kitchen disasters

since the recipe thread is doing well i figured who not start
a thread with our not-so-shining moments in the culinary arena?


can i go first????

i was baking some kind of bread and the recipe called for sugar to be sprinkled on the top during the baking to get that carmelized topping thing going.... being out of sugar i used Sweet and Low....


it took me days to get that taste out of my mouth.......eewwww!!!!


Warning: The Surgeon General suggests that if you are out of sugar, get off your lazy rear and go to the store.

Hehehe :D

When I was 7, my mom and I were making biscuits. I went to take them out with the dish cloth and it touched the bottom of the oven and caught on FIRE! I threw it down and made a black mark on the floor (that we could never get rid of). To this day, I'm still terrified when I take things out of the oven. And my mom blames herself for letting me take them out.

This happened to a friend of mine. She decided one day to try something different so she bought some ludfisk (I'm sure this is spelt wrong). The longer she cooked it, the more watery it got. Even the dog turned up his nose at it and he's a Golden Retriever!! That was about 8 yrs ago and she's never tried it since.

As for me, I'm anything but a gourmet cook. I eat all my disasters because I'm too cheap to throw it away.

I was helping my mom make Christmas cookies, and after dishing the rice krispie bars in the the pan, I put the Tuperware bowl on the burner I had just used to melt the caramel. I still hear about the "favorite" bowl I melted :)

Oh that reminds me of the time I melted the spatula to the pan and my apartment stunk up so bad, I was afraid it was poisonous odor and had to stay at a hotel for 3 days with my animals!!!

I don't want to reveal how old I was when I did this but let's just say I wasn't a little kid but I was old enough that I should have known better. I was baking a chocolate cake. The recipe said to line the pan with waxed paper and then grease the waxed paper and then pour in the batter. I was out of waxed paper so I substituted.......Saran Wrap. :eek: You guessed it! Saran Wrap melts when put into an oven! DUH! :eek: Had to throw out the cake and the pan as well! :rolleyes:

LOL! :)

One of my college roommates, although fairly brain smart, was not as lucky when it came to common sense (and I don't just say this becuase of this story) She managed to put a dish towel on to a hot burner and burn 4 holes into...it looked like a face, but of my gosh the smell!!!

Oh my goodness this thread is hilarious! My worst disaster would have to be the first time I tried making pizza with dough from scratch. I made up the dough fine, turned it out to roll it and instead of being a circle, it was rectangular. I didn't know that you can't re-roll pizza dough. I tried to re-roll it, and it turned very tough, the more I stretched it, the more holes it got in it. It was sticking to the counter, my face, my arms, my legs, the floor and everywhere in between. I was getting madder & madder, and finally crumpled it all up and threw it in the trash. We went out to eat that night. :o :rolleyes: And now, everytime I say I'm gonna make pizza for dinner, Mark looks at me real funny and says "Are you sure you are in the mood to do this???" :D

Oh and the other real disaster was back when I lived at home and the first time I made apple pie. There were two of them and they came out of the oven beautifully. I put them on the stove to cool, and proceeded to start making dinner. I turned on the wrong burner accidentally to start warming, left the room for a couple of minutes, and hurt a tremendous crash. The entire pie (that was sitting on the heating burner) exploded...there was apple pie on the cieling, floor across the room...just everywhere. It really taught me a lesson, and I am petrified and always double check now.


Oops I just thought of a third funny one...About 10 years ago, my best friend (now sister-in-law) & I were making & canning tomato sauce, and taking turns changing duties every 20 quarts or something. One would process the tomatoes through the blender, and the other would fill the jars. Everytime it was my turn at the blender, she would say "Make sure the lid is on the blender...do you have the lid on" I got tired of it and said, "Yes YES YES I have the lid...I can remember already!!" So the next time, she didn't ask, and the next time the tomatoes shot out of the blender so fast, we were drenched. :eek: We still laugh about to this day!!

Hmm.. since I've been living alone, I set fire to my oven. I baked a cheesecake, and I guess some butter dripped from the pan. Then, when I went to heat the oven the next time, the butter caught on fire. Scared me so bad, I refused to use the oven until my mom came to visit and cleaned it out for me.

