When Good Cooks Go Bad: Wiener Gravy and Other Disasters

[Gazelle]

The boss took our group (seven of us) to lunch today for a Christmas gift. After the meal, we got on the subject of bad cooks. A co-worker related a couple of stories about his mother, who would cook meat until it was bone-dry and then re-moisturize it by dubious means, i.e. quarter-cups of butter on steak and bacon grease-laden onions on pork chops. Another co-worker revealed that her sister makes "Wiener Gravy"; she boils hot dogs and then makes a gravy from the used water. ::gack::

After that last story, I was profoundly grateful to have already consumed my lunch.

My only story was of my dear mother -- who normally is an excellent cook -- making bean soup. She always used dried beans that had not been soaked long enough and therefore turned to sand when chewed. So nasty.

Any other bad cook stories, Dopers?

[Lady Ice]

My mother made a bean soup mistake once. She didn't have the Great Northern Beans that she normally uses, so she used a bag of pinto beans thinking it wouldn't matter. She had never cooked with pinto beans before, so she didn't know what would happen.

Have you ever tried to eat purple bean soup? It tasted great, if you could get past the looks of it. My father and I took to eating it between slices of buttered bread as a sandwich, so we wouldn't have to look at. My mother and sister refused to touch the stuff.

/slight hijack/ My late grandfather used to jokingly ask where the gravy was whenever anyone made hotdogs. Lucky for us, my grandmother was smart enough not to try it. Thanks for reminding me of a great childhood memory./slight hijack/

[rubes]

I love buffalo wings, and have often purchased some sort of powder/plastic bag for the oven type combo, to which I add some of my other ingredients.

One day, I decide to make boneless wings, which are actually cut breast strips. I was out of the pre-fab bag and powder, but that's ok. I use a number of spices and put my chicken in a tough freezer bag.

Imagine my surprise when that thick bag didn't hold up in the heat of the oven. I was alerted by my smoke detector, as the bag had melted, and juice was burning inside the oven.

It seemed like a good idea at the time...

[FairyChatMom]

Back before cake mixes came with the pudding already in them, my mother had a recipe for pudding cake that we always used. One day, one of my sisters decided she'd make a cake. She got the list of ingredients from Mom. In addition, she got all the ingredients listed on the box instructions. So she wound up using one box of cake mix, one box of pudding, 7 eggs, a cup of milk, a cup of water, a cup of oil, and 2 teaspoons of vanilla. Oh, it was a moist cake. It was a soggy cake. Actually, it wasn't even a cake - it was garbage.

[Lsura]

Not so much a cooking story, but a putting together things story...


My dad, for a long time, simply wanted to eat when he was ready to eat, and would put together the oddest combinations of food. The wierdest one I can remember is a salami sandwich. But we were out of bread, so he used slices of lemon cake instead.

I can see where he was thinking...lemon cake is good, salami is good, must be good together. I have no idea whether he put any condiments on it, or whether he actually enjoyed it.

[Gazelle]

Oh Lsura, ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!

Geeeeee-ross.

[Ukulele Ike]

Originally posted by Lsura
...lemon cake is good, salami is good, must be good together.

Only if you wash it down with a Bloody Mary.

Re: "weiner gravy." Well, some people put sliced frankfurters in the pea-soup pot to flavor the broth. And southern biscuits and red-eye gravy is a sausage gravy over biscuits. So I suppose using weiner water to make gravy isn't TOO great a logical jump.

[Gazelle]

Ukiebaby, don't make me take back all the flattering remarks.

[Lure]

Good cooks-my mother was far from a good cook so all I know is bad cook stories.

What she called pot raost,we called roast pot.The gravy actually had those black burnt bits from the pot bottom in it.

Her stew was meat and vegetables swimming in greasy water.

She tried a pound cake-she didn't pound it enough.

Kraft's Mac and cheese had these undissolved chese chunks that went powdery when you bit into one.

I'd try to act up before dinner when I was a young 'un so I'd be sent to bed without dinner.


Oddly enough,she made a mean potato salad,chocolate cake,and good pot of coffee.Go figure.

To this day,tho,I can't imagine how my father survived all those years on that grub.He was in hs late 70s until he finally succumbed to an overdose of bicarb.


In my adult life in my relationships I was always the primary cook (I'm male)

I learned my lessons well.

[jk1245]

My mother makes an excellent rhubarb pie (for those of you not int he know, rhubarb is a tart yet sweet plant that grows all over Wisconsin, and other parts of the Midwest I presume). Early in her wild rhubarb harvesting days, she acccidently picked a batch of burdock for use in the pie. Apparently, burdock is easily mistaken for rhubarb by novice harvesters. The mistake is definately due to appearances and not taste however, as burdock tastes rather like a bar of bath soap when baked into a pie.
It was a long time before my mom could convince me to try rhubarb pie again, as I assumed that God-awful bitter taste was how it was supposed to be. She still hasn't lived that one down.

[masonite]

I could be horribly wrong, but I believe red-eye gravy is not a sausage gravy. It's made with the juices left from frying a ham slice. Black coffee is the secret ingredient.

My mom is unable to bake potatoes. No matter the oven temperature, no matter the length of baking, they are hard as rocks, every time. Unfortunately, I inherited this disability....

[Alto]

This sounds like a classic story--but it's true. My when I was a child, my mother made fried chicken for the first time. My brother took the first bite and Mother was excited to hear what he thought. He was so polite, and he hated to disappoint her, so he said, "Well, it's a little bit sweet..." She had used powdered sugar instead of flour.

[Ukulele Ike]

Originally posted by masonite
I could be horribly wrong, but I believe red-eye gravy is not a sausage gravy. It's made with the juices left from frying a ham slice. Black coffee is the secret ingredient.

