What was your worst kitchen disaster?

[seaglass]

I made red beans and rice tonight - never had it before and I guess I never will again. Maybe I wasn't supposed to leave the bean juice in, it does not taste good.

This does not rank in the top 5 of my worst experiments in the kitchen, but it's close. I really suck at cooking.

Anyone else a nightmare in the kitchen?

[Suich]

1. Not me, but my Mom, in the '50's.

She always canned stuff and this time she made ketchup. All the bottles were sitting on the kitchen counter. We heard a racket in the middle of the night and when we went downstairs, all the bottles had blown their tops...there was ketchup everywhere! Walls, ceiling, cupboards, drainboard, floor...I mean EVERYWHERE!

We (4 kids) thought it was pretty funny but my Mom wasn't too happy.

:)

[KamaAina]

52. The '60s and '70s belonged to my Mom

'60s: Popcorn. She had everything down pat. Except for the lid... :scared:

'70s: Chili. Huge pot of chili meant to last for a whole week on one burner. Skillet soaking in Ajax on the next one. No good could possibly come of this... (slosh slosh slosh) Yuck! :puke:

[nolabear]

67. Mine in the 60's too.

In truth my mother wasn't much of a cook. Add pressure cooker full of beans. Hilarity ensues.

[whistler162]

70. Shades of Bing Crosby and Holiday Inn!!!!

[wickerwoman]

2. When I was six I tried to bake a birthday cake for my dad.

How was I supposed to know he kept Cremora in the can marked "flour"?

Also, I once tried to make toast by putting the bread directly onto hot stove burners. So not in a position to feel superior to anyone, cooking-wise.

:hi:

[seaglass]

3. The first time I made applesauce the directions said to strain it

so I did. It did not say to strain it before I mushed up the apples, so I strained the entire pot of applesauce right down the garbage disposal.

I don't know what I was thinking, that maybe the watery part would strain out but the rest would stay in the strainer?

Still not one of my top 5. :-)

[pacalo]

20. The Creamora cake is adorable!

My sister-in-law mistakenly used Sweet 'n' Low instead of flour to coat her chicken for frying when she was dating her husband-to-be.

[KamaAina]

51. She really should have been using cornflakes

:hide:

[pacalo]

65. Not the frosted ones?

:rofl:

[1gobluedem]

4. Confused 'garlic clove' with 'garlic bulb'

And put an entire bulb in pesto sauce. One way to clean out the sinuses....

I also put a very hot ceramic dutch oven on a tempered glass cutting board. Did you know those explode like a bomb when exposed to extreme heat? I'm still finding pieces of glass six months later.

[wtmusic]

79. LOL

We used to have a deli nearby where you could get pesto that was about 1/3 garlic/basil/pine nuts each.

When the garlic is sauteed for a minute you lose that bitter taste. But have the breath mints handy anyway. :wow:

[appal_jack]

81. that, my friend, is a culinary win!

That, my friend, is a culinary win!

...as long as you have enough beverages to wash it all down. Here's to ya!

:beer:


-app

[mwdem]

5. Sitting it on fire.,,

melting wax for making candles for christmas presents. It was our first apt., first christmas, and we were broke. We made candles for everyone. It wasn't too much damage, and we fixed it. This was in the early 70's.

[siligut]

7. A friend poured her leftover melted wax down the kitchen sink...

Drain cleaner doesn't dissolve wax, in case anyone is wondering.

[mwdem]

8. Ouch!

We just set the overhead cabinets on fire.

[mwdem]

9. delete

glitch!

[RobinA]

77. A Friend of Mine

did something similar. She had never melted wax before. She was making a snowman and had white wax. She melted it and it turned clear. She thought something was wrong with it so she poured the whole lot of it down the sink. One plumber visit and a complete system clean-out later...

[Avalux]

6. Spinach Pie I forced my kids to eat.

It happened several years ago and they still talk about it. Not sure what went wrong, but they didn't want to eat it; I kept after them while they winced and moaned. When I finally got around to tasting it I felt really bad; it was inedible. I threw it away and we ordered pizza. :D

[Xipe Totec]

10. Well, there was the time my handmade carbide lamp exploded

and landed in my mother's soup.

[necso]

11. Hard to say;

there have been so many.

But two episodes come to mind.

There was the time I cooked a roast with way too much (dried) spice, and gave myself a bad case of the hives (a fairly miserable experience).

