Bad taste

Boiled duck embryos, lobster foam, and freeze-dried steak wrapped in washcloth! Our favorite food writers relive their worst meals.

Editor's note: This is the first entry in "Eat & Drink," a new series that will run in the Life section every Tuesday. Today's contributors are Jane and Michael Stern, Regina Schrambling, Steven Rinella, Julie Powell, Michael Ruhlman and Robert Sietsema.

Read more: Cooking, Life, Eat and Drink, Food and Travel

Oct. 10, 2006 | Jane and Michael Stern have been eating their way around America for more than 30 years and are the authors of more than 20 books, including "Roadfood" and "Two for the Road."

The first book we wrote was about long-haul truckers -- not card-carrying Teamsters who lead orderly, normal lives but rather the wildcats and independents at the fringe of the trucking world. Scouring a truckers-only magazine, Jane spotted a classified ad inviting ladies to join the National Women's Trucking Association. President: Jean Sawyer. Location: Charleston, S.C.

She sent an application along with $2 dues. An NWTA membership card soon arrived sporting an engraved image of an 18-wheeler and the florid signature of President Sawyer. Jane's membership number was 2.

After trying unsuccessfully to telephone Jean Sawyer for an interview, we decided that the only way to talk to the president was to secure an audience in person. So we headed south -- and by the time we neared Charleston, the back of the car was packed with prizes from the road: a painting of a tearful Elvis on black velvet, a chenille bedspread of a multicolored peacock, and a case of Cheerwine, the North Carolina cola with a cough syrup taste. After checking into a motel on the outskirts of the city, we again tried to reach Ms. Sawyer by phone. But again, nothing. Fortunately, Jane's membership card bore the address of the NWTA.

As we drove to find association HQ, the landscape changed. Gracious antebellum homes gave way to split levels, which in turn gave way to dilapidated trailers and tumbledown shacks fronted by pockmarked yards with snarling dogs attached by ropes to stakes in the ground. When the road ended, we found ourselves facing a beat-up Mack truck parked in the dirt yard of a wood-frame house.

The president herself opened the screen door. She glared. "What do you want?"

Jane pulled out her membership card. Sawyer grabbed it, then softened in recognition. She spun around and yelled at her live-in boyfriend to move aside, motioning us through the door. She called her guy Dumbo -- we were never formally introduced -- but to our eyes, this sad, fat man was not nearly as cute as the cartoon elephant. She brought us to a kitchen table piled high with old newspapers, parking tickets, empty TV dinner tins, and Kool-Aid in a plastic pitcher.

"I would like to interview you for a book on the lives of independent truckers," Jane said.

Jean Sawyer's intense expression grew sharper. "That's a good idea," she decreed. "Y'all can stay for dinner."

As the next few hours rolled by, Jane was too flabbergasted to write notes. But her mind's eye and Michael's old Leica camera recorded the scene for posterity.

Let us tell you what Jean Sawyer looked like. Rake-thin, she wore rhinestone-bedecked cat's-eye glasses. Above the glasses was a blond bouffant that was some part her own hair, but in other parts a tangle of wigs and wiglets. She was unable to stay still. When she was not deep in a rant against her enemies in the trucking world (a diatribe so meandering and convoluted that neither of us could make sense of it), she kept busy styling and restyling her bouffant. She tossed hunks of blond acrylic hair into a plastic laundry bin, fished into the bin for others to apply to the top of her head, like a flighty bird building and rebuilding an enormous nest.

She led us to the backyard where her twin red 1961 Cadillacs were parked, bearing the vanity license plates Victim I and Victim II. With one hand steadying her hairdo, she tried to explain to us how the entire city of Charleston -- no, make that all of South Carolina -- was persecuting her. Late in the afternoon, the kitchen started filling up with adolescent boys, hers and Dumbo's. It was suppertime.

Jean Sawyer took a single, small, thin steak from her deep freeze. To this day, we are not sure what it was; before we had the chance to examine it, we beheld a fascinating food-prep technique. Sawyer ran tap water onto a grayish washcloth she took from next to the sink. She wrung it out and wrapped it around the steak. The steak was then placed in the oven, where it cooked for 40 minutes. That was to be dinner for us. For her and Dumbo and the kids, she grabbed a box of Hamburger Helper and started cooking that in a skillet on the stovetop.

A dozen hungry eyes watched as steak ` la washcloth was unwrapped for the esteemed guests. Feeling a little like characters in "Suddenly, Last Summer," we sawed at the meat and masticated as best we could. "Is it good?" came the plaintive whine of the youngest kid, who had already wolfed down his allotted Hamburger Helper.

"Have some," Michael said, cutting a hunk of the meat and reaching out to plunk it on the kid's plate.

Jean Sawyer's red-nailed hand swept in like a falcon coming down on prey. "Leave it be," she yelled. "Steak is for company. Where's your manners?"

There were no side dishes, no dessert, no coffee. As the children vanished from the table, Jean Sawyer's focus shifted. Her wigs and her fight with all of South Carolina lost their hold on her mind as she spun into an even more passionate harangue about men, women, God and the devil. We had no clue what she was talking about, so we gave up trying to understand. We stood, walked to the screen door and let ourselves out. Dumbo remained in his chair, smoking and staring into space. Jean Sawyer seemed not to notice our departure. As we drove away, we could see in her window, where she remained talking a mile a minute to no one at all.

Next page: Regina Schrambling: "Cheerios in a slimy, almost mucousy broth"