Yes, you're right. The classic red-eye is made in a pan you've fried country ham in. The source book I just looked in, though, sez it can also be made in a pan used to fry sausages.

"Biscuits and gravy" features crumbled-up sausage in a "cream gravy," which may or may not include cream, depending on what you use to deglaze the pan.

[Homebrew]

Originally posted by Lady Ice
Have you ever tried to eat purple bean soup?

How did it turn purple from pintos? Pintos are brown. Purple hull peas, I could understand.

[Daowajan]

Well, my parents' friends once made marinated mushrooms...

They put the mushrooms in a big cooking dish with four sticks of butter (no, I'm not kidding!) and broiled it until all the butter cooked down. Then they added cognac and more butter and repeated the process. Twice.

The worst part?

This isn't a mistake, it's an honest-to-god recipe. I was horrified.

[LolaCocaCola]

I've had a guy ask me to try his wiener gravy before...

[Lord Jim]

Originally posted by LolaCocaCola
I've had a guy ask me to try his wiener gravy before...

And you probably thought it was a sexual thing, right?

[Batsinma Belfry]

The first time I encountered my MIL's Apple Pie, I thought it was a chess pie. She had cooked the apples until they were no longer apples. But I love cinnamon, and it looked like she had used alot , because the pie filling was kind of brown. It wasn't until I had a mouthful of it , that I realized the reason it was brown............. She had fried the apples in hamburger grease!

[JayElle]

My mother is a wonderful cook with a kitten-like attention span. She wanted to make one of my recipes, which called for careful layering of meat and beans between cornbread batter to make this yummy tex-mex torte. Instead, she dumps all of the ingredients together, throws it in the oven, and produces this nasty orange, meaty cake-like thing.

A friend tell me that her mother has a similar treatment for what she fondly calls "corndog casserole." Bleech!

[Cervaise]

Obligatory link.

Related book (a great gift idea for anybody scrounging around at the last minute; it's hilarious).

[Skerri]

First, let me say that my mom is a good cook. The thread title made me think of another story, though.

My mom always makes gravy to go with turkey at Thanksgiving. About 3 years ago, my nephew was in the kitchen while my mom was cooking. (He would have been 21 at the time.)

My mom used the bag o' stuff out of the turkey to make the gravy. When my nephew saw the turkey neck go in the pot, he freaked out! "Was that the turkey's wee-wee?!" My mom looked him right in the eye and said, "yup!"

Now, he won't even look at the gravy at Thanksgiving, because no one ever bothered to tell him it was just a turkey neck. (And I'm sure he probably posts on a message board about how his grandma makes gravy with "turkey wee-wees!")

[evilbeth]

While not the most disgusting thing in this thread, my best friend makes bologna gravy. It's really the only thing she can cook well--if you can even say that about bologna gravy.

She thinks she makes great spaghetti and meatballs. She could not be more wrong. She doesn't own any spices (except salt and pepper), uses plain canned tomato sauce (not spaghetti sauce with flavors added) and to top it off, she does not own a colander so she just boils the spaghetti until almost all of the water is gone and then dumps the sauce and the very much undercooked meatballs in the pot. This results in a rather watery, flavorless raw meat and mush extravaganza. But she thinks parmesan cheese fixes everything.

[Tabithina]

Here's some stomach upsetting hot dog recipes for y'all:


Yummy Popcycle Hotdogs.
"Insert the wooden stick 1/2 way up the dog" _{Ummmm...yuck.}


Peanut Dogs
"Serve, if there are kids present, get out of the way quick!"_{As the children run for their LIVES?}

[Manduck]

Originally posted by evilbeth
she does not own a colander

Hey, christmas gift idea!

My grandmother read an article about how sugar was bad for you, so she stopped using it. In anything. She didn't use any substitutes either. You should have tasted her rhubarb pie! We had to eat some to be polite, but yeeesh. She gave us a few pies every year.

[krisolov]

I learned to cook as an adult, and made my share of kitchen debacles. One of my most memorable was some slow cooked venison ribs on the grill when my in laws came to visit. Those ribs were like carbon flavored kevlar. Mmmm....

[grendel72]

Originally posted by LolaCocaCola
I've had a guy ask me to try his wiener gravy before...

I've enjoyed wiener gravy on many occasions.

[Larry Mudd]

When my parents were newlyweds, my dad asked my mum to make fried rice, which was considered "exotic" in their tiny town. She wasn't sure about it, but he reassured her that it was easy-- just fry up some rice with veggies, eggs, and spices.

She didn't think it turned out well, by my dad was enough of a gentleman to eat everything on his plate before he advised her to steam the rice first, next time. Crunch, crunch.

The worst thing I ever did was a failed split-pea soup. It had been cooking for a couple of hours, and should have been ready, but still looked too watery. To try and improve it, I added a handful of rice, turned the stove off, and went out for the evening, thinking that the rice would simply absorb some of the excess water. What I didn't count on was the freaking micro-organisms that lived on the rice-- you gotta boil that stuff-- after a few hours, I came home and took the lid off the pot and was almost knocked over-- it smelled exactly like a big potful of puke. Live and learn.

(Maybe I have a genetic predisposition to fail to boil rice, now that I think of it..)

[Haywood]

My mom made the worlds worst fudge. The dog would run away from it. It was boiled for a few hours over high heat and then was poured out onto a plate. The plate always ended up in the freezer because the fudge would never set. The fudge she made was really chock full of sugar crystals held together with some kind of grease. She would never put in nuts but it always had clumps of coagulated grease spread throughout that looked like nuts to the uninitiated. We told her for years that she didn't have to go to all that trouble, we could buy fudge down at the candy shop. She told us she didn't want to cheat us our of her own fudge recipe. That plate of fudge never lasted very long. As soon as her back was turned my dad, brother and I were cutting out chunks and wrapping them in paper towels before we threw them in the trash.