And there was the time I heard that no matter how hard you squeezed an egg in your hand, it wouldn't break.

Now, the egg did hold up well as I increased the pressure.

That is, it held up well until it essentially exploded and egg shot everywhere...

Both episodes were pretty stupid.

But I only did them once.

...

And now I have the urge to try the egg thing again.

Must resist.

Lol.

[GreenPartyVoter]

12. Oh, where to begin?? LOL Well, when I was first married I made a

Tuna Helper pot pie. Got it all put together and was just pouring the top crust batter on when I saw the can of unopened tuna still sitting on the counter. I had to open and drain it, then push chunks of it down through the batter. Tasted about like what you expect tuna pot pie form a box to taste like.

My first turkey dinner I left the giblets in their bag inside the cavity. The whole bird was plastic-flavored.

I tried making a squash pie, but instead of nutmeg I accidentally put in cumin. My dad thought it was pretty cool but my hubby hated it.

When I was a kid my mom was reading a wacky mayonnaise cake recipe to me. Somehow 3 teaspoons was read as 3 tablespoons, but we didn't realize it until the oven door exploded open. That's when we figured that we had waaayyyy too much baking soda in the batter.

Also around that time I was making a chocolate pudding dump cake and was getting stuff from the unmarked mayo and peanut butter jars where Mom kept her supplies bought from the food co-op. Waited and waited for that cake to be done, but when it was it was utterly inedible. Instead of using cocoa I had used cinnamon. Dunno how I could have mistaken the two!

This barely scratches the surface of my cooking fiascos. Anyone want to have dinner at my house? :rofl:

[tigereye]

59. hilarious!

I love the mayo and exploding oven one! :rofl: You gotta laugh about these things!

[jmm]

13. Except for two toaster fires involving pop tarts and a microwave fire no big disasters.

The first pop tart fire happened when I was in high school getting ready to head in early to make up work I missed while out with the chicken pox. When I mentioned to my Biology teacher what happened he said they supposedly were a leading cause of toaster fires.

Once when we were about 15 a friend and I tried to cook some burgers on her mom's grill. It was beautiful but windy so we had some trouble getting it to light. At one point we thought the grill was ready so we put our burgers on but then it died out again so her mom offered to help. She went outside and a minute later came back and said it was all set. We were feeling really clueless as to how she got it to work so quick when we had been trying for awhile but glad she took care of it. A little while later when our burgers were ready we bit into them at the same time and spit them out. When her mom put more lighter fluid on the grill she didn't take the burgers off x(.

[applegrove]

14. I had made Tibetan Momos before and they were delicious (a kinda tibetan beef dumpling).

So I made some over at my brother's house. Of course he can't tolerate gluten so I was using a random mixture of patato flour and other non gluten flours. When I rolled the dough out I couldn't get it thinner than 1/3 of an inch so I knew I was in trouble. You can imagine the rest. It was terrible...the dough didn't cook. Yuk.

[applegrove]

15. I was once baking a cake and had the batter all mixed up when my sister started dipping

her fingers in one at a time and eating it. I kept telling her to stop but she didn't.......she got to finger #10....... the batter was in a dish that had a handle....... I lifted it up in one fell swoop and poured all the batter over her head. LOL!

[pacalo]

16. When I was newly married, hubby & I were playing Atari in the living room

while eggs were boiling for tuna salad in the kitchen. I was so into the game I had totally forgotten about the eggs, until I heard a noise in the kitchen, sort of like hearing something thrown at the wall. Turned out the eggs exploded & one hit the ceiling.

I ruined a pot of rice while playing Atari around that period, too. It wasn't until the living room started filling with smoke that I remembered the rice.

[GoCubsGo]

38. I can't tell you how many times I have done that.

Rice, eggs, chicken parts for broth, various vegetables... I ruined a pot of green beans just two weeks ago by forgetting about them. I wasn't playing Atari, however. Just distracted by other things.

[pacalo]

63. ...

:hi:

[tigereye]

17. almost dropping the turkey as it came out of the oven one Thanksgiving

due to a failure to coordinate the taking it out...

[siligut]

23. And I thought I was going to be left out on this

Xmas dinner was a production at our old house, well it is still a production here, but now I have better equipment. Anyway, as I was pulling the green-bean casserole out, I burnt my hand, reacted with the other one, and tipped the whole dish onto the door of the oven! Everyone was in the den, and I had had a bit of wine, so I just salvaged what I could, sprinkled more fried onions on top, put it under the broiler and no one, until now, ever knew. Ta da!

