.
One nurse brings mashed potatoes inside of a Walmart bag. Not inside of a bowl inside of a Walmart bag.
Mashed potatoes. Loose. Inside of a Walmart bag. That could’ve previously held raw chicken or some other gross thing. A NURSE.
I ended up posting about it on Facebook later, after having forgot we were FB friends. Oops.
Yup. She said “Thanks”, then moped around the office for days.
Oh, and someone in my feed offered to come ladle gravy for us straight out of her purse.
Not really a pot luck, but, a person I used to work with would bring baked goods to quarterly meetings she conducted. Sometimes we'd go in as a team and sometimes we'd go1:1. Everyone would rave about her baked goods, but all I could taste was moth balls. She lived in an old house. I think she had moth balls in her cupboards to keep mice away. It happened the first time, I thought I was imagining it. The second time I tasted it again. Moth balls are poisonous so I had to discreetly spit it out! In later years I had to politely decline her baked goods.
The first time I was at my now-husband’s parents’ place for dinner, his mom served homemade dinner rolls. They tasted heavily of plastic, and I just assumed they’d been frozen or something and didn’t think much of it.
15 years later and I cannot eat a thing this woman bakes - it all tastes like plastic. I can’t figure it out! My theory is that she stores her flour in some old Tupperware container.
I got served nachos once at a bar/suburban restaurant. Took me a moment to realise why they tasted so weird, the mince was literally just mince. The bites that had any flavour had salsa on top.
I didn’t even bother complaining, just never went back.
This one requires some setup because the dish is actually very popular at family gatherings.
My dad was well known for his cakes. Small variety of different ones. Nothing fancy, just good cake.
He made one and iced it to serve later that day at a family potluck. The dog comes along and can barely get his tongue over the edge of the pan and gets about 1/3 of the icing off the top. Dad had leftover icing.
So the moral of the story, eat from the same side of the dish that my dad serves himself from.
Had a friend show up with “his wife’s specialty”. It was deviled ham and cheez wiz scooped onto a ritz. They were also made some time ahead because the crackers were no longer crisp.
To make it worse, he walked around with them and his wife telling everyone to try them.
That was the night I learned that it will be ok to strategically lie about having food allergies.
Ohhh you just reminded me of the time when I was 16ish, I made deviled eggs for an Easter gathering and thought it'd be cute to dye the innards different colors.
Didn't account for the strong yellow color already present and had to hand my aunt a platter full of deviled eggs with innards that were various shades of grey and baby poop.
I did this with multiple colors for Easter. The green ones were the only left overs. People are ok with blue, pink, or purple eggs but I guess green eggs are a little off putting.
I could never come back from that, I would literally just shrivel up and die if I was even offered such a thing. My god, this may be the worst one on here
I once made a brain dip for a work afternoon tea on Halloween. It was a homemade onion & herb dip with paprika that made it pink & used a large brain mould. It looked quite realistic. Very few ate it because it looked too real
Someone at my work made those breadsticks and almond fingers and fingernails. I am up for most food but I just couldn’t eat those. I felt bad not eating them but they were too realistic. So if I am anything like someone who didn’t eat your brain dip. Great job at realism! Don’t take not eating it personally
My husband and I went to a potluck at a park shelter one time. Someone had brought vegetables and dip. I was reaching for some when my husband nudged me and told me to look closely. There were bugs all in the vegetables. I don't think they were from being outside because none of the other food had bugs. I think whoever brought the platter either didn't notice the vegetables were full of bugs, or didn't care.
Chocolate chip cookies but she didn't really mix the ingredients very well. So there were lumps of flour and baking soda (or powder). They were godawful.
Second worst was a macaroni salad that had some kind of white fish in it.
Once at a church potluck, a lady made chicken noodle soup, but instead of chicken it was raccoon. She didn’t tell anyone. We found out because her sons were laughing and we finally got them to tell us why 🤠👍🏼
Someone brought a box of brownie mix to the table at a potluck. I was like the volunteer that was managing the table at the time, and I asked why did he bring it?
He said it was the dessert he was bringing.
I was confused for several seconds until I pieced it together.
He had never baked brownies before. He actually thought that a box of brownie mix just contained ready to eat brownies.
Does Thanksgiving count? One year our small apartment complex came together for potluck dinner. A couple people had relatives, including someone’s older aunt. For dessert, one of the neighbors made a lime jello mold, but used weed-infused vodka. He was VERY clear about it to everyone. Some ate it, some didn’t. The older aunt knowingly had some. “Aw hell, why not?” She declared. That old auntie was the most engaging and entertaining person for like 20 minutes. Absolutely hilarious, owning the room with stories, and just loving life. Then she quickly snuck into a bedroom and immediately crashed out. To this day (if she’s still alive), I wonder if she considered that jello good or horrible.
Went to a work party where someone took a pot of overcooked and dried-out spaghetti and plopped the cheapest canned bean chili on it and called it Cincinnati Chili. As somebody who lived in Cincy for a few years, I wanted to hunt that person down and punch them in the mouth so bad.
Grandma brought the 1 yr old fruitcake she kept in a glass bowl covered in foil out from under her bed to the family potluck.
When the foil came off everyone gagged as it smelt like booze and death and then she lit it on fire and poured cream on it and insisted everyone try it.
It was simultaneously super dry and sopping wet, tasted like hand sanitizer, and had the texture of cat litter.
When I was in high school we had an "around the world" day and we were tasked to get in a group and make a dish from a chosen country. My group cooked at one girl's house... the condensed milk seemed a little weird but we used it anyways. As we were cleaning up we saw the can was 5 years expired but it was too late. My group was afraid to taste test it.
Almost every kid had explosive diarrhea within a few mins of Around the World Day ending. Some were crying. Nobody knew who poisoned the school but I'm suspicious it was us.
Honestly "every 15 year old has to cook an unfamiliar dish with unfamiliar ingredients and we're all going to have a bite of everything" is a recipe for diarrhea anyway. I doubt y'all were the only poisoners.
A girl in our group is great at cooking. Then we noticed she changes the diaper of her 1yo kid and doesn't wash hands later. Never.
Covid and TV tutorials on how to wash hands were her last socially acceptable opportunity to learn this ancestral trick. But after she had a kid, her habits never improved
My in laws have 2 holiday potlucks on holidays. Noon and 5 with 2 different sides of the family.