One time I was babysitting, and I had to start dinner. We were having sauseges. I put the sauseges in the frying pan, and was talking to the kids, 7 and 5. I said, "Geez it sure is taking a long time for these sauseges to cook!" and the 7yr old said, "I think they would cook faster if you turned the frying pan on." Sigh.. :rolleyes: :D

two from batchelor life...

lived in a house w/no stove

i'd 'heat' my soup on the floor grill of the house heater...once i took a nap after turning the thermostat up to 'HIGH'.......i think i lost about 10 lbs before i woke up...a great way to diet!

one rainy night i decided i wanted barbequed chicken....i set up the grill in the garage and sure enough....there was so much dang smoke i thought the fire dept would show up........

the worst part was the people that would slow down to look at the fool having a cook out in his garage.:eek:

Too funny!!! :)

When I was maybe 10 years old, my grandmother and I were making gingerbread together. We had done so many times before, kids in my family start learning to help cook the Christmas they turn 4, so this was not a "newbie" incident. We were rushing, had to make one "substitution," I think brown sugar for regular or something like that, but that wasn't the worst part. Just as we were pouring the batter into the pan, I said, "You put the baking soda in, right?" She said, "No, I thought YOU did!" So, we tried! We stirred the baking soda into the already mixed dough IN the baking pan.

It was hysterical. When baked, parts of it were 3 inches high, and parts a gummy 1/2 inch high - it looked like a map of some very hilly place! It was so bad that we got teased about it for YEARS!!! I didn't make gingerbread again for 20 years - and no one else in my immediate family made it for years after that incident either!

My favorite story is one we tell on one of my sisters. She was in charge of dinner (I think we were teenagers) and beef stew was on the menu. Everything went well until the point of thickening the liquid. You're supposed to use flour for this step. She got in a hurry and grabbed a yellow box -- yep, the baking soda!:D She thickend the whole pot with about a half-cup of baking soda! Needless to say, we threw out every bit and went out for dinner that night. :D

My mom (ACGAS) was cooking with a skillet in the kitchen. Our old cat (RIP), she was a youngin', jumped up onto the burning hot skillet.

That's why her pads were pink instead of brown. :(

I was living at home and my parents got a microwave, so we bought some microwave cake mixes that had just gone on the market. The chocolate one came out looking and feeling like one of those circular grinders that you use to sharpen axe blades! It wouldn't break, even after smashing it on the floor. So we bought a vanilla microwave cake to try again, and got a white grinding wheel as well!

More recently, I tried a baked gnocchi dish and the gnocchi melded together to the bottom of the dish like industrial glue.

:rolleyes:

http://pages.prodigy.net/rogerlori1/emoticons/rofl.gif
These stories are great! :D

Ok, this incident happened pretty recently. I was over at my mom and dad's house, and got the craving for nachos and cheese. So, I remembered I had seen a jar of Cheese Whiz in the pantry. I got my chips out on a place, and placed the jar in the microwave to melt the cheese. Well, after about a minute, I looked and saw this brown tube just rising straight up out of the jar! :eek: LOL It was like a brown really rubbery concoction of some sort! LOL :rolleyes:
I took it out and looked at the jar and the date was from like 3 years ago!! :eek: LOL LOL What's up with my mom having a jar that old in her pantry. I just laugh to think that it was one of the items that she packed for the kitchen when they moved out here from Indiana! :p LOL LOL

I can't think of any one thing right now, but anytime I'm in the kitchen to make anything other than a sandwhich, it is a possible disaster!!

I am NOT a cook and I told Tom this before we got married. The first week of eating dinner was really hard for us. (Now we only eat dinner at home 2 times a week) I knew how to make like 3 things. I thought, well, pudding would be nice and easy too. I made instant banana cream and sliced up real bananas and added them to it. We had to drink it, it never thickend, after hours and hours in the fridge. I dug the box from the trash and it said you had to use whole milk, as 2% or less would not set. So much for reading the directions. Haven't made it since.

Also I didn't know you couldn't reheat Mexican food in the micro wave with guacamole on it. It turns JET BLACK.

I had caramelized some apples in butter and sugar and wanted to flame it with rhum. The only dark rum we had was an Austrian 80% (Yes they make it - and it's something you definitely cannot use for drinks). Ok, I put a ladle on my apples in the pan and took the matches.
A flame that reaches the kitchen ceiling.:eek:
I was quick enough to throw a towel over the pan and nothing more happened but boy was I happy that I did not burn the house down.

He he , I had lots of those "mistakes" , but I can hardly remember any ...! Let's think ...:confused: :confused:

Oh yep !