[Guybud5]

This one insn't so much about a bad food as a hillarious name.

I had a friend that used to always cook hotdogs by frying them in a skillet on a bed of onions and worcestershire sauce.

THe name of this masterpiece: A Greenville Tube-Steak.

[Larry Mudd]

Guybud, Mr. Tube-Steak is ubiquitous up here. Love that logo.

[Master Wang-Ka]

Did you know that some of the wild turkeys the Pilgrims hunted for the first Thanksgiving were between fifty and sixty pounds? That amazed me when I read it; I didn't think North America had edible fowl that big south of Sesame Street. Even the domesticated kind you buy at the grocery can get up to thirty pounds. This is why, in late November and early December, so many meals across this great land are made up of a local dish called "holiday leftovers", whose main ingredient is turkey.

My friend Troll thought about that, and he wondered why nobody ever cooked turkey except for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Troll liked turkey just fine, and he suspected that between himself and his two roommates, twenty bucks would buy enough turkey to feed everyone for a couple of weeks -- but not long enough for everyone to get sick of it. I was one of those roommates, and listened to him wax eloquent about it. Troll's girlfriend Bubbles happened to be in the room, and advised against it; her mom had made turkey every Thanksgiving for years, and she had seen it to be a humongous undertaking.

The Troll disagreed. "It's not that big a thing," he said, "if the Pilgrims could do it without Teflon and microwaves. Your mom just thinks it's a big thing because she has to cook, serve, and clean up after two dozen people every November." With that, Troll promptly went out and bought a turkey. I don't remember what season it was, but it was definitely not the holidays -- I'm fairly sure it was, in fact, midsummer or so. Still, the stores had turkeys for sale.

When he got home with the bird, he promptly yelled for me. "How do we cook it?" he asked.

"Um," I replied. "How much does it weigh?"

Troll grinned. "Thirty pounds."

I stared at him for a minute. "Thirty pounds?"

"Biggest one I could find," he grinned. "Hey, I'm hungry!"

"Jesus Christ in a Bunny Suit... not too hungry, I hope," I said. "A turkey takes a long time to cook -- especially a big one."

Troll's face fell. "How long?"

"For a family-size bird, about three, four hours," I said. "This one looks more like a baby ostrich. You're looking at, like, five or six hours in the oven."

Troll frowned. "Well, fine. We'll do it tomorrow, then."

"Suits me," I said.

The next morning, Troll asked over breakfast how soon I thought we should start the turkey. "Do you have a roasting pan?" I responded.

Troll looked at me funny. "Roasting pan?"

"You know," I said. "It's a big sort of bathtub-shaped pot you put the turkey in, about four or five inches deep--"

"Can't we just, like, wrap it in foil or something?"

"Not unless you want to start a fire," I said, pointing at the bird. "Rodan, here, is full of ice and bird fat. Roasting him is going to make him sweat it all out, big-time. Unless you feel like putting out the fire, throwing the turkey away, and cleaning the oven, you want a roasting pan."

Troll responded with his favorite four-letter word, got his hat, and stormed out the door. He returned a while later with a disposable aluminum turkey pan and a folding roasting rack. "Will this do?" he growled.

"Did you check it for holes?" I asked. His eyes bugged a little; before he could say anything, I said, "Put it under the faucet and run a few inches of water in it. If it doesn't drip, it'll work." A gallon or so of water later, we found that the pan was unperforated. Smiling again, Troll went and got the turkey out of the fridge, to put it in the pan.

"Wait a minute," I said. "No way is that thing thawed yet."

"Huh?" said Troll. "It's been sitting in the fridge since yesterday afternoon!"

"Yeah, but that's a lot of bird. I'd leave it in the fridge another day or so."

"Dammit, Doc, if you'd just said something, I'd have left it in the sink--"

"--and given us all salmonella poisoning," I finished. "Better to let it thaw in the fridge."

Troll scowled, then cooled. "All right," he said. "We'll cook it tomorrow." He then glanced up at me and said, "We will cook it tomorrow, right? No more thawing, no more pans, no Sacred Turkey Dance, or anything?"

"Not a reason in the world we can't have that bird for supper tomorrow," I replied.

The next day, I made the mistake of asking if Troll had a meat thermometer.

Fortunately, I was able to tell him that we didn't exactly need to have one before he caught me.

When he'd cooled off, we set up the roasting rack in the pan, set the turkey on it, fired up the oven, stuck it in, and settled down to wait.

"How long?" Troll asked.

"Between seven and eight hours."

"Wow," he said, lighting a cigarette. "Is there anything we need to do between now and then?"

"Well," I said, "You'll need to baste it."

"Baste?" he said, mystified.

"Every half hour or so, you open the oven door, dish up some of the juice in the pan, and pour it back over and around the turkey. Keeps the meat juicy. Ever had turkey that was too dry?"

"Oh, okay," he said, puffing on his cigarette. "Sounds like a plan. What do you say we make an event of it?"

"Mmm?"

"Well, there's you, me, and Bobo. I can call Bubbles over, and Crazy Jane, and ..."

Before long, the place was full of people. Well, not full -- no more than seven, I'm sure. Still, we were all there, and before long Bobo broke out the cards, and soon the Thanksgiving In July was in full swing. At length, I retired to my room to study.

Until the smoke alarm went off.

I jumped; until then, I wasn't even aware that we had a smoke alarm. All three of us were smokers, and between Bobo's cigars and the pipe I sometimes smoked, the place had often been sort of opium-den'ish. Or at least I thought so until I opened the bedroom door.

I couldn't see anything! It was as if someone had built a wall right outside my bedroom door -- a wall covered with dirty gray cotton. The only thing missing was a subtitle reading LONDON 1898. I could still hear the thin electronic squeal of the smoke alarm, though. In the distance, I saw movement, and heard a woman shout.

