TOD, in three categories —
1. The ones that were along the lines of BK’s experience yesterday would be buying a normally delicious deli-made chicken salad and finding bits of gristle or bone. That’s happened a couple of times, at different places, and each time it was several months before I could go back to that particular chicken salad. That same thing has happened with nationally marketed mass-produced products such as Marie Callender’s pot pies, which I find damned tasty until I draw a bad one.
2. In actually becoming ill from a meal, I still remember my first ever night of food poisoning (whether that was the actual cause, who knows) following a meal of some dish at a place in Cleveland we all loved during my college years. I have never succeeded in recalling exactly what that meal consisted of (it had something to do with barbecue, or whatever was being called that then) but it was years before I could go back to anything I thought was similar.
3. Finally, we have the situation in which you take something to be polite, thinking the thing might end up being good or at least not present a problem, and it’s all you can do to get the first bite safely down. I suspect I’ve had a few such instances, but the one that always comes to mind is the pigskin roll (is that what it’s called?) as one of the appetizers in a Thanksgiving dinner at a friend’s house. Fortunately, no one was offended when I didn’t go on with it; it turned out that they mostly made it for the father who had very specific tastes.