[tigereye]

35. there's always something, eh?

I am betting most folks have had a holiday "salvaging the meal" story. :D

Another Thanksgiving the oven wasn't working and no one noticed til well into preparations, then we had to run across the street and put the turkey into our neighbor's oven. And then after all that, we had to eat wild turkey with birdshot still in it.

[tigereye]

18. in the group house i lived in during grad school

I got the bright idea to make a chicken-beet dish - hereafter referred to as the "St. Valentine's Day Massacre."


It was not a good idea, at all. Most refused to eat it.

[Swede]

19. I was cooking pork chops,phone rings,my friends daughter was in an accident.

I drive to their house to see how she is,she is fine. I take a sip of coffee and then remember the pork chops. Got home and the house was full of smoke. Took a long time to clear that smell out.

[Flaxbee]

21. hmm, last night the timer on the grill crapped out, and

the kitchen almost caught on fire from really really burned tofu. The kitchen reeks.

I'm getting better at cooking; my husband is a terrific cook. But last night we put the tofu on the grill, two phone calls came in, and the timer didn't switch the grill off. You really have to be careful, things can go wrong really quickly in a kitchen.

[MorningGlow]

22. Oh, so many

I'm not the greatest cook in the world. I've gotten better, though.

I think my first classic move was when I was a teenager. For some reason I was rushing around in the kitchen helping my mom get dinner on the table. I don't remember why I was in a hurry--maybe I was just hungry. Anyway, my mom had put some bean soup in the microwave to reheat. It was in a microwave-safe "pot" (plastic thing with a handle) with plastic wrap over it. I whipped it out of the microwave and spun around...the plastic wrap caught on one of the latches on the microwave door...and the next thing I knew the pot was whisked out of my hand, and bean soup was EVERYwhere. Mostly down the side of the floor-to-ceiling cabinet next to the microwave. We were discovering dried bean soup splashes for YEARS after that. :blush:

Most recently...I was hosting my first Christmas Eve dinner two years ago. My brother and his family were visiting from California. I bought a huge turkey but didn't have a pan big enough, so I bought one of those disposable foil ones. I put a metal grate on the bottom to keep the bottom of the turkey from getting mushy. Tried to pick up the pan by the sides to take it out of the oven and baste it...and one of the metal bits punctured the bottom of the pan. Turkey juice all over the inside of the oven. My SIL and I quickly put it on the stovetop, and the rest of what-was-going-to-be-gravy sluiced into one of the front burners and doused the pilot light. It was dead (soggy) for a month. And then one day it miraculously came back to life. (The dinner was pretty all right, though, for my first time cooking for the entire clan.)

[Capn Sunshine]

24. I forget what it was, I think soup

at one of my restraurants back in the 70's. But whatever happened, we had to throw the pot away and buy a new one. I think I have intentionally blocked that memory.

[rainbow4321]

25. When daughter was 5 yr old she tried to re-heat pizza in the microwave

Unfortunately, she entered 5 MINUTES instead of 50 seconds...

I knew nothing about it til she came into my room saying "I'm sorry, mama, I'm sorry". She led a very confused me into the kitchen where I see gray smoke from ceiling to floor as it poured out of the microwave! Inside the microwave was a very charred rock that was once a slice of left over pizza!

Before anyone asks how the hell I didn't SMELL it, I was born without a sense of smell
(anosmia). SO the only way I knew about the smoke filled kitchen was her bringing me into the kitchen (that had no smoke detector).

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

26. Not mine -- my ex.

I came home one day and found a plate of muffins on the dining room table. On top of the muffins was a little hand-drawn paper flag featuring a skull and crossbones. It seems that he misread the recipe as calling for baking soda instead of baking powder. The muffins were horrible - completely inedible, salty and bitter. But the skull and crossbones was a nice touch.

[Lyric]

27. We've never had an actual disaster, but we've had some funny moments.

Last Thanksgiving, I decided to brine our turkey. I didn't have a pot or bowl big enough to put it in, but I *did* have one of those jumbo turkey roasting bags. I put the bag into a cooler full of ice, put the turkey in, filled up the bag with brine, tied it off, and poured more ice over the top.