"Hey!" I yelled, my voice a little shaky. "Is the house on fire, or did Troll do something weird with the turkey?"

From off in the distance, I heard the oven door clang open, followed by Troll's favorite four-letter word. I took this as a sign of relative safety, and strolled into the foggy evening. From the living room, I heard Bobo call my name.

"Yeah?" I replied.

"Doc! Dammit! I'm getting the front door! Dammit! Troll's putting out the bird! Dammit! You get the $*#&$%@ smoke alarm an' make it shut up!"

I tried, and collided with one of our guests. Together, we followed the sound to its source. Working together, we managed to climb up, yank the thing off the wall, fail to figure out how to turn it off or yank the battery, and finally, we beat it to death with a baseball bat and a golf club. As we did so, the air cleared, which helped us to see the thing as we took turns whacking it.

And, at the end, the turkey remained edible. It turned out Troll had gotten tired of basting it, and in order to save time, he'd pulled the bird out, removed the roasting rack, and set the turkey down directly in the pan, partially immersed in its own juices. "That way," he thought, "it'll baste itself while we play cards."

I explained to him while we ate that this would have made turkey soup, not roast turkey -- and what started the fire?

"No fire," he said with his mouth full. Swallowing, he continued, "I accidentally poked a little bitty hole in the pan when I put the turkey back in it. It started a slow drip going, and when the puddle reached the heating element in the bottom of the oven, it started to burn. No fire, just lots of smoke."

"Incidentally saving the turkey from a soggy grave," I added.

"Nice smoky flavor, too," chuckled Bobo. "I have to admit, this is pretty good. What did you stuff it with?"

"Huh?" said Troll.

"What did you make the stuffing with?" I rephrased.

"Huh?" said Troll.

"The stuffing, dipstick, the stuffing!" laughed Bobo. "What-did-you-stuff-the-turkey-with?"

"Oh," said Troll. "I didn't have to stuff it. It wasn't empty."

[DeadlyAccurate]

While I can't beat Wang-Ka's hilarious story, I do have a couple of bad cook incidents. One was me. I was trying to make eggrolls, only I ground everything so fine that it looked like this hideous purple mush. The other was my husband. He tried to make fish stew. He thought some okra would be nice in there. You know what okra does when it gets overcooked? It gets slimy. We still joke about that slimy fish stew.

[TVeblen]

I'm omnivorous (with the sole exception of chicken liver) and love trying new foods. Moreover, my Depression-era parents inculcated me with a deep respect for food as nurturance, and the rigid demands of hospitality. Which is a highfalutin' way of saying that simply being offered food is a gift to be respected.

That said, one (dear) friend was simply a dire cook. Some people have a tin ear; she had a tin mouth. She wasn't anorexic but just plain didn't give a whoop about food. It was all just interchangeable fuel. But she had a generous heart and good will so she tried to make stuff for friends, just hadn't the faintest clue how.

Her worst: frozen chicken breasts, nuked for about 2 minutes then topped with 1 small packet of Italian salad dressing that came with a salad she'd bought years ago and hadn't eaten. The meat was rubbery white for 1/4" on the outside, bloody ice crystals on the inside, and sweating in pools of hot, rancid dressing.

Now, chix breasts w/ assorted quickie flavorings can be damned good eatin', if done right. She had the theory down right, but execution doesn't begin to describe the results. Fortunately, she cheerfully offered to make some popcorn when nobody could do more than pick, horrified, at the chicken.

Veb

[JohnT]

summarizing my wife's misadventures in the kitchen and I was going to call it My Wife's Cookies: A Recipe for Disaster. Pun intended. It's probably better this way.

Mrs. JohnT doesn't cook. Her idea of a complex meal is one where she has to co-ordinate the cooking of peas in the microwave with the cooking of pasta on the stove so we can feed the baby - Mommy eats a bunch of frozen dinners and Daddy fends for himself. Many of the local restaraunts know us by name.

My wife was invited to a cookie exchange party, where she was supposed to bake some cookies and bring some dough so more can be baked at the party. Mrs. JohnT has NEVER attempted anything as complicated as cookies before - why, her one attempt to grill some cheese sandwiches had 3 severe, "you-can't-cook-it-this-way" flaws alone!

Party is at 11:00am. Supplies are bought and laid out Friday afternoon, recipe is from the 'net, hand-written because the printer is broken. JohnT comes home from work, volunteers to help wife bake cookies that evening: she refuses. Uh-oh, I can see the signs already - this is going to be some big life-struggle that will either end in sobbing or, if things work out, relieved tension.

So, I retire to the living room, spending the next couple of hours with Sophie. No progress is made on cookies. Sophie is put to bed (8:00pm), parents retire to bedroom to watch TV, no progress is made on cookies.

Saturday morning arrives and I get up around 7:30 to take care of Little Miss so Mommy can get ready for the party and bake her cookies. I see that Mrs. JohnT is hungry, so I offer to go to BK and pick up some croissan'wiches/Cini-mini's, which she gratefully accepted. So baby and I make an 8:30 trip to BK while my wife starts on her cookies. And the disaster begins

Now, apparently, the recipe required shortening (Crisco). My wife, in her concern for living the healthy life, decided that shortening would be too fattening to put in her cookies so she wasn't going to have any in hers. Mistake #1. As you can imagine, the mixture wasn't doing too well, especially coupled with mistake #2:

We have electric beaters and a couple of mixing bowls. Mrs. JohnT somehow thought that mixing it by hand would be easier and faster. I have no idea where she got this idea, but have it she did. Worse, she had the batter in a couple of measuring cups, trying to stir in them, which was really mistake #3 because...

