What is the craziest thing that you've eaten when you were desperate for food?

Grass.

A packet of ketchup over some oyster crackers that I’d probably gotten with some take-out soup.

I know. Disgusting. But I was starving and they were the only remotely edible things I could find in the car.

In retrospect, I would probably have been better off munching on some gum wrappers.

When I was a teen I had a friend who lived in a housing project and they were poor. They didn’t have a phone, which was unheard of for me. Her mom worked in a factory and made very little. I was visiting and hungry, and all they had in the house was bread and sugar and so I put some margarine on the bread and then put sugar on it.

I personally have never been starving or desperate for food, even if it may have seemed so at the time.
I have eaten things that weren’t so pleasing because I was very hungry. Some things that I have eaten becuase they were all that was available at the time:
Ketchup soup, that would be ketchup packets in hot water. Add a creamer packet and you have cream of ketchup soup.
I have eaten huckleberries in the woods, when I was hungry and winter berries too.
When we were kids we would eat the fruit off some bush in the old neighbor lady’s yard. I think it might have been quince, it was really sour.

@Mama_Cakes I had to give you a GQ just because of your topic choices!

When I was an undergrad and too poor to even explain, my GF and I would have baked beans on toast as a regular dinner. Her British mother introduced her to the dish as a breakfast item when she was a kid.

@jca When I was a kid, my best friend and I would make butter and sugar sandwiches to tide us over and could never figure out how our Mom’s knew (we completely failed to assess the amount of sugar we had left on the counter top).

I have also eaten food that was marginally safe for human consumption and survived.

The best, however, was probably squirrel. If you are Appalachian, squirrel is not unfamiliar as a dinner item. My Mom (a southerner) and my Dad (Appalachian) had their most lively argument after my Dad had bagged some squirrel and my Mom threw out the hearts (my great-granddad’s favorite). Then there was the time Dad bagged some rabbit and some live shot apparently blew the door off the oven—we went out for burgers . . .

@wilma Oh! That reminds me of another adventure in fine dining.

I was visiting my sister in her dorm and all she had in her fridge was booze and condiments. So we got drunk and made condiment soup. Ketchup base, pizza condiments (dried pepper flakes, dried oregano, Parmesan cheese), coffee creamer, with some salt and pepper.

Someone actually peeked their head in to ask what we were making because it smelled good. It’s sad what smells good to a college student.

Raw field corn (not sweet corn), crab apples (be careful, too much will give you the shits) and little friskies.
@Kayak8 I love squirrel. My s/o is an animal lover so I’m no longer allowed to hunt.

Cinnamon Toast Crunch without milk.

grubs

The skin around my fingernails. I went there.

Pot Noodles.

Out of date many things.
My own skin (lips mainly)
Paper. I like eating paper.

Discarded bread from a garbage can.

I had gone for about 36 hours without food, because I was involved in a Boy Scouts Order of the Arrow initiation.

When I was camping I once put Craterellus cornucopioides (trumpet of the dead)mushrooms I found in an omlette. It was very tasty but you would be amazed how few people would actually eat it.

Leaves.

I rode by bike from San Francisco to Los Angeles back in 1995. I did 80 mile legs. When I arrived at my destination, naturally I was extremely hungry. When I arrived in Santa Cruz, I stayed in a hostel and had to wait for some other hostel people before we all went out for dinnfer. I was so hungry I ate about 50 pieces of hard candy sitting in a jar.

Birds Custard – it and porridge were the only things in the cupboard and I was broke.

My 1st apt., out on my own and dead broke for a week or so
A few broken lasagna noodles cooked up and then layered with a mixture of piece of leftover butter stick, packets of pizza delivery cheese sprinkles, leftover slice of cheese and an egg beaten in. For some sauce I used a ketchup packet mixed with some leftover powdered spaghetti sauce mix and cut it with a some chili flake sprinkles to take down the sweet flavor of the ketchup. I stirred in a little bit of wine and baked it in a bowl. It was gross but I ate it.

A little flour in a bowl, mix in a little oil, a few shakes of salt, mix in enough cool water to make a stiff dough. Just like eating raw pie crust. Yum

Flout tortillas with mustard.

Friskies kibble – a neighbor kid taught me that one. Her parents kept the people food locked up..

We had sea slugs in China where they also served chicken feet. I can eat almost anything if there is enough beer involved.

When we were very broke we always paid rent and food first so we never really starved. But towards the end of the pay period we would have refrigerator soup. Big pot, piece of left over chicken, all the left over veg and some frozen if there were any there, rice, ketchup, soy sauce, whatever, it all went in. Cook it for a couple of hours, and it always tasted good. If you take the time you can always eat well and cheaply!

We often have baked beans on toast, I never thought of that as a strange food to eat???

I once ate old, half green clementines I found in the back of my locker. They weren’t good at all, but I was starving.

And another time, I was at a walkwathon at school, in which we had to stay overnight at the football feild. I woke up in the middle of the night with the muchies, and I woke up a few of my friends to go search for food. All the food trucks were gone, and the concession stand had closed. So, I found a super old pack of unopened goldfish crackers under the bleachers.

Lets just say, I’ll never eat “found” food ever ever again.

Once when my blood sugar was almost “go to the ER” low, I ate candy canes off the Christmas tree. With the wrappers on. I didn’t care, it was the only sugar in the house and I was grateful for it.

Garden chives.