The next day, it was time to take out the turkey. I asked Rhythm to retrieve it from the porch, where it had spent the night out in the cooler full of ice. Instead of bringing the whole cooler in, she decides to try and pick up the turkey, bag and all, and carry it into the kitchen. When I saw what she was doing, I yelled, but not fast enough. No sooner than she had stepped from the porch into the kitchen than the bag EXPLODED in her arms, and a 25-lb turkey plus a gallon or more of brine went EVERYWHERE. I swear to god, the splash was so enormous that we had brine dripping from the ceiling. It took us hours to clean it all up, and Rhythm learned a very important lesson: roasting bags are NOT very strong.

We laugh about it now, although this might be the first time that Rhythm's allowed me to tell the Story of the Exploding Turkey Bag in public. :D

[Crystal Clarity]

31. LOL! Another one of those 'not funny at the time' stories...

I have a few myself, but no Exploding Turkey Bags, thankfully! That sounds like it must have been an enormous mess! :yoiks:

On an entirely different note (no pun intended)... I had no idea that you and Rhythm were together. I've seen you two in various places on DU and have admired both of your DU names. In fact, someone did a thread here in the lounge a couple of weeks ago about DU names that ought to go together (or something along that line) so I paired you two up, having no idea that you actually were... :blush: (hey, I'm fairly new here, but it probably shouldn't have taken me THIS long to figure it out!)

Now I like your names all that much more. You sound like a fun couple! :hi:

[Rhythm]

28. My most recent "OMG did that just happen?" moment... from work

I work in the kitchen of a pub here in this crazy college town, and football game-days are insane to say the least.

A few weeks ago, in the midst of a prolonged rush, we had what has come to be called the 'three-strikes buffalo quesadilla' incident.

We were in a hurry, and one of the other cooks put together this buffalo chicken quesadilla, but had neglected to notice that the customer had specified "no onions"... Strike 1
I remade it while he worked on something else; when finished, i picked it up off the flat-top griddle on a long spatula, and promptly sent it flying across the kitchen... strike 2
We finally both looked at the third guy in the kitchen, and told him it was his turn. He got it made, got it on the plate, sent it out, and the customer decided it was too spicy... strike 3.

*facepalm*

I love my job...

[Crystal Clarity]

29. "Baking" my daughter's 'Jelly Shoes'

Yeah I know... :wtf: But seriously, 'it' happened and oh what a mess. :crazy:

I was making a lasagna, a treat I could rarely afford as a factory working single mother. My daughter was only about 3 so this would have been around 1988. Back then, brightly colored plastic/rubbery shoes called 'Jelly Shoes' were in style for little kids. My daughter had a pink pair.

Anyway, at some point, my daughter must have put those shoes into the oven for some unknown reason. It could have been days before. Perhaps some imaginary game???

I'm sure you can guess the rest... I turned the oven on preheat as I was preparing the lasagna, layering all of that gooey goodness. Meanwhile I was blissfully unaware of the stinking black smoke emanating from the oven until actual flames erupted. I shut the oven off immediately but because I was unable to unplug it, I grabbed some flour and threw it on the flames instead of water. Water might have been ok, but it was an electric oven, so who knows?

That put the fire out but OMG the smokey black stench and the mess!!! Fearing that the smoke might be toxic, I brought my daughter next door to the neighbor's house and alerted everyone who happened to be home in my apartment building. I had to open the doors and all the windows yet it was still awful. And it took me HOURS to clean all the goo and flour.

Thank God I was on good terms w/everyone in the building, but they never let me forget... "You're not going to be doing any baking today, are you"... they'd often jokingly say to me. :blush:

I've had actual real-food cooking disasters too, but I thought someone might get a kick out of this one. It wasn't funny for me at the time though! D'oh!

[CrawlingChaos]

30. two words: Baked Alaska

Ungodly mess. Never going there again.

[Raven]

32. Not mine but a real winner...WBZ Boston radio used to have

a cooking program with Dave Maynard on Thanksgiving morning. He would give advice about solving turkey dinner problems. A woman called in. She had put her turkey in the oven not realizing that an unopened can of beans had fallen into the back of the turkey pan. An hour or so later the can exploded and blew the door off the oven and sent the turkey flying across the room. She was calling to ask Maynard how she could rescue Thanksgiving dinner. He played that tape each Thanksgiving for years.

[pacalo]

66. That's priceless!

[Enthusiast]

33. We always rinse the beans.

Saute chopped onions in plenty of olive oil. When the onions are about done toss in some chopped garlic and red pepper flakes. We use chicken stock to cook the rice. Before the garlic turns brown we add sliced smoked sausage, kielbasa works. After the Sausage browns a bit we add the drained and rinsed beans. Add the rice when it is done and there ya go. Proportions are up to you. I wanted to try beans and rice so I came up with this procedure. The wifie has since co-opted my recipe.