Did I mention that Mrs. JohnT has a bit of the OCD, especially regarding cleanliness and germs? Imagine her joy when clumps, big and small, of a mixture of sugar, raw eggs, butter, milk, and flour starting flying around the kitchen when she begins mixing. Then, of course, the dogs have to get in the act by eating what's landing on the floor, so they get banished to the bedroom. She then tries to mix, but it is no good: something is not right with the batter - she knows this. So she tries harder, getting more frustrated.

This is what I came home to when I returned from BK 20 minutes later: my poor wife in tears, torn between cleaning the kitchen and making the cookie dough, the dogs in jail for the mere crime of being dogs, the baby BANNED from a 1/3rd of the house (it's a small one-story detached home), and the clock ticking, ticking until the party, with her still needing a shower etc.

So I put the baby in her playpen, much to her displeasure, calmed down Mrs. JohnT while helping to clean up the kitchen (which wasn't really all that dirty, I mean, my God, our house is always neater and more organized than those we visit). I got on the phone, looking at the Yellow Book for bakeries and started calling those around us. Gotcha! A bakery that sells Christmas cookies by the dozen, and not only that, they'll go ahead and sell some dough/sprinkles for another 24 cookies.

We got a tupperware bowl for the dough, and she was ready to get ready for the party. She gave me a hug and thanked me and asked what was wrong with the dough. I said, "I don't know, but you shouldn't have waited until the last minute to do something you've never done before."

[Quasimodem]

My late mother's German dishes were excellent, but she never learned to make cornbread. I think she must have left out whatever it is that makes it moist, because We needed lots of iced tea to wash the stuff down.

Even the dogs turned up their noses at it, and wouldn't eat it until they knew they weren't getting anything else any better from our table.

Once I went out in the yard and looked into one of the dog's dishes which contained some cornbread. It was raining and the rainwater was beading up on the cornbread! My dad and I had a good laugh over it!

Quasi

[Apricot]

My grandmother is a notoriously bad cook. Her worst dish? Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. She knows I like cheese, so she added some more shredded cheese, just for me. Only she added it to the boiling water, and proceded as directed. It was very crunchy.

[Osakadave]

There was the night I came home drunk and decided to cook up a packed lunch for work the next day. Umeboshi (Japanese pickled plum) sauce fried rice sounded really good at the time...

[LouisB]

Wang-Ka is the absolute, hands-down winner. Great story.

My mother's mother died when my mother was sixteen, leaving my mother to cook for her father and brother. During her learning cycle, she ran across a recipe for coffee pie, which called for three cups of coffee. Being somewhat literal minded, she ground coffee beans until she had the required three cups of coffee, which she used to make the pie. Her father and brother talked about it until their respective deaths.

The first thing I ever cooked all by myself was bacon, for a BLT. I couldn't locate any grease/oil/lard to cook the bacon in, so I melted butter and cooked the bacon in that. Only bacon I ever had that slid down.

[Miss Mapp]

An old housemate of mine, who was generally a pretty good cook, once tried to make pea soup from scratch. She used dried whole (not split) peas, which did not soften no matter how long she cooked them.

Mmm... pale green pebble soup!

[Master Wang-Ka]

EXPERIMENTAL QUESO

(Queso: Spanish: Means cheese. Tex-Mex: Means Chile Con Queso, or Cheese Dip with Salsa In It)

I used to have a roommate back in the dorms who ate five meals a day, triple portions, and was skinny as a rail. No kidding. This guy would get hungry at ten o'clock at night and want to go eat at Pic-A-Taco, and want me to come along -- he hated eating alone -- and he'd order the Muy-Macho-Caballero Plate and I'd sit and eat free chips and his little bowl of chili con queso, which for all you north Texans out there, means chilies with cheese, or for all you Yankees out there, means cheese dip with salsa in it.

It occurs to me that perhaps Yankees are unacquainted with the concept of "free chips". In many restaurants, the waiter makes a habit of bringing you a glass of water you didn't order and don't intend to drink, right? Well, in Texas, in all the better Mexican restaurants, they do this as well... but they also bring you a basket of tortilla chips and a bowl of salsa to nosh on while you wait for the food you DID order... like in Alabama, or Mississippi, where if you go in a restaurant and order anything before noon, they'll bring you a glass of water and a bowl of grits (that you didn't order). It's a touch I've always liked, and when I first ventured north of Dallas, I was disappointed to find that the custom wasn't universal...

Anyway, I developed a real taste for queso, and one day in the dorms, I thought it would be great to have some chips and queso for dinner. I went to the grocery store -- the chips were easy enough to find, but there didn't seem to be any queso. When I asked a clerk, he told me where to find the Velveeta.

I grew up with individually wrapped American Cheese slices, and had no idea what to do with Velveeta bricks. For lack of any other ideas, I bought one and took it back to my room. My roommate liked chips and queso too, but he had no more idea than I did how to turn a brick of Velveeta into a hot bowl of queso.

Turns out we would've been better off spending the money at a restaurant. Dinner that night was chips alone, spread with what remained of the Velveeta. For several years after that, when the whim struck me and I had some coins in my pocket, I'd try to make queso. I finally hit on a recipe that worked in late '86. I'd also learned some things you shouldn't do while trying to make queso.

!!! Don't drop the Velveeta brick or any portions thereof into a deep fryer -- getting them back out, much less into the bowl, is something of a chore. We did, however, independently discover how to make fried cheese sticks this way, by dipping the Velveeta chunks in batter before tossing into the fryer.

!!! Use of a pressure cooker will not get you queso, though it will provide a rather interestingly-flavored cheese soup. Add chopped broccoli for a totally different recipe.

!!! Queso is difficult, if not impossible, to make over a fire. Fire is usually a pretty reliable sign that you're doing something wrong.