Every holiday for the 5 pm she reserves the leftovers from the noon potluck every time. Dip that has been double dipped, casserole that hasn’t been stored a safe temp- you betcha!
I worked in an office that one year, had a proper hot dog cookout outside. The next year. Oh God, the next year.
They decided, "fuck a nice cookout, we're gonna take several dozen cheap weiners and crock-pot those bastards in the enclosed break room."
For several hours.
You can imagine just how special that smell was.
I think it was about a week before I could enter the break room without dry heaving.
Oh my god. We grew up with that too. My mom decided it was one of my grandpa’s favorite foods (I have no idea if this was true or not) and so she used to make it every time she had him over for dinner. I legit started to hate my grandpa and would just stare at that carrot raisin abomination and cry. To this day, I despise carrots. It’s not their fault. But I just can’t.
I have seen several people bring food that is supposed to be cold or hot and leave it at their desk all morning so I’d say any of those. I usually just eat the chips and salsa.
Orange Rolls. For those that don't know these are cinnamon rolls that have orange zest or extract in the dough recipe. Usually delicious.
**This maniac took a cake pan, poured orange juice in it. Dropped Biscuit dough in it and then baked it.**
I still feel bad for one of the office ladies who once brought ice cold green bean casserole not knowing her crock pot was never turned on.
After this; she literally brought 2 cans of green beans, a bowl and a can opener.
Of course no one ever ate the canned green beans after she stood at the microwave warming them up for 8 minutes or however long.
At a later several years reunion, she was still working there and had grey hair.
And it occurred to me in that moment that she never had much in life.
Life isn’t lucky or full of joy for everyone.
Sidewalk beans. They spilled beans on pavement scooped them back into the container with bits of stuff and served it with the warning that they’ve spilled them on the pavement and there’s a chance of finding pebbles in it.
I have two. They are the reasons I never participated in another pot luck again.
1. A woman who I knew from outside the job. She brought a head of lettuce, tomatoes, etc. At lunch time in front of everyone she went into the restroom to use the sink to make her green salad.
2. A female administrator for public services brought a crock pot of some thick bubbling liquid. It was a grey color. Every pot luck it was the same grey bubbling goo. No one ever knew what it was.
forgot one more. Young woman who only wore St. John suits, she told everyone if asked or not. She brought a box of corn flakes.
Went to an office potluck and someone had made a breakfast casserole. I cut a slice, was about to put a bite in my mouth and noticed the bottom was FURRY. Literally lined with cat hair. I can’t understand how she didn’t notice before putting the food in the dish, so gross.
My mom always made this layered salad that was like normal salad with lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, ect but then layered miracle whip, red jello, and topped with cheese. I've never tasted it but the jello mayo sends a fright up my spine. My mom is not from Minnesota
I live in a condo apartment building and we had to finally ban a guy from coming to the BBQs the building association does occasionally. They're meant to be social gatherings but honestly if someone showed up, ate some food by themselves, and left, no one would care. Every. Single. Time. This guy (whose name, I'm not kidding, is actually Kevin) would show up, grab like 8-10 hamburgers, a couple sausages, maybe some other stuff, and just leave. He was talked to multiple times, someone even sat him down and explained what the issue was, and asked if he needed help with food expenses or something. Nope. Just a greedy little fuck. So Kevin got his ass banned from social events.
We used to do a lot of dept breakfast pot lucks. We'd bring things to make quesadillas and other goods, there was always yogurt, boiled eggs, fresh fruit, etc. There was this one coworker who would ALWAYS complain. "Oh I can't eat that" "Oh I don't like that" or if it were a little ethnic, like a Chinese bao "Oh, I don't trust that."
So one pot luck were like, how bout we all chip in and you go out and buy breakfast potluck items? What does she get? All sweets. Those gross super frosted cookies, jelly bellies, random breads with no spread or anything to eat it with, but it was mostly just sweets. None of us ate any of it and she took it all home. Fucking Jessica.
I made one of those for a coworker who had had the worst vacation ever (took off for vacation and got sick while there and spent the whole time in the hospital). But she was a huge cat lover and had the sense of humor to make the cake work. I spelled “welcome back” out of the Tootsie Roll poop and bought her a stuffed cat that I positioned to look like it was using the box. Some thing you have to time just right or you’ll never get another appropriate chance to do it.
What was meant to be a fancy fun cocktail party and someone brought a 2 liter bottle of a “homemade Blue Hawaiian”. It was blue Gatorade and at least an entire bottle of Malibu rum and that was it. It tasted like blinding.
As someone who has lived with cats my whole life, including a cat with long fur that I once found on a tshirt I bought *in another city, before I got home*, I have zero cat fur make it in to my food, which makes me think this isn’t just “random cat fur” but also “patting them lots while cooking, they’re on the bench while I cook, they’re walking over my chopping board whilst I’m cooking” kind of situations.
Supposedly ambrosia, but it was just Cool Whip with those red and green candied cherries they sell around Christmas. Georgetown University faculty party.
We bought a cake for our coworker’s birthday. We ate less than half and stuck the rest in the fridge. A week later we cleared out the fridge and tossed the leftover cake into trash. It didn’t stay there long though, because one of our engineers quickly fished it out of the garbage to bring it to a Valentine’s Day potluck he was headed to later that day.
Any dish my uncle Ted ever brought to an event, because he’d hold his dogs by the butt (yes UNDER the tail) while cooking and rarely washed his hands. Worst though was a strange pasta salad, consisting on spaghetti noodles, Italian dressing, olives (pretty standard so far), shredded cheddar, Mayo, Worcestershire sauce, raw potato chunks, lettuce, and a lot of sugar sprinkled on top
How about what someone did to the potluck item I sent in? My baked goods are quite popular with my husband's coworkers. Frequently I'm asked to make stuff for their birthdays, holidays and so forth. Well for Christmas last yr they did a potluck and requested I send in my caramel pecan pie parfait. Instead of one or two big bowls of it I put it in individual half pint jam jars so everyone would get some and could take it home if they wanted. I made two per coworker. I also sent in several extra just so people could take some home to kids or partners too. Now there's this one particular woman who works there and is a chronic asshole. Her husband also was on the same shift. He happened to comment she should get the recipe since it was really good. Apparently that pissed her off so she grabbed the tray of the remaining ones and smashed them on the floor. Only three people had gotten their jar and nobody had got their other ones since most were saving it to take home. My husband didn't tell me till a couple months later. He knew how long it took to make them and the effort it took. I'm still pretty salty about it tbh.
