There was nothing else to eat in the house...

[elyse]

Peanut butter on a spoon, dipped in cool whip, dipped in chocolate quick.

I would do a Quik dip on the PB, then a dollop of Cool Whip, and a final dusting of more Quik. Double chocolate and a nice presentation to boot, even if it's just on the tip of your finger.

Presentation is everything.

You may be right, but presentation was not the first thing on out minds at the mo. I mean... Cool Whip... EWWWWW!!!!!

[elyse]

Slightly off subject, but I used to make dill pickle brine popsicles when I was a kid. And this New Year's Day, I ate a half bottle of cocktail onion stuffed olives and drank the brine. That was GOOD eatin'.

[seawakim]

Oh boy.....the things one does when nothing else is in the house.

Caramel syrup right out of the jar, saltines with just about anything, condiments always come in handy for a variety of cravings, and those emergency semi sweet chocolate chips have satisfied many chocolate cravings.

I remember a couple of times when I tried to make a dinner with ramen and condiments

[grahamtigg]

I plugged in the toaster

This reminded me of the only thing I learn't (OK, food wise) in my student days. More an equipment technique that a recipe - cheese on toast made with a toaster.

Place two slices of bread in the same toaster slot and toast as usual. Butter the toasted slide and carefully top with sliced cheese, cheddar works well. Turn the toaster on its side and place the two slices (cheese side up of course) in the toaster and carefully slide in the toaster mechanism - this will now be a horizontal slide of course. Watch carefully . When cooked gently 'pop up' your cheese on toast onto a plate. Spinkle with celery salt and tuck in.

Notes:

1) turning the toaster timer to max. toasting helps prevent premature flying hot cheese on toast

2) An alternative to a controlled 'pop up' of the resulting meal is to use a fork to slide out the toast. Practice makes perfect.

3) Do not use too much cheese. This tends to melt and makes a real mess of the toaster (and some serious smells)

[Anna N]

....

2)  An alternative to a controlled 'pop up' of the resulting meal is to use a fork to slide out the toast. Practice makes perfect....

This could result in a BBQ'd diner as well as a cheese sandwich!

[NeroW]

Hot dog and stilton omelette.

I think that's the worst thing I've read here yet.

Guilty pleasure: soft store-bought onion bagels, toasted, with butter and green shake-y "Parmesan" cheese.

[maggiethecat]

Ramen noodles straight from the pack, uncooked, unflavoured.

( I kinda like them this way!)

[A Scottish Chef]

my grossest thing as far as I can remember.  Peanut butter on a spoon, dipped in cool whip, dipped in chocolate quick.

Was the dipping chocolate bitter or sweet?

[elyse]

my grossest thing as far as I can remember.  Peanut butter on a spoon, dipped in cool whip, dipped in chocolate quick.

Was the dipping chocolate bitter or sweet?

It was powdery.

It may be called NesQuick by you. Nestle Quik chocolate milk powder. But it was actually PDQ which doesn't exist anymore. It was like Ovaltine chocolate malt powder. Are you familliar with Cool Whip? Plasticised (non?) dairy type topping. Foul stuff.

[Dana]

My grandma, a hard-working farmer's wife, used to call Cool Whip 'calf slobber".

Still makes me laugh.

[A Scottish Chef]

Hot dog and stilton omelette.

I think that's the worst thing I've read here yet.

Actually, that wasn't too bad. They were good hotdogs and the stilton was excellent.

I also know Haggis soup will become a great dish. I'll get it perfected sooner rather than later.

[fimbul]

Good lord... It cannot compete some of what has gone before, but in college I'd make fried rice with whatever friends with meal tickets could steal from the school cafeteria. I cooked fried rice with any number of odd processed sandwich meats and wilted vegetables (some of which I think had been smuggled out in peoples' pockets).

One friend became peculiarly addicted to my fried rice with black olives and enough soy sauce to kill a moose. He still begs me to make it to this day, and recently lamented that my cooking had gotten too "fancypants" to recreate those glories of days gone by.