!!! Do not in any way involve a microwave oven. While experimenting with generic cheese -- artificial Velveeta, if you will -- a block of the stuff detonated after nine minutes on the HIGH setting with enough force to tear the door off the microwave. Furthermore, generic 'Veeta often gets hard instead of melting; from then until the day we moved out, there was cheese shrapnel embedded in the wall across the kitchen from the microwave.

!!! Know your jalapenos. Some are mild and sweet, some are hot and tangy, and some can corrode the paint off a battleship with their odor alone.

Required:

small saucepan

1/2 cup water or milk

1 or 1-1/2 cup picante sauce, thick and chunky, mild to spicy, depending on your taste

1/2 brick Velveeta or a whole brick if you're using one of the little bricks -- DO NOT use the generic or off-brand kind, as these sometimes get hard or clump together when you heat them, and they sometimes don't make smooth queso. Fat Free Velveeta works fine, and the Nacho Cheese flavor adds a zesty note, if you like it. Cheez Whiz will work, but is considerably more expensive...

plain tortilla chips (the Lime & Chile flavor are good, too)

OPTIONAL: 1 can of chili, chili with beans, or chili hot dog sauce.

OPTIONAL: 1 lb. ground beef, browned

(IF YOU DON'T HAVE PICANTE, you'll need an 8 oz. can of tomato sauce, and 1/2 cup each of diced tomatoes, onions, and green chiles of some kind -- jalapenos will do, if you like it hot. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 10 min. It isn't picante, but it'll make your queso taste about right. I generally use Pace Thick & Chunky, myself.)

Put the stove on low heat and put the picante or picante-mix, whatever you're using, in the pan with the milk or water. If you're using milk, stir it from time to time and be sure it doesn't scorch.

While it heats up, run the cheese thru the grater or chop it into coarse little chunks. When the stuff in the pot gets pretty hot, start adding the cheese, a handful at a time. Stir it in until it melts away. Add more cheese. Stir. Keep doing this until you run out of cheese or it's the right color and consistency -- bright pale orange, and almost so thick you can't pour it. If you add chili, do that now. If you add meat, brown it and crumble it into taco meat first, then add as the queso gets creamy. Adding meat and/or chili turns it from a snack or side dish into a real meal.

You can reheat the stuff, but be sure to add a little milk or water to the hardened queso before cooking; it burns easily if you don't.

Simple, no?

[DeadlyAccurate]

Actually, Wang-ka, I make Ro-tel dip all the time in the microwave. I've never had a problem, but you have to microwave it a little while, stir, microwave again, stir, etc. until it's completely mixed up. And you should pour the Ro-tel in when you first start melting the cheese.

(For those who've never had it, Ro-tel dip is a can of Ro-tel tomatoes & green chiles and Velveeta, melted and mixed together. It's similar to Wang-ka's queso dip above. The milk is optional, but it does make for a smoother, creamier cheese dip. Oh, and adding hamburger meat is yummy. For more artery-clogging goodness, add a pint of sour cream to the mix after it's melted.)

[Master Wang-Ka]

Ah, so.

Deadly has found a flaw in my recipe. Quite right, too... it IS possible to use a microwave... but it was quite some time before I was brave enough to try.

I'll NEVER forget the horrible sharp flatulent sound that brick of Velveeta made when it exploded, or the horrible rending sound the microwave door made when it flew off the microwave, bounced off the kitchen door, and clattered limply to the floor.

We never got our security deposit back on that apartment, either...

[slortar]

My grandmother once accidentally used sugar instead of flour when making battered fish. Mmmm...sweet, sticky fish cakes...

[gallows fodder]

Originally posted by Cervaise
Related book (a great gift idea for anybody scrounging around at the last minute; it's hilarious).

Bless your heart! I was looking for that book as a gift for my uncle (who has made more than a few frightening dishes in his time), but I couldn't remember the title or the author. Thanks for the link!

[Lute Skywatcher]

Originally posted by Haywood
The plate always ended up in the freezer because the fudge would never set.

Same thing happened to me when I tried making fudge with Splenda. Evidently, though it's made from sugar it doesn't act like sugar. I decided something was wrong when I noticed that the teperature on the candy thermometer started going down. That's when I took the fudge off the stove to cool, but it didn't cool enough to really set until I put it in the freezer overnight. It actually turned out pretty good, just a bit sticky and I ended up with about half as much as the recipe stated.

[cards]

My wife is not the main cook in our household, so when she does venture into the realm of dinner prep, we need to be prepared for occasionally hazardous results.

She is a CPA and after tax season a few years ago had some time off and decided to cook while I was at work. Fried chicken based on her mother’s recipe. At the same time we were rehabbing an older two-story home. Being an efficient accountant, she decided to brown the chicken on the stove in the afternoon and finish it off when I got home. After the chicken was browned, she would work on reglazing an upstairs window.

She is working on the window from the outside on top of the porch roof, when she hears a beeping noise she at first attributes to some construction equipment down the street. Soon, however, smoke is roiling out the second story window. Instead of climbing down and calling the FD, she goes back into the house, down the stairs and into the kitchen, where amidst the smoke she sees the fire on top of the stove. Ignoring the $35 fire extinguisher I purchased for just such an occasion, she picks up the squirt hose from the sink and proceeds to put the fire out. Water on an electric stove. Then calls the FD. Then gets advice from the firemen that should she wish to fight fires in the future she should get some training. And when cooking with oil it is better to remove the pan from the electric burner and turn off said burner. Having survived with no burns, electrical shock or smoke inhalation she proceeds to call her mother.

I am blissfully unaware of the entire episode until I arrive home. We have been married a few years, so I was pleasantly surprised when she comes bounding out the back door to greet me before I even get out of the car. She opens my car door and quickly announces “you can’t yell at me!” Uh oh. Then my insurance agent walks out of the back door with a beer in his hand, kind of smirking. Big sinking feeling. Several thousand dollars and a few months later, a remodeled kitchen and dinning room.

