July 11th, 2009

In my last post, I asked you to tell me what your favorite gross food combinations were. You didn’t disappoint. I told you I would pick one disgusting combination and award a Junk Drawer magnet for best worst one.

Since there were so many icky combinations, I decided to put some of them to a taste test because I’m nothing if not adventurous. Or stupid.

The ingredients:

Cheerios cereal

Pre-cooked bacon

Peter Pan peanut butter

Italian bread

Minute Maid orange juice (concentrate)

Sweet pickle slices

Breakstone’s cottage cheese (Eek! I’m gonna eat it!)

San Georgio elbow macaroni

Welch’s grape jam

Whole milk and spaghetti sauce (not pictured because I’m a dumbass and forgot to put them out)

For my journey, I started with the combinations I thought were gross, yet intriguing, and moved toward the ones I thought were sure to make me hurl.

First up, whole milk and orange juice concentrate, suggested by Babs Beetle. She says "I used to half fill a glass with orange juice, the kind you have to dilute with water, then top it up with milk and wait for it to curdle – about 10 seconds. Once it was all lumpy I would gulp it."

I put about 2ozs. of concentrated OJ in a glass and then filled the rest with whole milk and stirred.

This stuff is delicious! It reminds me of a place that may still be popular in shopping malls called Orange Julius. I’d forgotten all about it until I drank this. My recommendation is to make sure you do use full-fat, whole milk and perhaps add crushed ice. It’s extremely rich, though. You have been warned.

Grade: A

Next items: Orange juice and Cheerios cereal, offered up by Jenny, who wrote: "I guess I discovered this next thing when one day I poured a bowl of Cheerios and then discovered we had no milk. So I put orange juice on top and … WOW! IS THAT EVER GOOD!"

I took the rest of the concentrate and diluted it to make regular OJ. Poured it over the Cheerios and dug in. It was a fairly enjoyable sweet treat for breakfast, but the OJ gave it a biting aftertaste. Think of it as a candy bar in a bowl. With a kick.

Grade: C+

Next, we have the peanut butter-related combinations.

First, peanut butter and sweet pickle slices. Heather says, "I like peanut butter & pickle sandwiches, but the pickles have to be hamburger dill slices."

I have to admit I thought this was pretty high on the gross scale. To me, pickles should only be eaten straight up or on a burger. Let me tell you, this stuff was divine. The savoriness of the peanut butter, mixed with the sweet and tart flavor of the pickles, makes for a surprisingly good combo. And who doesn’t want a little crunch in their sandwiches?

I took a good four bites out of it, but had to discard it because I had a lot more to eat. If not for the calories, this one would have been completely finished off.

Grade: A+

Our second bacon-related combination is the one I believe was mentioned most often in the comments — bacon and peanut butter. I had such high hopes for it. I think you’re all familiar with my bacon addiction. What could go wrong?

Here’s what can go wrong. Apparently my bacon addiction is so bad, I now need 10x the bacon to get the same delirious reaction to it as I once got. I couldn’t taste the bacon! Did I make it wrong? How many slices should I have put on? Five are pictured here. All I tasted was the peanut butter. I’m so depressed.

Grade I wanted to give it: A+

Grade it got: D

Damn.

Now here’s where I encountered my first feelings of trepidation. The very idea of mixing grape jam and macaroni is so completely bizarre to me, and when I combined them in a bowl, I wanted to throw it out before tasting it. But I soldiered on.

Just look at it. Think about it. Does it look appetizing? No. Would you want to eat it? No. How did I like it? I didn’t. IT. IS. NASTY. Grape jam belongs on only one thing. Toast. Period.

A woman named Kathy suggested this and I wish she had a blog so I could link to it, and you could all go over and tell her she needs to have her head examined. Or her stomach.

Grade: F

For our last test, I spread my culinary wings. I don’t recall ever having eaten cottage cheese in my life. Why? Because to me it looks like yogurt that’s a year past its expiration date.

SewDucky suggested this concoction: "… cottage cheese, heated, with either pistachio pudding or spaghetti sauce mixed in. Everyone thinks I’ve lost my mind."

Everyone is correct.

I still have the aftertaste of this dish, and not a good aftertaste. I would characterize the flavor as sort of like manicotti filling, without the benefit of being enveloped in a blanket of pasta and being flavorfully-seasoned. Couldn’t take more than two bites. Warming it up did not help.

Grade: D

I hope you enjoyed my little taste test. You’ve all been so good waiting patiently for me to announce a winner.

******* Drumroll please *******

Winner in the category Worst Food Combination I Never Thought I’d Like: Peanut Butter and Pickles

Winner in the category Word Food Combination I Wouldn’t Eat Again For Any Amount of Money: Grape Jam and Macaroni