[seaglass]

43. Yes I think rinsing the beans would have helped, also I do not like Andouille

sausage, which I did not know until I ate it last night. Lastly the recipe (I got it from the back of the red bean can) called for adding Creole spice/seasoning - did not like that either.

This is why I am not a good cook. I need explicit instructions. I debated over draining the beans. It did not say to drain the beans, though I normally would, but it did say to cook until simmering. Since there was no other liquid except the 3 tbsp of oil used to saute the vegetables I couldn't figure out how the beans would simmer so I figured I was supposed to leave the bean juice in.

Not good. :-(

Yours sounds much better :-)

[siligut]

46. Consider trying Zatarain's, it comes in a box.

I understand that Zatarain's makes good red beans and rice, in a package. I have tried their product and found it to be pretty good. You can find the boxes in the prepackaged food aisle. The sodium content is probably high, if that is a concern, you might want to read the content breakdown. I think the directions on the package are explicit too. :)

[WolverineDG]

62. tony cachere's is good too nt

[seaglass]

71. I did use Zatarains Creole Seasoning. I think the 2 things that ruined

the dish for me was the adouille sausage (I'm guessing there is none in the package :-)) and the bean juice. So I will try this because I do like both red beans and rice.

Thanks

[Ineeda]

34. My mother, who had no sense of smell and was not a genius in the kitchen

had made chicken broth from the Sunday chicken leftovers and stored it in the fridge in a Tupperware pitcher. The next night, she added the broth to a pot of cooked rice, heated it thoroughly, and served it. Dad, the first to taste it, said, "What the...?" To be fair to Mom, visually there's not much difference between a pitcher of lemonade and a pitcher of chicken broth. World of difference in taste, though. :rofl:

[Enthusiast]

36. Funny.

That would be quite the difference.

[GoCubsGo]

37. Enchiladas with red sauce back when I was in high school

The enchiladas were great. The kitchen looked like a murder scene. My mom banned me from the kitchen for weeks after that.

[meow2u3]

39. My worst kitchen disaster got me evicted from my apartment 24 years ago

When I was a student at the University of Texas (Austin), I rented an apartment when I decided to make tortilla chips. I cut and fried the tortillas, and in an absent-minded moment, I decided to take a shower while the stove was on and the tortillas were frying!!! I was 25 at the time, about 3 months before my 26th b'day.
Dumb move on my part! When I got out of the shower and dressed, I walking into the front room full of smoke, so I had to open every window and the door to get rid of the smoky smell. The only trouble is that the walls were covered with smoke and the landlady got wind of it. I was evicted a month later for causing the damage to the premises.

All this happened before I was treated for ADHD. This is one of the worst, but not the costliest, ADHD moment I experienced. Two years later, I decided to seek treatment not because of disasters like this, but because I lost a would-be boyfriend, who came out and told me straight up that he'd have dated me regularly if I didn't have the attention span of a gnat.

[mikeytherat]

40. Not mine, but a friend made a seafood quiche for her in-laws, and bought a ready-made pie crust.

She didn't think about it being a graham-cracker pie crust.

mikey_the_rat

[Lyric]

41. Oh wait--I DO remember a disaster!

I have this fantastic recipe for a super-thick, New York Style cheesecake. I've made it a dozen times, and it always comes out perfect. The recipe requires a LOT of eggs and cream cheese, and I was making it at my Mom's house for a big family dinner, so I asked my Mom to pick me up an extra dozen eggs at the store (so I wouldn't deplete her egg supplies).

I made the cheesecake, put it in the oven, and took it out an hour later. It smelled divine and looked perfect. It chilled overnight in the fridge, and then I brought it out the next day to put the strawberries and sweet sour cream on top as the finishing touch. Before the toppings went on, I cut away some of the brown streaks from the top edges (standard procedure), popped them into my mouth while I was mixing up the sour cream...and immediately spat them back out. It tasted like EGGS. Strongly. Like a sweet quiche, not a cheesecake. It was awful.