1)As my mom had a very bad health (MS) , I started helping out pretty young ! So one day , my mom asked me to peel and boil the potatoes for her . I was proud I was in charge here , so I got started full of energy . I peeled at least 5 times the amount we needed , grabbed the biggest casserole I could find , and did the job . Then me mom asked : "Did you add enough salt ?" . I made sure there was enough , so I poured in a CUP of salt ...:rolleyes:

Oh my , you should have seen a) my mom's face when she saw I peeled enough potatoes for two weeks ; b) my dad's face as he took one hot potatoe in his mouth :eek: :eek: :eek: ! Since then , I never add salt any more ..! I prefer the natural taste :rolleyes: :D

2) On of those X-mas eves , I was helping out as usual . My mom's favorite dish then is "cow's tongue" . I don't know the English name for it . It comes with a yummie tomato-sauce .
As we got short of time , my mom asked me to hand over the tin of salt , so she could prepare that sauce . As she was so much in a hurry , she didn't notice that silly Lut was giving her the tin of SUGAR !!!!:rolleyes: :D :p ! She also made the mistake not to taste the result before serving it . We were running late , so the show had to go on !!! He he , it is still a family-joke nowadays : "He , remember that yummie sugar-tomato-sauce we ate in 1966 ??" . I always turn red then ....:eek:

Quote:

---

Originally posted by lut


1)As my mom had a very bad health (MS) , I started helping out pretty young ! So one day , my mom asked me to peel and boil the potatoes for her . I was proud I was in charge here , so I got started full of energy . I peeled at least 5 times the amount we needed , grabbed the biggest casserole I could find , and did the job . Then me mom asked : "Did you add enough salt ?" . I made sure there was enough , so I poured in a CUP of salt ...:rolleyes:

Oh my , you should have seen a) my mom's face when see saw I peeled enough potatoes for two weeks ; b) my dad's face as he took one hot potatoe in his mouth

---

Oh my,(no offense) but that's hilarious http://www.mainzelahr.de/smile/froehlich/roflrofl.gif http://www.mainzelahr.de/smile/froehlich/roflrofl.gif

(but also sweet because you were so proud and excited to help your mom)

Quote:

---

I still hear about the "favorite" bowl I melted

---

Hey, it's was an awesome bowl and one of the only ones that had a lid that you could put right on top. You know what trouble I have with the wraps that mom and dad always put over food.

Quote:

---

"Geez it sure is taking a long time for these sauseges to cook!" and the 7yr old said, "I think they would cook faster if you turned the frying pan on." Sigh..

---

I remember once when I was younger that somebody was cooking meatloaf in our oven and after an hour of waiting, my brother started wondering when it was going to be done. As I walked past the oven, I noticed that the oven wasn't even on. So, that particular meatloaf took over 2 hours to cook!!!! Talk about hungry by the time diners done.

notice that every time caramel/carmelized gets mentioned, something goes wrong.......

something catches on fire or burns.....

and why are flour, cornstarch, salt and sugar the same color?


scary huh?

omg! just Yesterday i seriously *tapped* the front of the oven and ALL THE GLASS SHATTERED AT MY FEET! i was kinda lauphing cus i couldnt even beleive it! i tapped it and all the glass just fell off! we called the company and we get a free new one:D :p

oh ya and once i was like 6 and i couldnt get my pop tart out of the toaster oven because it was to hot. so then i did a stupid thing. i stuck the napkin in the the toaster oven so i could get it out without burning myself! well the napkin caught on fire and i dropped it cus it burt my hand:( and it caught the WHOLE kitchen on fire!:eek: all i could say was opps to my mom when she was screeming for me to get out. lol:D everyone is ok though!

Quote:

---

Originally posted by RICHARD
notice that every time caramel/carmelized gets mentioned, something goes wrong.......

something catches on fire or burns.....

and why are flour, cornstarch, salt and sugar the same color?


scary huh?

---

LOL LOL So true!

Here's a "I knew better" story:
When I came back to California, I stayed with my Dad for awhile. He was a serious gourmet cook and was the one who taught me cooking (BTW, Cincy'sMom, he was a chemist - who better to teach you to cook?LOL). I was a vegetarian at the time. I wanted to impress him with a homemade "all natural" vegetable soup we used to serve at our restaurant back east, so I started adding things, and the soup/stew grew out of the 2 quart pan, the 3 quart pan and finally ended up in the 5-quart dutch oven.