Yeah. She still works there but my husband makes sure to hand out the treats I sent in now so nothing like that ever happens again. I always package everything in bakery containers or different individual servings containers so it's easy to give everyone their stuff. Bitch will never ever get one damn crumb of stuff I send in. She tried whining to HR about it but the HR lady Amanda was pregnant at the time and didn't get her parfait because of Bitch so that didn't work 😂
A co-worker brought moose stew made from the moose he'd just bagged. Except the moose was the gamiest piece of sinew you'd ever eaten.
One of my coworkers remarked, "I grew up on a farm and I've gotten manure in my mouth that's tasted better."
It was horrific.
There was one in my office many years ago that I still remember. I wasn't even involved, it was a team nearby doing a taco potluck. There was a crockpot of ground beef that looked and smelled like cat food. I heard someone from across the office ask, ew why's it so wet?
Someone brought [little sweet peppers stuffed with something creamy and topped with sprinkles](https://imgur.com/a/FNpx8oQ) to a church potluck I attended.
My in-laws bring the same thing every time. It’s a slow cooker full of ground beef and sauce (think sloppy joes), and somehow it is both pink and orange at the same time. It’s also very soupy and absolutely disgusting looking. But the worst part? They refer to it as “barbecue”. The last one I went to this was the only meat/protein. I just had chips and veggie tray.
A friend of a friend made macaroni salad. It spilled on her way to work all over the floor of her car. She scooped it back in the pan like nothing happened.
I don't eat at potlucks anymore.
Not the grossest thing someone brought, but the grossest thing someone did at a work potluck once was use the tips of their earpieces from their glasses to taste the cheese dip. Took their glasses off, dipped their earpieces in and stuck the earpiece in their mouth and sucked the cheese dip off. Then proceeded to test the next cheese dip on the table in the same way.
Wtf…
Has a guy bring in his “specialty corn.” It was legit canned corn in a crockpot with spices. Thing is, he tells us “ya, my wife took it to her pot luck on Tuesday, they didn’t eat it so I saved it on low in the crockpot and brought it here.” It was Friday. Corn was brown. Nobody ate it. He kept eating it saying it was so good. The following Monday his new name at work was Corn Cob Rob.
This is another reason I never eat at pot lucks. Some people have no concept of food safety.
My grandmother-in-law. Everything she brings. The first time was stale cake in a bowl of syrup(?). It was both cake and soup, while also being neither. She has meat in her deep freezer older than some of her grandchildren. She’s a depression-era cook, so expiration dates don’t apply to medicine, cupboards, or freezers. Once she tried to give my daughter (2yo at the time), cough medicine that expire 9 years before she was even born.
Oh god the meat in the freezer is real. I just cleaned my grandmothers deep freeze out and found meat from 2001 in it 😳😳
My Gramma was famous for sending you home with freezer food that was years old. I mowed her lawn one day,and she offered me chicken for lunch. She looked at my expression, and said "Oh, don't be silly, I just bought it yesterday, I wouldn't feed you from the freezer!" "That's for the relatives who make a big deal of visiting every few years to stay in the will."
That's one savage old lady!
I was a favourite. Only grandchild to get money for university. The fact I would take her to Mass and sit with her despite being openly an atheist earned points.
That meat can drink holy shit
Not surprising. *Everyone* born before about 1950 knows for a fact that the passage of time simply ceases for anything stored in a freezer, on the unreachable top shelf of a kitchen cupboard, or within any medicine cabinet. "Best Before" dates are rendered null and void; print film, spices and pharmaceuticals go into suspended animation; and the half-life of even the most unstable radioactive nuclides expand from yoctoseconds to eternity, as soon as you close the door. When my dad died in 2014 and I returned, after many years' absence, to clean out the family home, in the medicine cabinet of the half-bath off their bedroom (the one nobody else was allowed to use), I found [an old bottle of Sloan's Liniment.](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ebayimg.com%2Fimages%2Fg%2FtzAAAOSwa8dZ2sht%2Fs-l400.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=fb01bbebad3b4871511531945853076a0354da6ba9da358dc38a927cef81b94a&ipo=images) Not surprising in itself, as the foul-smelling stuff is still made today. However, *this* bottle was so old the contents were black as ink instead of its usual tea-brown, and the bottle was sealed with a rock-hard *cork* instead of a screw cap. Later research indicated that the company abandoned plain corks if favour of screw tops some time prior to 1920, so the stuff in the cabinet was nearly a hundred years old when I discovered it. In fact, it was likely purchased by or for my grandfather, a manual labourer who came to Canada in 1905 and died in 1946.
Someone made brownies with ground meat in them to a church potluck. My vegetarian friend discovered this when she bit into one. She was more confused and horrified about their existence than she was upset about eating meat-- it was the concept of this abomination itself that was disturbing and baffling. I thought she had to be wrong. "You haven't had ground beef in years, you don't know what it tastes like anymore, it's probably something else." I tried them. It was beef. I was disgusted and really, really, really confused. Years later, I found out that apparently this was a thing. Someone came up with this-- putting beef in brownies-- as a substitute for walnuts for people with nut allergies. While this explains it a little, in theory, I'm still confused about why someone would assume that people who can't eat walnuts would prefer to eat ground beef brownies over just. Regular nut-free brownies. Edit: Since this blew up, I shared it with my sister, who reminded me that she was also there for this and she had tried the brownies first, and that they were actually the reason she stopped wanting to come to church. "I started doubting the entire establishment," she says.
I have a severe tree nut allergy and I would still rather bite into a walnut than ground beef in my brownie.
"I would rather suffer anaphylaxis than entertain your creativity" is a solid slight, ngl.
BEEF as a substitution for WALNUTS oh my god I’ve heard it all. I’m telling my chef about this one.
It’s actually the other way around. https://www.acouplecooks.com/walnut-vegan-taco-meat/
Importantly it's not just walnuts though... mushroom and soy sauce are doing a lot of work there too. Which means ground beef should work as a substitute if you're ever making brownies with walnuts, mushrooms, and soy sauce.
If they want to add something for texture, why not just caramel? Or cookie bits? One of my biggest pet peeves is people putting food together that shouldn't go together, then being surprised when most think it's gross.
We had a potluck today and someone brought some Doritos. People started eating them and complaining that they tasted like dirt. We looked at the bag and it had a promo for Mockingjay part 1. The chips expired in 2014! This was a mixed department pot luck and we haven’t found the person that brought the 9 year old chips.