For the life of me, I couldn't figure out what I'd done wrong. I checked my recipe again--5 eggs plus 2 egg yolks--and checked to make sure I hadn't used more eggs than I was supposed to. I hadn't, but then I noticed something that I had completely overlooked before. Instead of buying large eggs, Mom had bought JUMBO eggs. In a normal 1-2 egg cake it probably wouldn't have made a noticeable difference, but in a cheesecake that required the flavor equivalent of 7 eggs to begin with...well, the size difference really added up. REALLY. Using Jumbo eggs instead of Large eggs added the equivalent of 3-4 more eggs than I actually needed.

My family was kind about it. Several of them actually volunteered to eat a piece anyway. But 3/4 of that cheesecake went straight into the trash. Oooooh boy.

:hi:

[pacalo]

64. I love your story!

Nice writing style. I enjoyed Rhythm's story up above, too.

You two must have a lot of fun times together -- like Lucy & Ethel.

:hi:

[CBGLuthier]

42. Canned Beans??!!??

You can not use canned beans for this recipe. Dry red beans cook plenty fast.

And yes, most of the time you need to rinse canned beans to use them.

[suninvited]

44. cook the beans and the rice seperate

cook your beans with your sausage or ham and onions and garlic and some spices. Cook your rice as you always do.

When you get ready to eat, put rice in your bowl and cover it with beans. That way everyone gets the rice/beans ratio they like and as much bean juice as they like.

[clyrc]

45. Getting my hair caught in the beaters when I was mixing frosting

I was about 8, and when I leaned over the bowl, my hair got caught and it really hurt! Everybody else thought it was hilarious, though. I never mixed anything without first tying up my hair, after that.

My mom is a wonderful cook, but every once in a while her meals didn't work out. Once, she made something called sunshine soup, and it was awful. My family knew better than to say we didn't like something mom made, so we tried to eat it until she admitted it was really bad. I can't remember what we ate after that, but my younger sister came back later from a friend's house asking for food. Mom, being a little ornery, gave her a small bowl of soup. My sister was always on the alert for being shortchanged, probably because I was bad about stealing her food, especially anything sweet, from her when she was really little. She demanded that mom give her a bigger bowl of the soup, and for once mom quietly gave her a bigger bowl. My sister found out why the rest of us were laughing, pretty quickly.

My most irritating experience, though, was shortly after I was married and I spent most of a day making a chicken fricasee. The irritating part was that after all that work, it tasted exactly like I had opened a can of cream of mushroom soup and poured it over a chicken.
.

[LiberalEsto]

47. The infamous Valentine cake

Back in my hippie days I was in college and living in an apartment with my boyfriend, a couple of other people and a very large dog. While my bf was at work, I decided to surprise him by baking a cake for Valentine's Day. I made a chocolate cake recipe that requires vinegar, flour, sugar, baking soda, oil and cocoa powder.It's called a Wacky Cake, Funny Cake and all kinds of names because of the unusual ingredients. You mix all the dry ingredients in the baking pan, make 3 impressions in it with a spoon, dump in the wet ingredients and stir.

Once the cake was done, I realized that the bf would soon be home, so I started frosting the cake right away, without waiting for it to cool. It was some kind of canned frosting that I had tinted pink for the occasion. Pieces of the cake stuck to the frosting knife, or broke off and avalanched down the sides in a mess of pink frosting and brown crumbs. I desperately tried to paste the cake together by adding more and more frosting.

Finally I got it more or less frosted, decorated it with those tiny candy hearts that say "Kiss Me", "Luv U", etc. and put it in the refrigerator.

When the bf arrived, I proudly whipped out the cake, but the candy hearts had melted in the frosting, so it looked like a cake on really bad hallucinogens. He politely declined a piece, saying he was exhausted, and we headed for bed after putting the pink, purple and green mess back in the refrigerator.

Upon waking, I stepped into the hallway and slipped on a puddle of ghastly dog vomit. I expressed my extreme annoyance to the owner of the huge dog.

The owner then expressed his extreme annoyance with me for attempting to poison his dog with my horrible cake. I vehemently denied this and said he had no business eating the cake or sharing it with his dog.

In the middle of the night he had swiped a piece and gave one to the dog. He'd thrown his own piece out after a single taste, but the dog gulped his, and was sick a short time later.

When I mixed all those weird ingredients, I'd forgotten to add sugar, so in addition to looking awful, it tasted awful. My bf and I broke up a few weeks later. Even though he never tasted the cake, I assume that was one of the reasons he split.