I told him to eat his duck salad and shut up.

[Jinmyo]

I told him to eat his duck salad and shut up. 

[elyse]

One friend became peculiarly addicted to my fried rice with black olives and enough soy sauce to kill a moose.  He still begs me to make it to this day, and recently lamented that my cooking had gotten too "fancypants" to recreate those glories of days gone by.

I told him to eat his duck salad and shut up. 

If I say the same to you, will you give me duck salad too?

[elyse]

Oh, I'm just bumping this thread up for the new batch of members.

[Carlovski]

Well, here are some of my horror stories.

- A bizarre pasta bake, made with a tin of condensed soup (Mushroom probably - "Borrowed" from housemate) and the filling from some particularly cheap and nasty frozen sausages (Leftovers from a BBQ). Added some Dijon and a bit of onion to make it palatable. Surprisingly tasty!

- Pea, kidney bean and pasta 'soup'. Sounds nasty. Was nasty.

- Sardine and chickpea fishcakes. Tinned salmon works ok, and you can make a sort of mash with chickpeas (Which on it's own works quite well!), so why not? I can tell you why not, they fall apart and taste minging. Though the principle is sound. Maybe I'll try again!

[Callipygos]

I once tried making "minestrone" out of a can of mixed vegetables and a can of Beefaroni. Add water until soup consistency.

I've actually had two experiments that turned out great -- I once saw a former roommate of mine walk into a kitchen that contained nothing but two potatoes, some shredded cheese, and a package of veggieburger seasoning, and say, "hey, I can work with this."

He mashed the potatoes, seasoned them with the veggiburger stuff, added a little flour and made big dumplings out of them with a spoonful of cheese in the center of each, and then baked them. Surprisingly good.

Another time I had two other roommates who once served this amazing vegetable lentil soup with really unusual spices. I kept raving about it and asking for the recipe, and they finally shamefacedly admitted they didn't know. What had happened was, they had tried to make vegetable juice in the juicer, using primarily lettuce and celery and other green leafy vegetables, but the resulting juice was apparently horrible. So they decided to make it into a soup base, and "we just sort of kept throwing things in until it tasted good."

[tryska]

  Instant tuna casserole: one pack macaroni and cheese (Kraft), one can of Starkist.

i still eat this now. one of the few meals i can eat 5 days in a row.

except i've gotten sophisticated and actually saute the tuna in olive oil, cayenne and garlic powder first.

ummm......recently my roommate and i cleaned the pantry out as we were both broke and we ahd no food int he hosue.

it was 3 day old baguette, broiled to softena nd toast it up, left over mushroom gravy, sauteed canned corned beef and onions (looks and smells a lot like dogfood - tastes pretty good) canned kipper snacks, and sardines.

the corned beef and mushroom gravy tasted pretty good ont he toast. well so did the mushroom gravy and kipper snacks on toast. to me anyway. sardines - not so good.

Edited August 12, 2003 by tryska (log)

[KateW]

  Instant tuna casserole: one pack macaroni and cheese (Kraft), one can of Starkist.

i still eat this now. one of the few meals i can eat 5 days in a row.

So do I. Thought I was a real genius when I thought of it

Also I take those ramen packets, boil the noodles, and stir fry them with the seasoning packet, tofu, and scrambled egg. Just the egg if I have no tofu. The possibilities are endless.

[lincolneinstein]

Well, when I was a kid, we had very little. So when it was just us kids in the house, and no food easily accessible; I as the oldest, had to make dinner. This was a bad idea. I had no instruction except for watching my parents cook. So I would find whatever we had in the house and throw it in a pan and cook it. We had corned beef hash with french-fries and onions. All cooked together. It was pretty good with some ketchup. Once I tried to combine some LaChoy ingredients: water chestnut, noodles of some kind, and to add some fresh stuff to it I put in some onions and tomato paste. It was rude. I realized I should have drained the canned stuff first. I thought it needed the moisture. I never made that again. Forgive me I was about 12 of 13 at the time.