No problem there, the problem lay when I added the final touch, the sunflower seeds I found in his cabinet. I did a sniff test, knew they were a little old, but I added them anyway! We had 5 quarts of the most rancid tasting glop ever! Dad was such a tease, I never tried to make it again for him!!

NEVER use old seeds or nuts; the oils go rancid and GAK - permeates the whole dish! (Which is why I always keep them refrigerated, along with my oils, for the most part.)

This is actually a co-workers kitchen disaster. Really it is.:)

She decided to have baked lobster vs. boiled lobster, so she
put the lobsters in the oven and set the temp for 400 degrees.
After about 5 mins, she started hearing this tapping on the
glass. "HEY! LADY! It's getting hot in here. Let us Ouuutttt!!!!"

Not sure what she was thinking to try and bake live lobsters,
but it ended up saving their lives, because she couldn't bare
to cook them after that.

Par...

We're not the only ones making mistakes in the kitchen:eek:

http://www.texascooking.com/humor.htm

Two things come to mind-

The first involves mom (Lillycat). I really like hot and spicy food. She prefers bland mush (he he). So, I decided when I made her chili to spice it up a 'little'. She decided to appease my taste, and she, too, spiced it up a little. We both did it without telling the other....Yeow! While I liked it, I must admit, it was hotter than I woulda liked.

Second, I made pancakes for my friend for breakfast one time...well, they looked like fried chicken breasts. I ate them, cause I don't like to waste food, but, when my friend asked for my camera to take pictures, I knew things were bad....

And, like who knew you had to refridgerate pumpkin pie? Shoulda looked at it before I offered it to my friend...all wooly and stuff...ugh.

Mine involves a turkey on the grill for a family holiday dinner. we had done a test drive a few weeks beforeand the turkey had come out perfect. Well, it was colder by Christmas, so the coals went out before the turkey was done. So we added more charcoal, and re-lit the turkey...and stupidly had used charcoal lighting fluid. The turkey got done, but the whole thing tasted like charcoal lighting fluid. People were being polite and trying to eat it, but it really was not edible.

the thread is 'kitchen disasters' not 'poison your loved ones'


;)

Well, nobody died. :D They just went hungry.

Quote:

---

Originally posted by boscibo
Well, nobody died. :D They just went hungry.

---

(didn't want to admit i have done the same thing myself....):rolleyes:

I did once manage to fall asleep on the couch while I had a batch of chocolate chip cookies in the oven. They don't look too appetizing when they've spent two hours baking.:eek:

I've also discovered that bread-machine bread isn't has a funny texture when you've read the wrong figure for amount of yeast.:rolleyes:

(I should mention, I'm thinking of having my own cook-book ... all recipes will have the same instructions: remove from freezer, unwrap, nuke.)

The Pectin Experience

With boredom lingering heavily in my apartment, I aimlessly surfed the web this afternoon. Looking into my "Favorites" file, I spied a recipe site I hadn't visited in quite sometime. Now first you must realize that for me to have a recipe site bookmarked is an oxymoron--kinda like "jumbo shrimp." I've never liked cooking/baking/etc, matter of fact, if it involves me walking into the kitchen--I don't like it. For years now, the most complex food stuff Mom's had me make is ice tea and if she's feeling REALLY daring--and we're talking LIVING ON THE EDGE-- she'll ask me to grate cheese.
You have to give her credit--she tried early on to "convect" the "ovenly duties" into my less than lean bod. She tried with gusto to turn me into a regular lil' chef. But after a near grease fire, my substitution of 2 cups for two tablespoons mustard, and the loss of an entire box of pizza dough (kneading sounded easy enough--so how come I ended up looking like a horse in DESPERATE need of a ferrier?), she decided to call it quits. It's just plain and simple. I'm microwave compatible.
And I suppose those previous incidents should have served as proper warning for tonight's incident. Hindsight is always 20/20. I was nosing around the recipe site and found a recipe for Starbuck's Frappucino--YUMMY!! Read the ingredients list....milk, sugar, expresso, cocoa powder, and pectin. Easy enough. (Nevermind the fact that I'm allergic to milk.) Now, what the heck is pectin?
Lovely thing about the web--you can search (and find answers for) almost anything. Quick search revealed it's a natural thickener used in canning. Okie doke. I sign off the web, spend two hours getting ready to go to a place that I'll be in for 20-30min (females are such funny creature, eh?), spend another 30 minutes chasing & caging a mad bunnie, another 10 minutes finding the car keys, and finally I'm out the door.

