I just grabbed a spoon and was ready to dig in to a smooth, cool, creamy tub of chicken fat.
I thought it was home-made vanilla ice cream. Oops!
When I was a kid, I grabbed a wrapped thing from the fridge that I thought was a piece of candy.
It was actually one of my Mom’s prescriptions, and was intended to enter the system from the other end. Fortunately, it tasted horrible and I spat it out immediately.
I never did find out what it was supposed to cure, but it sure cured me of grabbing things from the fridge without checking them out first!
When I visited China for 3 weeks in 1981 as a guest of a Friend who was working there, my Boyfriend’s birthday arrived. Friend and I decided we needed to surprise Boyfriend with a cake. Friend called around, having connections in Beijing, and informed me with pride that yes, a cake was forthcoming on the appropriate day. It was delivered on time, and it looked PERFECT with beautiful creamy icing and elaborate decorations, just like in all those pictures of birthday cakes you see in the West. We cut into it and Boyfriend the Birthday Boy dug in, only to spit it out immediately.
It was not frosting. It was lard.
The bakers had not ever made a western-style cake with icing before. They saw it in pictures, and used what they thought was covering the cake. If we hadn’t tried to eat it, it would have been darned near perfect.