[Lyric]

48. For what it's worth, you probably were not to blame for the sick dog.

Chocolate is poisonous to dogs. The chocolate in a single piece of cake wouldn't usually be enough to hurt a large dog, but it might have been enough to make him puke. Rest easy--the idiot who gave him chocolate cake was to blame there, not you.

As for the rest of your story-- :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[Auggie]

49. Fucking icemaker

Sprang a leak and flooded everything

[ScreamingMeemie]

50. Polyethylene melts rather quickly at 400 degrees.

BabyG and I had just moved into this house and were delighting in brand new stainless appliances. He is such a good kid and is constantly picking up. More about that later.

It was late one night (about 11-ish) and he was hungry. I figured I would pop a frozen pizza in the oven. I turned on the oven to preheat and went back to, probably, the computer. Twenty minutes later, with burning eyes full of wonderment, I opened the door to the oven to see two of the polyethylene cutting boards I had bought (black even) dripping their last little bits onto the floor of the (this is why I can't have nice things) oven. BabyG was horrified. "I'm sorry! I'm Sorry! I thought it would be a good place to store them!"

At 4 AM and after the loss of my favorite metal spatula, the oven was (sort of) good as new. I now look every time before I turn on the oven (although I've probably just jinxed myself). Funnily enough, there's never anything in there. See how awesome BabyG is? Just don't get me started on his clean-by-throwing-new-stuff-away penchant.

Now, ask PassingFair what I did to her kitchen. :D

[tigereye]

61. how old is he now?

How are you? Been a while. :hug: :hi:

[Xithras]

53. The first time I ever made lasagna....

...I somehow missed the fact that the ground italian sausage was supposed to be browned before it was added to the lasagna pan. I thought that it would be cooked as the lasagna baked in the oven.

Some of it did. Most of it didn't. Sadly, several of us ate a significant part of our lasagna plates, commenting about the "odd" taste, before we realized why it tasted funny. :puke:

[seaglass]

54. Yay - now I don't feel so alone :-). Some of these were pretty damn funny

though I'm sorry for those whose kitchen mistakes ended in fire. :-(

[book lady]

55. I was cooking a spaghetti squash in the microwave...

I did not poke enough holes in it to relieve the pressure. It blew open the microwave door and smashed to smithereens on the kitchen floor. I have never put a squash in the microwave since.

[GoCubsGo]

56. I always cut them in half before I nuke them

I scrape the seeds out, and steam them face-down in a little water. Works like a charm.

[backwoodsbob]

57. last thanksgiving the kid wanted to help..sooooo...

the wife told him to heat up the honey for the home made bread in the microwave......but.....she forgot to tell him to loosen the lid first.It didn't explode until he got it out.
Thankfully no one got touched by the flying glass shrapnel.I cleaned honey off the ceiling and walls and cabinets for months as I found new spots it got in.

[WinkyDink]

58. Not mine, my mother's: Made a HUGE batch of her fabboo spaghetti sauce. Set it on a towel on the

counter to cool. Ummmm....For some reason, forgot the end of the towel was attached to the rest that was UNDER THE POT, and tugged.
CRASH! SPLATTER! OOZE! DRIP!
Floor, walls, cabinet doors, under the stove and refrigerator, and on herself. Sauce, sauce everywhere!
Nor any sauce to eat. :-)

[WolverineDG]

60. Dad + blender + overwhelming curiousity to make sure it's all blending =

mess all over the kitchen we had to clean up for weeks. :eyes:

Why he couldn't just LOOK AT IT through the glass like the rest of us did is beyond me.

Not necessarily a disaster, but I've been getting shit for this for *decades* :

Dad decided his WWII era (possibly) smoke alarm was just fine & dandy for our kitchen in the late 70s. I decide I'm going to make cinnamon toast & set the oven to the correct temperature. Within seconds, before I have even opened the fridge to get the butter out, the damn smoke alarm goes off :grr: :grr: :grr:

So, yes, I'm the only one in my family who set off the smoke alarm in the kitchen BEFORE I started cooking. :grr: :grr:

dg

[newcriminal]

68. Back years ago when I was still trying way to hard for my step children to love me,

I made a birthday cake for my stepson. His birthday is in October so he wanted a Halloween inspired spooky cake. I decide to make a grave yard with tombstones and skeletons creepy fence the whole works. It took me around 4 hours to complete the thing. It was gorgeous, better than I had even hoped for. I showed him the cake. He kissed me and said "Wow, how long did you work on that? Thank you so much, I love you." I of course kissed him on the head and said I loved him to.