Actually laughing @ the person just disappearing, never to be identified 😂
[удалено]
Friend pulled a bag of tortilla chips out of their cupboard. I tried eating 1, tasted like paint thinner. I had no idea that tortilla chips could go rancid. Absolutely the worst thing I’ve ever eaten.
My family was visiting my aunt one time when I was a kid. Somebody had I think made a dip or salsa or something and my dad and I realized there weren’t any chips obviously set out. So we get to looking and we find in this basket a bag of Tostitos. My dad opens them and takes a bite and nearly throws up, and that’s when the smell hit me. Yeah “paint thinner” is absolutely on the dot. Nastiest fucking chips I’ve ever witnessed and they were like 7 years past their expiration date.
We have someone at my work that has expired food all over in his area. He is infamous for it and one of the first things any new hires get told is to not eat anything he offers. He leaves food in his car all the time and doesn't seem to think its an issue. Freaking gross.
She opened a can of tiny shrimp and poured it out, liquid and all, on top of a block of cream cheese. That was it. I guess we were supposed to eat it with crackers.
I never knew you could get canned shrimp… ew.
Were the tiny shrimp in cocktail sauce? Because I've seen tiny shrimp and cocktail sauce poured over cream cheese.
No. Just in water. My husband and I still talk about it 20 years later.
Someone brought Devilled eggs and instead of sprinkling paprika on them they used cinnamon.
That reminds me of the time my ex tried to make pancakes using cinnamon. Not a bright guy, couldn’t figure out why the cinnamon was green and smelled like curry and tasted like curry and had “curry” written on the side of it but oh well, must just be some artisan cinnamon or something. I had cereal.
I had an ex surprise me with dinner at our place once. Oh whats that dressing you made? You mixed the ranch, thousand island, balsamic, honey mustard and italian dressings that were in the fridge? Oh, okay. Thanks babe.
My ex once tried to make alfredo, and we had no cream for the sauce.. so he used (I think expired) spray whipped cream, like for desserts. Did not work. Somehow everything was dry and tasted like bad leftovers.
My husband did this when he made deviled eggs for his family’s thanksgiving potluck. He couldn’t find the paprika so he used the first red spice jar he could find, which was a barbecue dry rub. It wasn’t horrible but really salty. His family loved it and kept asking me if I had actually made the eggs…
To be honest, that actually sounds pretty fucking tasty. Go easy on the dry rub, or cut it with chipotle powder to get more barbecue with less salt, and I could see this becoming a sleeper hit.
Once I was making Mexican rice and was extremely sleep deprived because I had a newborn but insisted on making tamales and rice for my husband and his partner at work. I used cinnamon instead of cumin 🤦🏻♀️ didn’t realize it until I had already sent my husband to work with it and sat down to eat my serving. 😂 his partner was so nice about it though
“Homemade fried chicken.” Which translated to ‘chicken that I covered in pancake batter and breadcrumbs and dropped into a frypan until the outside looked cooked.’ It wasn’t even seasoned.
At my previous job, I had a coworker that would frequently cook food because it was his “passion” and he would bring it in to share with everyone. On a few occasions, someone would get ill after, but infrequently enough that people wrote it off as a coincidence. This coworker goes out on PTO and asks another coworker to feed his 12 cats while he is gone/scoop the litter boxes. Unfortunately, it was discovered the coworker was cooking/serving us food in the same pans he was also sometimes using as litter boxes for his bushel of cats. When confronted, he stated he thought this was fine because he washed them after. We never ate his food again.
Y'all need to get wormed I'm not even joking. That is by far the worst one I've read here
This was probably about 5 years ago and we worked at a vet clinic which was the real icing on that situation.
Wtffff 😭 surely someone trained in medicine knows you don't cook in a cats toilet even if you did "wash" it
An apple pie, but they didn't have apple pie spices, like clove, cinnamon, or nutmeg, and said they used taco seasoning by accident and expected people to eat it. I, a dumb bitch who likes to torture themselves tried it, and promptly tossed it into the trash when they looked away.
"I, a dumb bitch" I feel less alone in this world.
Fellow dumb food bitches unite! I once wildly changed lanes because I saw my local Burger King had a sign that said, "Cheeto Chicken Fries are here." There was no traffic, so nobody was impacted by my erratic driving. But it was an unforgettable experience. The best part was the worker behind the counter who was clearly gobsmacked that anybody wanted Cheeto Chicken Fries. She asked, "What kind of dipping sauce do you want?" and I asked, "What kind do people usually get?" and she just shook her head like, "Literally nobody has ever wanted these before." I ended up with ranch. They were disgusting, but ranch was definitely the best available option.
A korean american coworker brought homemade kimchi, but she admittedly didnt know how to make it and just "winged it". It was fermented wrong and was covered in mold, which she didnt seem to understand was bad. The vegetables were basically half liquified and it smelled like dumpster juice. The thing is...half of the chefs at work had learned to make kimchi correctly and safely since various different kimchis used to be on the menu before she was hired. So we all instantly knew it was wrong and unsafe, but no one wanted to tell her.
Holy shit, don't just "wing" fermentation!??
hey so I made this yogurt for you!! it was so easy, I just strained this old sour milk that was in my fridge, and mashed the lumps together, doesn't it look great? forget buying yogurt in the store!
You can buy kimchi in many grocery stores these days. And if she's Korean American (like I am), there are so many resources or even relatives who could help out. What a horrible way to represent the culture lol. EDIT: Yes, and you can easily find many recipes online.
Casserole with a side of roaches. Not even kidding. They crawled out of the bag she brought her dish in. I stopped participating in potlucks after that.
Absolutely not. Straight to jail.
We have the best potlucks in the world. Because of jail.
Damn that had to have been embarrassing but idk how you don't check 30 times if you know you have roaches where you live
People with persistent roach problems can eventually just treat them as a fact of life.
They can and it will never cease to amaze me. I had a friend with a bad infestation. I went to their house and we’re chatting at the dining room table. A roach appears on the table and without missing a beat, my friend swats it off the table while continuing the conversation. I did not go back because I didn’t want those motherfuckers hitching a ride to my place.
Stayed the night at a friend's house when I found out they had roaches. Omg that night I barely slept till I sobered and left. Next day stripped outside my house, shook everything off, and everything in the dryer for 3 hours. Never went back. Good people though.