At one pint we had to live of army issue food rations for a whole week. This may not seem so bad, plenty of variety in those green stamped pouches, however we all found that we broke out in the worse case of acne ever. We all had tons of pimples for days afterwards. I guess they were the greasiest things I have ever ingested.

SO I vowed no more government cheese and goulash stew for me. To date, I haven’t had to.

[tanabutler]

The last time I had a "there's nothing to eat" moment, I improvised something that is one of our favorite dishes in the world.

I had a smoked chicken breast, some cilantro, onions, pine nuts and orzo. Found a near-empty jar of jalapeños. Made jalapeño pesto (something I literally dreamed up one night, back when I was catering):

Jalapeño Pesto

cilantro

olive oil

pine nuts

garlic

jalapeño slices (and a little of the brine)

salt

Br-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-rp in the food processor until smooth. (No cheese in jalapeño pesto!)

Then I sautéed red onion, diced fine, in olive oil until translucent, and added the chicken breast (diced 1/4"). Cooked the orzo and tossed the whole thing together:

orzo

smoked chicken breast

onions

jalapeño pesto

more pine nuts

Try it.

[elyse]

Well, when I was a kid, we had very little. So when it was just us kids in the house, and no food easily accessible; I as the oldest, had to make dinner.  This was a bad idea.  I had no instruction except for watching my parents cook.  So I would find whatever we had in the house and throw it in a pan and cook it.  We had corned beef hash with french-fries and onions.  All cooked together.  It was pretty good with some ketchup.  Once I tried to combine some LaChoy ingredients: water chestnut, noodles of some kind, and to add some fresh stuff to it I put in some onions and tomato paste.  It was rude.  I realized I should have drained the canned stuff first.  I thought it needed the moisture.  I never made that again.  Forgive me I was about 12 of 13 at the time. 

That doesn't sound THAT bad. Served over rice? Or cooked on top of cooking rice so the rice absorbs everything?

At one pint we had to live of army issue food rations for a whole week.  This may not seem so bad, plenty of variety in those green stamped pouches, however we all found that we broke out in the worse case of acne ever.  We all had tons of pimples for days afterwards.  I guess they were the greasiest things I have ever ingested. 

SO I vowed no more government cheese and goulash stew for me.  To date, I haven’t had to.

That's the spirit.

[Raynickben]

When I was 12, my best friend was over and we decided to raid the liquour cabinet. We found a bottle of banana liquer and decided that was going to be a real tasty drink. Problem was we had to hide it from my mom so we added the banana liquer to some milk. It was so foul I can't even describe it. The bigger problem began when my mom found out what we had done and to teach us a lesson made us finish all of it. We couldn't drink it so we decided to add some cereal to the banana milk and try and eat it that way. That was worse. So we poured the banana milk and cereal into a blender and added some icecream and made banana cereal milkshakes. Somehow we were able to drink it all that way but believe me when I tell you I cannot even smell banana liquour without gagging (not that I come across it much!)

[Sean Hickey]

It's my sweet tooth that usually gets me...

when I make oatmeal, I go for a 1:1:2 ratio. Dry oats: brown sugar (packed) : water. (Brown sugar added after it's cooked, of course.)

If I don't have oatmeal or money for sweets/candy, I'll just eat the brown sugar. No brown sugar, I'll just eat plain white sugar.

Though hot chocolate mix straight up isn't that bad. When I had no clean spoons, I'd just fold the plastic lid in half and use it to scoop the stuff up.

Other than that, I can almost always at least make bread or red beans and rice. Or just plain jasmine rice. Assuming I just don't eat a lot of brown sugar in lieu of dinner.

Mmm... sugar... (wanders off to the kitchen)

[bursell]

I made a peanut butter and jelly taco once.

And only once...