Whenever she decides to do some home improvement in our latest house, she asks me if I want her to fry some chicken.

[Cervaise]

I think Wang-Ka has a bright future here on the boards.

[tramp]

One of the delicacies of the Penn State dining commons was "Tuscan Pasta" which was macaroni with BBQ sauce all over it.

[Lute Skywatcher]

Originally posted by tramp
One of the delicacies of the Penn State dining commons was "Tuscan Pasta" which was macaroni with BBQ sauce all over it.

BBQ & noodles can be good.

King Street Blues
Six Way BBQ Noodles $8.95
Macaroni Springs topped with Cheddar Jack Cheese, Onions, Tomatoes, Sour Cream & Scallions and Choice of Chicken or Pork BBQ.

[Master Wang-Ka]

The night I met the Gorilla sticks out in my mind, when it comes to cooking stories.

I'd met his roommate, Max, at the place I worked at the time, and Max had suggested we all get together for dinner. He mentioned that his roommate would make dinner, and since everyone had heard about my insane videotape collection, perhaps I could bring some videos?

It sounded good to me. About then... the phone rang.

I picked it up. A crazy high pitched voice screamed and jibbered at me. I recognized Max's name though. "It's for you... I think," I said, handing Max the phone.

Max looked at me funny, and took the phone. He listened for a minute, and his face showed shock. "Holy CRAP!" he cried. "That was Gorilla! My house is on fire! We've got to get over there, NOW!"

And Max ran out the door.

I followed, stopping to lock the front door, and to ponder why Max had a gorilla, and how it had gotten my phone number.

We ran through the darkened evening streets. In the distance, I heard sirens, of fire engines to come. Max was a skinny little bugger, and I had to run hard to keep him in sight. Fortunately, he didn't live more than a few blocks from my place. He ran into a complex of apartment buildings, and into a little breezeway between two buildings... and stopped cold.

When I caught up with him, I saw why. The pavement was covered with broken glass. This one apartment faced into the breezeway, and the two large windows flanking the front door had blown out. Max stood there in shock. Plainly, this was his apartment. Cautiously, I stepped into the breezeway. The front door was standing wide open, which may have saved it from being blasted off the hinges.

About then, a hairy man wearing a towel ran out into the breezeway. "Max!" he cried. "It's okay! It's all right! I-- YEAAARGH!"

Seizing his foot, he hopped backwards into the apartment. He was barefoot. I guess he hadn't noticed all the broken glass.

Max and I cautiously stepped forward, and peered into the open window. The apartment did not appear to be on fire. Nothing was burning. There were no soot marks or black smears, or anything to indicate that it had been on fire. I noticed the aquarium sitting on the breakfast bar was shattered, though. I also didn't see any gorilla. I did smell a strong odor of burnt hair, though. Was that it? Had they been meaning to serve the gorilla for dinner, and it had somehow managed to escape? That still didn't explain how it had gotten my phone number, though...

Meanwhile, the hairy man continued to hop around the living room holding his foot. His towel fell off. He was naked. He fell down behind the couch, and I saw him no longer.

About then, the fire department showed up. It seems someone had reported a fire. Did we know anything about it?

Max and I couldn't tell them anything.

About then, the hairy man emerged from behind the couch, firmly wrapped in his towel again, and limping slightly. Yes, he was the one who'd reported the fire. He was also the one who'd called my house.

Meanwhile, the firemen, in full firefighting gear, had spread through the apartment, looking for signs of fire. One noticed that one wall of the kitchen had scorch marks on it. He also noticed a twisted cylindrical thing on the kitchen floor. It looked like an exploded bombshell to me. What the %$#@ HAD these crazy people been meaning to serve me for supper?

About then, the hairy man began to explain himself... and the story fell into place:
****************************************************
Gorilla had set up a dinner date with his girlfriend and his roommate that evening. His roommate had mentioned that he worked with this guy who had every videotape ever released, and what say we invite him, and ask him to bring some videos? Gorilla was agreeable, and Max had set out on foot to my place. Meanwhile, Gorilla had showered, and begun dinner.

Dinner was a sort of open faced sandwich thing with chicken breasts and molten mozzerella that Gorilla called "Atomic Chicken". It involved careful baking at medium temperatures. Gorilla was running back and forth between the kitchen and the bathroom, dressed only in his Fruit Of The Looms, trying to get cleaned and shaved and coiffed and make dinner at the same time. At one point, he was shaving himself by the reflection in the chrome parts of the stove. Kitchen utensils and hygiene supplies were scattered throughout the kitchen. He put on a pot of green beans to cook, and then went back to the bathroom to find his toothbrush.

While he was in there, he heard an explosion in the kitchen.

He ran back in... to find the kitchen in flames.

The entire north wall was ablaze. The stove was wrapped in flame. The kitchen was an inferno.

Gorilla stood there, goggling at it. What the fuck? He'd only been gone two seconds. How the hell does a fire this huge start in two seconds?

About then, a tiny part of his mind interrupted his ponderings to point out that his house was on fire, and to suggest that he do something about it.

Um... okay. How does one put a fire out? Water! You put water on it!

Gorilla ran to the sink, and turned on the water. It ran ineffectually out of the faucet into the sink. He began grabbing handfuls of it and throwing it at the burning wall. It didn't seem to do much good. Was the fire SPREADING? Man, this wasn't WORKING! How ELSE did one put out a fire?

Um... well... you BEAT it out!

Gorilla ran to the wall and began slapping at it. VERY briefly. He then jerked back sharply to blow on his newly hairless knuckles to cool them. Plainly, barehanded wasn't going to work. What else was there to beat the fire out with? He cast around him for a dishtowel, a blanket, SOMETHING--

Nothing.