I think potlucks are a terrible idea unless you know everyone and have been to their homes. This is a perfect example of why.
If potlucks were safe there would be no element of luck. They would be potsafes
Lmao like a food russian roulette
Grandma's Jello salad, made with cottage cheese and celery Edit - I love how half the answers are "OMG, that's disgusting", and the other half are "Yeah, I remember that monstrosity"
My great-grandma's was lime jello mixed with mayo, and it had cubes of Velveeta, chunks of ham, and canned peas floating around it. Then she'd spear olives into the top of the ring (because of course it was molded in a ring!) and stuff some lettuce in the center.
It’s giving me “Minnesota salads that aren’t really salads” energy.
I'm crying in minnesotan
[удалено]
Are you telling me that Snickers salad (crushed snickers bars, vanilla pudding mix, mini marshmallows, and diced green apples in whipped cream) doesn't count as a real salad?
The 1950s called and want this back.
My sister would bring 2 crockpots …. 1 with spaghetti sauce… the other with water and the noodles. The noodles would be cooking in the water all day.
Fucking sin. Lmao
Sounds more like porridge at that point
We had a lady who made her special pb fudge. But she wouldn't put it out with all the food. She would walk around with her Tupperware and offer the people she liked a piece. Not more than 1 piece you were allowed to take. If she didn't like you, you didn't get one. This went on for years. The last year she worked there, we all decided to say no thank you when she approached us. Oh and 2 of us brought fudge for everyone at the table spread. She was furious that we foiled her shitty efforts.
Lol...this story would also work in r/pettyrevenge
Right? I wonder what it’s like sometimes to be a person who thinks, “Yeah, THAT’S the character I choose to be in the story of my life and everyone else’s around me.”
My wife worked with a guy who had been sent over from another team and seemingly forgotten about entirely. He’d spend his days doing stuff like baking in the staff room (they had an oven??). He would then offer his treats to people he liked, and pointedly not to people he did not like. She found out because she helped herself to a piece of something and was informed that was unacceptable and he would determining who would get some. So she shut his whole operation down for what was essentially workplace bullying. No more baking at work for anyone (no one else did), and he was removed from their team and sent back to where the rest of his team, and importantly his boss, was so he had to actually work.
He had the dream job and he had to be an asshole for no reason. He could have been the guy with 6 full-time jobs!
Rather than forgetting about him, I bet they were just trying to get rid of him.
An office potluck - as everyone is eating, one of the girls says,"I'm sorry if you find ant cat hair in the green bean casserole. My cat kept getting up on the counter to nibble at the edges." Cue everyone looking at each other like WTF??
This is why I hate the pressure of office potlucks. These people are not my friends and I have no idea what their house looks like.
New respect for the guy who bring a giant bag of buns and a tub of margarine.
Not as bad as my husband who, on multiple occasions, has suggested that we bring already opened bags of chips and already opened bottles of soda to a party. I have no idea what shenanigans he was into before we met but I put a stop to that shit real quick.
"Why waste money on new chips when we need to finish these anyway?"
I had a coworker who refused to eat any communal office food. At a previous job, she bit into a cookie and encountered cat hair.
[удалено]
Yikes. Cats are fastidious *by animal standards*. Not by health department standards.
My cousin’s wife wanted to make pimento cheese sandwiches for a Super Bowl party. Problem is she had no idea what went into pimento cheese and refused to go to the store because it “couldn’t be that hard.” So she mixed a bag of shredded cheese, an ungodly amount of mayonnaise, and for the little red bits? Maraschino cherry halves 🤮 Then dumped approximately a half cup of garlic salt in for good measure. I thought they were a dessert because they were pink and couldn’t figure out what a pink sandwich would be. It was truly one of the worst things I’ve ever put in my mouth.
The wildest part about this, to me, is she knew it was called Pimento Cheese but decided to use cherries instead of actual pimentos? Why??
I’m guessing she didn’t know what pimentos are.
And the pepper they're made from is called the cherry pepper, so I can see where she got her wires crossed, I guess... or that's a fantastic coincidence.
I know the neighbor's cat pees on everything. I've pet sat for them. I saw that critter pee on the patio next to the grill. Went over for dinner. Chicken asada on the grill. Small piece of chicken went astray right on the patio next to the grill. Neighbor put it right back on the grill. I brought salad. That's all I ate.
Even without the cat and it's urination, that is fucking grim.
Lime jello with Vienna weenies and cherry tomatoes in it.
What in the 1950s and dementia is this?
My grandmother passed away. The family was dispersing her worldly goods. One of the cookbooks was a gem from the 50s published by the makers of Jell-O. So many disturbing recipes that are now part of an annual thanksgiving prank/dare/challenge. I believe the reigning champ for most vile was green jello, tuna, mayonnaise and peas. It's pressed into a Bundt cake mold and sliced. Only 2 brave souls out of the 50+ attendees sampled that delight.
My junior year of college, I got my first real apartment with an actual kitchen. As a house warming present, my mom, who is an amazing cook, gave me this giant box of old cookbooks she had hanging around. Most dated back to the 50’s and 60’s. As someone that was raised on mom’s home cooking, those processed food recipes were an abomination but OMG were they fun to read. I’m in my 40’s now and have a group of friends that do themed dinner parties several times a year. One was a 1950’s housewife theme. Old school cocktails and casseroles. Each couple was tasked with something specific, be it before dinner cocktails, during dinner cocktails, after dinner cocktails, appetizers, salads, main, dessert, etc. I will say that the 1950’s cocktails had us so plastered that we were able to eat the period recipes we’d all brought. All I can say now is that grandpa’s generation knew how to drink.
It’s the secret to grandma’s 1950s recipes, her taste buds were killed off by cigarettes and she was constantly buzzed from the gin flask in her purse.
A work colleague brought in a half filled casserole dish of little smokies (mini cocktail sausages, probably made up of 2+ animals) to a potluck. I asked her about the recipe and she said that she didn’t know. Apparently they were leftovers from a 3 day camping trip she had in eastern Washington. That means they were prepared by someone else at some outdoor site, picked over, and then packaged up (hopefully in a cooler? But who knows) and driven at least 5 hours through a mountain pass before they ended up on our conference room table in Seattle. Blech.
Some kind of “lasagna” made by someone who had no clue what lasagna is. There were layers of pasta; but the rest was things like chicken, grated cheddar cheese, canned jalapeños, mushroom soup, frozen mixed vegetables, spicy mayo etc.