No sweat.

(cont'd)

It took 40min. to find Pectin at the grocery store; the cute store guy didn't even know where they kept it (see? it's a good thing I spent so much time primping). It's appearance was only made known by accident--I had given up and was finishing up my other shopping. Strolling from the popsicle aisle to the wine aisle (such is the diet of the college student), I spied the canning supplies and bingo! There's the pectin!! And just an FYI, I don't binge drink like many of my peers--rather, I like to think of myself as a self-proclaimed wine connoisseur. (I earned this title by taking a sip and (usually) promptly spitting it back out--but hey, if at first you don't succeed--try, try again? Hey, gimme a break--I didn't like coffee at first either! lol) Anyways, a glass a wk is suppose to be good for your heart--but unfortunately, I don't think Boones Farm qualifies as "real" wine and my grocery budget doesn't actually allow for a $20.00 bottle of stuff I won't drink.
I digress...
As I dined on my tantalizing red meat (a ham/cheese hot pocket) and a glass of coke (thought it was gonna be the wine, huh?) my thoughts turned to the yummy dessert awaiting my eager digestive track. Finishing the last crumb that clung mercifully to the saucer, I sauntered to the kitchen.

The instructions called for 1/2 c of expresso--welll...the grocery store was out of expresso and rather than 'faking' it (running it thru the pot twice), I decided just to turn the knob to "strong" and improvise. I actually followed the directions (a miracle in itself) and when I took a sip, it was pretty yummy--not just pretty yummy--REALLY yummy! Tasted just like the real stuff!! But then I got the bright idea to add the rest of the pot of coffee and eyeball the measurements.
***I'll pause here to foreshadow my second mistake. I have a problem with judging measurements whether it be distance or time. Unfortunately, this became a henderance to my 3d archery hobby. If somone can TELL me the distance, I'm a dead shot. If you can't tell me, well...I'll give you a head start in the opposite direction because my inches sometimes resemble feet, my feet inches. 15 minutes can equal an hr, and...you get the picture.***
So with the pot of coffee gone, I added 3 tablespoons of pectin (the original called for 1tblsp). I added some, I don't know how much, cocoa powder--the original called for 1/16 tblsp. Now...just through in some sugar, pour in some milk, and then stir!

(cont'd)

And stir....and stir...and stir...and stir?

Hey what are those floaty pieces? The cocoa must not be completely dissovled--stir some more. And more...and more...and more....

By this time, I'm wondering if the coating has come off my plastic spoon. Not possible. The spoon is black and the floaty pieces brown. Ok...? Did some kinda critter get into the bag and then into the concoction when I wasn't looking? Nope, no critter. Did a paper towel dissentegrate? Nope, no paper towel. Hmmm...let's take a piece out for inspection. Ewwww..it's mushy, stringy, and tough--and looks like......upchucked roast beef!! I tried straining the darn stuff but that didn't work--it was INCREDIBLY thick so much so, that it soon clogged my strainer and seemed to multiplying with every passing second! So I did what had to be done. I dumped it down the kitchen sink. It's prolly down there right now plotting to take over me, my apartment, the town, and eventually the world. (I can see the headlines now: "College Student who Made Drink that Resembled Reguritated Roast Beef, Dies"--she ran but the vehement blob caught up with her-- according to witnesses, the cocoa powder slowed her down but the petcin killed her.)

Ok, maybe not.
But it's at least contemplating ways to make me pour drano down the sink. And thus, the moral of the story:

Pectin + Cocoa Powder + Coffee + Milk + Sugar + Zippykat = a dead ringer for Reguritated Roast Beef

Too funny! your catch-phrase of "needs supervision" makes much more sense now. I always thought you were refering to your pets;)

Quote:

---

Originally posted by zippy-kat
...--but unfortunately, I don't think Boones Farm qualifies as "real" wine and my grocery budget doesn't actually allow for a $20.00 bottle of stuff I won't drink.
I digress...

---

http://pages.prodigy.net/rogerlori1/emoticons/rofl.gif
LOL LOL ROTFL :D :D
It's been so long since I've had Boones Farm!! They go down so easly, huh? I could pound down a bottle in one sitting :o

Quote:

---

Pectin + Cocoa Powder + Coffee + Milk + Sugar + Zippykat = a dead ringer for Reguritated Roast Beef

---

OMG, Zippy, you're a riot! This story had me rollin'! :D