I put the cake in the oven so no cat or kid would touch it, and went to my room to cry. (I do love my kids so much).

About an hour or two later I turned on the oven to preheat it for his birthday dinner, (his favorite meatloaf)and you guessed it I forgot the cake in the oven.

I cried in my room twice that day!!!

[vixengrl]

69. This is just a story I'll tell on my younger brother--he was only about five--

and Mom and Dad went out shopping, and I'm six years older, so having us alone for a little wasn't a big thing. Anyway, he decided to make toast. I don't know why. It must have looked simple enough to him. All I know is, he wanted me to help him get the toast out of the toaster because it wasn't coming all the way up.

I jiggled the handle on the toaster to discover he must have pulled some raisin bread from the very back of the bread box, because that stuff was green. How he did not notice the bread was green before he put it in there, I do not know. (I can't judge--when I was the same age, I turned on an iron and tried to put an iron-on from a Honeycombs box on a tea-shirt. Since I couldn't reach the ironing board, or even pull it out, I ironed from the floor. After all--what's the diff? I had seen Mom do ironing. I burnt a spot in that carpet....five is not a good age for cooking, ironing, haircutting, shopping, running one's own baths or deciding one is *so* going to leave school right now and go home --which I did decide to do at one point because they gave us a snack break, I was bored, and home was only three blocks away-- In retrospect, both me and my brother might have needed more adult supervision, but we did keep busy!)

I explained to him that green was not the way bread was supposed to be, and that eating it was not the way to go. I may have resorted to a "mold=cooties" analogy. I think I followed up with Leggos. I didn't want him to feel uncool about the moldy bread thing--and waffles can fix a lot.

For my adult cooking life, I was presented with cheese I did not recognize and tried to melt into a sauce, thinking it was like parmesan. Actually, it was a sharp provolone. I could have sliced it into sandwiches for the next two weeks--but instead I stirred this inert article around a sauce pot waiting for a change that never came. By now, the gradations between soft and hard cheese and what you can do with them all are still a little "iffy", but I have a better idea of what can't be done.

I also don't recommend braising turkey legs. They don't get tender that way. I was thinking--juices=juicy, but wasn't thinking of flavor. Actually, cooking in liquid with a little alcohol turns them into tough, weird-flavored crap--unlike the brilliant tender braise you can sometimes get with chuck beef, olive oil, and much love. You better roast. You just....better. Such a waste of turkey legs and a mess of all the good dark meat flavors. I could have rolled the legs in breadcrumbs and spice, and set them up in the toaster oven to a good browning instead of frittering away the stuff that makes a turkey leg a good piece of meat. That was like, 12 years ago. Still kick myself.

[annonymous]

72. I cooked a pasta salad

When I was growing up, my mom frequently would prepare food in the morning and have me put in the oven so it would be ready for dinner. When I saw the pasta salad, I assumed she wanted me to put in the oven like I usually did. It was such a disaster no one wanted to eat it. There were a few other kitchen disasters over the years i.e. my brother forgot to drain the noodles when he made tuna casserole, my sister using the wrong type of cheese for this French dish called Croque Monsieur, the inedible stuffing one Thanksgiving that tasted like vinegar because sourdough bread was used instead of regular bread.

[wtmusic]

73. 8x too much salt in boiled cabbage.

I need say no more.

[Lisa D]

74. Taking chicken straight out of the freezer

and trying to make fried chicken with it. Does. Not Work. Maybe if I had used cornflakes....

[wtmusic]

76. Yup

We all make that one...rite of passage. :thumbsup:

[woo me with science]

75. Not me but a relative, and this was a long time ago,

but it was so traumatic the family still talks about it.

She made a beautiful chicken soup for company, rich broth with white meat chicken, rice, and lots of spices. It was served in a big tureen with crusty french bread and butter on the side. There was also a beautiful salad.

Someone at the table raved about the soup and commented on how much pepper there appeared to be in the recipe.

Then someone noticed that all the little bits of "pepper" had legs.

[Odin2005]

78. When I was 11 I tried to make a surporise cake for my mom and...

...I accidentally used SALT instead of sugar. :rofl:

[WolverineDG]

80. SURPRISE! nt

[jmowreader]

82. I have two

First one: I attempted to melt chocolate in the microwave. Five minutes oughta do it...well, five minutes set the chocolate on fire.

I also attempted to make orange sauce...tapioca flour and orange juice. Don't do this. Just don't.