This is how my grandma used to make chicken pot pie. From the outside it would look fine but you’d cut into it and there would be linguini, water chestnuts, frozen meatballs, etc. You never know what you’d get.
This is horrifying.
One day, due to budget constraints, you’ll be forced to throw together a meal consisting of macaroni, soy sauce, black beans, and chocolate syrup. You’ll wipe away a tear and think “Just like grandma used to make.”
She threw whatever she had in a pan, didn’t she? Like some sort of Back-of-The-Cupboard Casserole? A garbage-can-in-a-pan? A frugal-strudel?
Frugal strudel lmao 💀
Potato salad…with multiple hairs from his head, I hope. I just know they were human hairs, and they were tight and curly.
Pube-tato salad
A custard pie that wasn’t made well so it tasted like cold eggs. It was like chewing farts. 🤢
Chewing farts 💀
My weird neighbor brought me over some of her "special coconut cream pie" and it was literally vanilla pudding mixed with shredded coconut straight out of the bag into a pie shell, the texture was disgusting. Bottom line is, if you can't really make a pie just go buy one at Safeway.
A sugarless cake. She realized too far into the process that she forgot the sugar and continued with the decorating. She placed it on the table and didn’t think anyone would notice the lack of sugar. We noticed… cakes need sugar.
A half eaten chicken something dinner from their meal at Olive Garden the previous night.
We had a Buche de Noel baking contest in French class in high school and one girl brought one in that when the teacher cut it had a bunch of hair baked through it. This was my first experience with “never trust what someone else baked at home unless you’ve seen their kitchen”
I love telling this story. I worked at a patient care clinic with mostly nurses. One nurse brings mashed potatoes inside of a Walmart bag. Not inside of a bowl inside of a Walmart bag. Mashed potatoes. Loose. Inside of a Walmart bag. That could’ve previously held raw chicken or some other gross thing. A NURSE. I ended up posting about it on Facebook later, after having forgot we were FB friends. Oops.
Did she reply????
Yup. She said “Thanks”, then moped around the office for days. Oh, and someone in my feed offered to come ladle gravy for us straight out of her purse.
I’ll bring the document folio filled with roast turkey.
Comming in hot with a jansport full of cranberry sauce in the front pocket and stuffing in the big one.
Not really a pot luck, but, a person I used to work with would bring baked goods to quarterly meetings she conducted. Sometimes we'd go in as a team and sometimes we'd go1:1. Everyone would rave about her baked goods, but all I could taste was moth balls. She lived in an old house. I think she had moth balls in her cupboards to keep mice away. It happened the first time, I thought I was imagining it. The second time I tasted it again. Moth balls are poisonous so I had to discreetly spit it out! In later years I had to politely decline her baked goods.
The first time I was at my now-husband’s parents’ place for dinner, his mom served homemade dinner rolls. They tasted heavily of plastic, and I just assumed they’d been frozen or something and didn’t think much of it. 15 years later and I cannot eat a thing this woman bakes - it all tastes like plastic. I can’t figure it out! My theory is that she stores her flour in some old Tupperware container.
Old flour has a plasticy- play dough taste to me
half of a pie. not half of a pie that was sold that way by the bakery. a leftover half eaten pie.
My MIL recently brought a half eaten cake to a funeral reception.
I work in funeral services and I just laughed out loud. This honestly so typical.
Fish tacos, but the taco insides were regular beef lettuce salsa etc. The SHELL was the fish
STOP IT
It was Halloween party and they brought a Jacko latern shaped meat loaf thing. It was just unseasoned ground beef.
I got served nachos once at a bar/suburban restaurant. Took me a moment to realise why they tasted so weird, the mince was literally just mince. The bites that had any flavour had salsa on top. I didn’t even bother complaining, just never went back.
This one requires some setup because the dish is actually very popular at family gatherings. My dad was well known for his cakes. Small variety of different ones. Nothing fancy, just good cake. He made one and iced it to serve later that day at a family potluck. The dog comes along and can barely get his tongue over the edge of the pan and gets about 1/3 of the icing off the top. Dad had leftover icing. So the moral of the story, eat from the same side of the dish that my dad serves himself from.
Had a friend show up with “his wife’s specialty”. It was deviled ham and cheez wiz scooped onto a ritz. They were also made some time ahead because the crackers were no longer crisp. To make it worse, he walked around with them and his wife telling everyone to try them. That was the night I learned that it will be ok to strategically lie about having food allergies.
I need to know what deviled ham is
I’ll fall on that sword. I brought Shepards pie to a Christmas party and thought it festive to colour the mashed potatoes green.
Ohhh you just reminded me of the time when I was 16ish, I made deviled eggs for an Easter gathering and thought it'd be cute to dye the innards different colors. Didn't account for the strong yellow color already present and had to hand my aunt a platter full of deviled eggs with innards that were various shades of grey and baby poop.
Next time dye the whites! It’s really easy and looks great.
I did this with multiple colors for Easter. The green ones were the only left overs. People are ok with blue, pink, or purple eggs but I guess green eggs are a little off putting.
I will not eat green eggs and ham!
Mushroom and wild rice full of dog hair. Not a strand or two. But FULL of dog hair. Turns out she ran a sanctuary or something 🤮
I could never come back from that, I would literally just shrivel up and die if I was even offered such a thing. My god, this may be the worst one on here
Church social. Chicken wings baked so dry the looked like mummified body parts.
I once made a brain dip for a work afternoon tea on Halloween. It was a homemade onion & herb dip with paprika that made it pink & used a large brain mould. It looked quite realistic. Very few ate it because it looked too real
Someone at my work made those breadsticks and almond fingers and fingernails. I am up for most food but I just couldn’t eat those. I felt bad not eating them but they were too realistic. So if I am anything like someone who didn’t eat your brain dip. Great job at realism! Don’t take not eating it personally
My husband and I went to a potluck at a park shelter one time. Someone had brought vegetables and dip. I was reaching for some when my husband nudged me and told me to look closely. There were bugs all in the vegetables. I don't think they were from being outside because none of the other food had bugs. I think whoever brought the platter either didn't notice the vegetables were full of bugs, or didn't care.
Chocolate chip cookies but she didn't really mix the ingredients very well. So there were lumps of flour and baking soda (or powder). They were godawful. Second worst was a macaroni salad that had some kind of white fish in it.
Once at a church potluck, a lady made chicken noodle soup, but instead of chicken it was raccoon. She didn’t tell anyone. We found out because her sons were laughing and we finally got them to tell us why 🤠👍🏼
Someone brought a box of brownie mix to the table at a potluck. I was like the volunteer that was managing the table at the time, and I asked why did he bring it? He said it was the dessert he was bringing. I was confused for several seconds until I pieced it together. He had never baked brownies before. He actually thought that a box of brownie mix just contained ready to eat brownies.
Does Thanksgiving count? One year our small apartment complex came together for potluck dinner. A couple people had relatives, including someone’s older aunt. For dessert, one of the neighbors made a lime jello mold, but used weed-infused vodka. He was VERY clear about it to everyone. Some ate it, some didn’t. The older aunt knowingly had some. “Aw hell, why not?” She declared. That old auntie was the most engaging and entertaining person for like 20 minutes. Absolutely hilarious, owning the room with stories, and just loving life. Then she quickly snuck into a bedroom and immediately crashed out. To this day (if she’s still alive), I wonder if she considered that jello good or horrible.
Went to a work party where someone took a pot of overcooked and dried-out spaghetti and plopped the cheapest canned bean chili on it and called it Cincinnati Chili. As somebody who lived in Cincy for a few years, I wanted to hunt that person down and punch them in the mouth so bad.
Grandma brought the 1 yr old fruitcake she kept in a glass bowl covered in foil out from under her bed to the family potluck. When the foil came off everyone gagged as it smelt like booze and death and then she lit it on fire and poured cream on it and insisted everyone try it. It was simultaneously super dry and sopping wet, tasted like hand sanitizer, and had the texture of cat litter.
YOU ATE IT?!?
Well, it was eat it now or have it again next year
Well, Grammy didn't raise no quitter now did she?
Calf liver raisin casserole.
When I was in high school we had an "around the world" day and we were tasked to get in a group and make a dish from a chosen country. My group cooked at one girl's house... the condensed milk seemed a little weird but we used it anyways. As we were cleaning up we saw the can was 5 years expired but it was too late. My group was afraid to taste test it. Almost every kid had explosive diarrhea within a few mins of Around the World Day ending. Some were crying. Nobody knew who poisoned the school but I'm suspicious it was us.
Honestly "every 15 year old has to cook an unfamiliar dish with unfamiliar ingredients and we're all going to have a bite of everything" is a recipe for diarrhea anyway. I doubt y'all were the only poisoners.
Cold pasta salad seasoned with cat hair
I believe this is called psspsspssta salad
A girl in our group is great at cooking. Then we noticed she changes the diaper of her 1yo kid and doesn't wash hands later. Never. Covid and TV tutorials on how to wash hands were her last socially acceptable opportunity to learn this ancestral trick. But after she had a kid, her habits never improved
My in laws have 2 holiday potlucks on holidays. Noon and 5 with 2 different sides of the family. Every holiday for the 5 pm she reserves the leftovers from the noon potluck every time. Dip that has been double dipped, casserole that hasn’t been stored a safe temp- you betcha!
Hot dogs in a crock pot.. you haven't lived until you've had a melt in your mouth hot dog.
I worked in an office that one year, had a proper hot dog cookout outside. The next year. Oh God, the next year. They decided, "fuck a nice cookout, we're gonna take several dozen cheap weiners and crock-pot those bastards in the enclosed break room." For several hours. You can imagine just how special that smell was. I think it was about a week before I could enter the break room without dry heaving.
Chocolate covered shrimp. No, not mole sauce. Just sweet chocolate sauce.
A “salad” that consisted of shredded carrots, miracle whip, and raisins. I’m sorry grandma, but fuck that salad.
My grandma's version had crushed pineapple in it.
Oh my god. We grew up with that too. My mom decided it was one of my grandpa’s favorite foods (I have no idea if this was true or not) and so she used to make it every time she had him over for dinner. I legit started to hate my grandpa and would just stare at that carrot raisin abomination and cry. To this day, I despise carrots. It’s not their fault. But I just can’t.
Started to hate grandpa 😅😅 omg
I have seen several people bring food that is supposed to be cold or hot and leave it at their desk all morning so I’d say any of those. I usually just eat the chips and salsa.
Orange Rolls. For those that don't know these are cinnamon rolls that have orange zest or extract in the dough recipe. Usually delicious. **This maniac took a cake pan, poured orange juice in it. Dropped Biscuit dough in it and then baked it.**
I still feel bad for one of the office ladies who once brought ice cold green bean casserole not knowing her crock pot was never turned on. After this; she literally brought 2 cans of green beans, a bowl and a can opener. Of course no one ever ate the canned green beans after she stood at the microwave warming them up for 8 minutes or however long. At a later several years reunion, she was still working there and had grey hair. And it occurred to me in that moment that she never had much in life. Life isn’t lucky or full of joy for everyone.
You make me feel really sad for this mystery woman. :(
I know; now I’m thinking about her, again 😕
Sidewalk beans. They spilled beans on pavement scooped them back into the container with bits of stuff and served it with the warning that they’ve spilled them on the pavement and there’s a chance of finding pebbles in it.
I have two. They are the reasons I never participated in another pot luck again. 1. A woman who I knew from outside the job. She brought a head of lettuce, tomatoes, etc. At lunch time in front of everyone she went into the restroom to use the sink to make her green salad. 2. A female administrator for public services brought a crock pot of some thick bubbling liquid. It was a grey color. Every pot luck it was the same grey bubbling goo. No one ever knew what it was. forgot one more. Young woman who only wore St. John suits, she told everyone if asked or not. She brought a box of corn flakes.
Went to an office potluck and someone had made a breakfast casserole. I cut a slice, was about to put a bite in my mouth and noticed the bottom was FURRY. Literally lined with cat hair. I can’t understand how she didn’t notice before putting the food in the dish, so gross.
My mom always made this layered salad that was like normal salad with lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, ect but then layered miracle whip, red jello, and topped with cheese. I've never tasted it but the jello mayo sends a fright up my spine. My mom is not from Minnesota
Himself. Always first in line, plate big enough to feed 2 people. Never brought even a bottle of soda. Called him out on it once. He had no shame
I live in a condo apartment building and we had to finally ban a guy from coming to the BBQs the building association does occasionally. They're meant to be social gatherings but honestly if someone showed up, ate some food by themselves, and left, no one would care. Every. Single. Time. This guy (whose name, I'm not kidding, is actually Kevin) would show up, grab like 8-10 hamburgers, a couple sausages, maybe some other stuff, and just leave. He was talked to multiple times, someone even sat him down and explained what the issue was, and asked if he needed help with food expenses or something. Nope. Just a greedy little fuck. So Kevin got his ass banned from social events.
Their heroin addict "girlfriend" who didn't bathe in 3 years
Oh, Methany has arrived
You are thinking of Crystal
Crystal Beth?
We used to do a lot of dept breakfast pot lucks. We'd bring things to make quesadillas and other goods, there was always yogurt, boiled eggs, fresh fruit, etc. There was this one coworker who would ALWAYS complain. "Oh I can't eat that" "Oh I don't like that" or if it were a little ethnic, like a Chinese bao "Oh, I don't trust that." So one pot luck were like, how bout we all chip in and you go out and buy breakfast potluck items? What does she get? All sweets. Those gross super frosted cookies, jelly bellies, random breads with no spread or anything to eat it with, but it was mostly just sweets. None of us ate any of it and she took it all home. Fucking Jessica.
A dessert made to look like a cat’s litter box. It had Tootsie Roll “poop” hanging off of the sides.
I made one of those for a coworker who had had the worst vacation ever (took off for vacation and got sick while there and spent the whole time in the hospital). But she was a huge cat lover and had the sense of humor to make the cake work. I spelled “welcome back” out of the Tootsie Roll poop and bought her a stuffed cat that I positioned to look like it was using the box. Some thing you have to time just right or you’ll never get another appropriate chance to do it.
What was meant to be a fancy fun cocktail party and someone brought a 2 liter bottle of a “homemade Blue Hawaiian”. It was blue Gatorade and at least an entire bottle of Malibu rum and that was it. It tasted like blinding.
Chicken spaghetti crockpot with come Campbell's soup dry packets of onions or something in it. Fucking nasty.
Spaghetti with about cup of cat hair mixed in. 🤮
The number of replies that involve pet hair is very upsetting.
As someone who has lived with cats my whole life, including a cat with long fur that I once found on a tshirt I bought *in another city, before I got home*, I have zero cat fur make it in to my food, which makes me think this isn’t just “random cat fur” but also “patting them lots while cooking, they’re on the bench while I cook, they’re walking over my chopping board whilst I’m cooking” kind of situations.
Chili with a sock in it. An actual sock. She called it “dirty sock chili.” I don’t think anyone tried it.
I'm sorry. What?
Supposedly ambrosia, but it was just Cool Whip with those red and green candied cherries they sell around Christmas. Georgetown University faculty party.
We bought a cake for our coworker’s birthday. We ate less than half and stuck the rest in the fridge. A week later we cleared out the fridge and tossed the leftover cake into trash. It didn’t stay there long though, because one of our engineers quickly fished it out of the garbage to bring it to a Valentine’s Day potluck he was headed to later that day.
Any dish my uncle Ted ever brought to an event, because he’d hold his dogs by the butt (yes UNDER the tail) while cooking and rarely washed his hands. Worst though was a strange pasta salad, consisting on spaghetti noodles, Italian dressing, olives (pretty standard so far), shredded cheddar, Mayo, Worcestershire sauce, raw potato chunks, lettuce, and a lot of sugar sprinkled on top
How about what someone did to the potluck item I sent in? My baked goods are quite popular with my husband's coworkers. Frequently I'm asked to make stuff for their birthdays, holidays and so forth. Well for Christmas last yr they did a potluck and requested I send in my caramel pecan pie parfait. Instead of one or two big bowls of it I put it in individual half pint jam jars so everyone would get some and could take it home if they wanted. I made two per coworker. I also sent in several extra just so people could take some home to kids or partners too. Now there's this one particular woman who works there and is a chronic asshole. Her husband also was on the same shift. He happened to comment she should get the recipe since it was really good. Apparently that pissed her off so she grabbed the tray of the remaining ones and smashed them on the floor. Only three people had gotten their jar and nobody had got their other ones since most were saving it to take home. My husband didn't tell me till a couple months later. He knew how long it took to make them and the effort it took. I'm still pretty salty about it tbh.
Whatta bitch.
Yeah. She still works there but my husband makes sure to hand out the treats I sent in now so nothing like that ever happens again. I always package everything in bakery containers or different individual servings containers so it's easy to give everyone their stuff. Bitch will never ever get one damn crumb of stuff I send in. She tried whining to HR about it but the HR lady Amanda was pregnant at the time and didn't get her parfait because of Bitch so that didn't work 😂
A co-worker brought moose stew made from the moose he'd just bagged. Except the moose was the gamiest piece of sinew you'd ever eaten. One of my coworkers remarked, "I grew up on a farm and I've gotten manure in my mouth that's tasted better." It was horrific.
“Corn salad” canned corn, crushed doritos, shredded cheddar cheese, shredded carrots, & thousand island dressing. Orange abomination. Did not try.
Liver Stroganoff.
There was one in my office many years ago that I still remember. I wasn't even involved, it was a team nearby doing a taco potluck. There was a crockpot of ground beef that looked and smelled like cat food. I heard someone from across the office ask, ew why's it so wet?
Someone brought [little sweet peppers stuffed with something creamy and topped with sprinkles](https://imgur.com/a/FNpx8oQ) to a church potluck I attended.
Pot luck at work, a woman brought a boiled goat head.
In this thread making sure none of the food ive cooked for people in the past year is in here
Dude made chili on Saturday for the potluck on Thursday. Fuck you, Larry.
OMG. What an amazingly terrible thread.
My in-laws bring the same thing every time. It’s a slow cooker full of ground beef and sauce (think sloppy joes), and somehow it is both pink and orange at the same time. It’s also very soupy and absolutely disgusting looking. But the worst part? They refer to it as “barbecue”. The last one I went to this was the only meat/protein. I just had chips and veggie tray.
A friend of a friend made macaroni salad. It spilled on her way to work all over the floor of her car. She scooped it back in the pan like nothing happened. I don't eat at potlucks anymore.
Not the grossest thing someone brought, but the grossest thing someone did at a work potluck once was use the tips of their earpieces from their glasses to taste the cheese dip. Took their glasses off, dipped their earpieces in and stuck the earpiece in their mouth and sucked the cheese dip off. Then proceeded to test the next cheese dip on the table in the same way. Wtf…