Desperate, he yanked off his tighty whities and frantically began trying to beat the fire out with them. He whacked the fire three or four times without much visible affect. On the fifth swing, he realized that his underwear was on fire, and let go of them to keep from getting burned.

After that, he decided to just stop doing anything and stand there and scream for a while. After several good screams, he felt a little better, but his house was still on fire, and now he was naked.

What else did one do when the house was on fire?

CALL THE FIRE DEPARTMENT!

He ran into the living room, grabbed the phone, and dialed 911, and yammered his address into it, adding "FIRE! FIRE! HAAAALLLPPP!!! before he slammed the phone down again. About then, it occurred to him that perhaps he should tell his roommate about this. He saw, on the notepad next to the phone, "Am at Doc's, 555-6431", so he called my place, and screamed at Max that the house was on fire.

Oddly enough, having successfully DONE something about it, he felt better, and lit a cigarette, and waited for the fire department to arrive. He took a drag, and glanced into the burning kitchen.

...and realized that he was sitting on his butt, naked, in a burning house. He was in actual physical danger.

His mouth dropped open, and his cigarette fell out of it.

Into his crotch.

I should probably point out that Gorilla was so rattled he hadn't hung up the phone. Max was still standing there, listening to nothing. Suddenly, Gorilla began screaming, and Max was convinced that his roommate and bosom buddy was burning to death, and that's when Max shouted at me and pelted out my front door.

Well, yeah, Gorilla WAS burning alive, just not quite the way Max thought.

Meanwhile, Gorilla had retrieved his smoke, and ran again into the burning kitchen. What the hell? What to do? It would take the fire department too LONG, what was he going to DO--

...and his eyes fell upon the fire extinguisher hanging in its little bracket, next to the stove.

I wasn't there, of course. I can only imagine the look on Gorilla's face. It must have looked exactly like in the movie Army Of Darkness, where Ash is facing the horrible undead monster in the pit... and suddenly, someone throws him his chainsaw.

Gorilla seized the fire extinguisher with alacrity... and burned himself on the hot metal. It hadn't been IN the fire, but close enough long enough to heat up significantly. He dropped it.

It landed on his toe.

He hopped around screaming and cursing for a few seconds, all the time he could afford, and then grabbed the thing again. It was still too hot, but by Ghod, he was going to put the fire out. He grabbed the handle, aimed it at the fire, and squeezed the trigger.

Nothing happened.

He squeezed again. Nothing.

After that, he went a little nuts, and began beating the extinguisher against the burning wall, weeping and crying and screaming and cursing the evil rotten appliance that had so failed him and refused to put out the fire.

About then, he noticed that there was a tag hanging on the extinguisher. Of COURSE! Read the INSTRUCTIONS! He quickly backed away from the fire, and took the tag in hand to read it.

The tag was on fire.

Screaming and howling, he tore the tag away and slapped out the flames. Too late. It was unreadable.

At that point, he jumped up and down screaming, ready to break the damn extinguisher over SOMETHING--

--when he noticed the little ring/pin thingy sticking out of the trigger assembly. It was intended to prevent accidental discharge. Gorilla immediately slipped a finger through the ring and yanked--

--and it stopped. It was held onto the extinguisher by a little plastic loop, the same one the tag had been hanging on.

Gorilla yanked again, HARD. Nothing. It was too tough. It wouldn't give or break.

Screaming and shrieking and howling like the damned, Bob PULLED--

--and the cord broke. The ring came free. Gorilla flung it across the room. The extinguisher was in hand now. The pin was gone. NOTHING would stop him from raining foamy death upon the enemy flames! And Gorilla spun around to face the burning wall and squeezed the trigger--

...the wall wasn't on fire.

Gorilla let go of the trigger. He stood there and goggled.

The wall was not on fire.

Gorilla stood there some more. He stared. The wall was not on fire. The wall HAD BEEN on fire, but now was NOT. What the hell was this? How does a fire go from nothing to Firestorm in two seconds, and then from Inferno to nonexistence in two seconds? The wall wasn't charred. Nothing seemed damaged.

Had... had there actually BEEN any fire? Was Gorilla losing his MIND?

He stepped forward ... cautiously... and put his hand on the wall.

The wall was hot, hotter than it should have been, but not so hot that you'd think it had been burning. Hey, there were scorch marks, up near the ceiling! Gorilla felt the stove, and nearly burned himself on the hot metal.

Plainly, the wall HAD BEEN on fire... but now ... was NOT.

A flicker of flame caught his attention! Dammit, the evil sneaky rotten fire had MOVED! It had OUTFLANKED HIM! He spun around, extinguisher at the ready!

A thin tailing of smoke and the stench of burnt vinyl flooring rose from a little white mound. Gorilla's underwear was still on fire, where he had dropped them. Gorilla pointed the extinguisher, squeezed the trigger. The extinguisher worked fine, and killed the little flame immediately.

About then, he heard sirens, and someone screaming his name, nearby. Gorilla abruptly remembered that he was naked. He ran into the bathroom, to get a towel...

...and that was where we came in.

The firemen were mystified. The wall did have scorch marks, and SOMETHING, some sort of sudden thermal effect, had blown out the windows and shattered the aquarium... but what the heck was it? The firemen were quite knowledgeable about house fires, arson, and such. They knew any NUMBER of things that would cause a wall to burst into flames suddenly... but NONE that would suddenly vanish, leaving only traces of scorch instead of total destruction. What the hell?

About then, one of the firemen picked up the exploded bombshell looking thing. He looked it over, and then called Gorilla over.

It had once been a can of hair spray. "Where did you leave this last, before the explosion?" the fire chief asked.

Turned out he'd been doing his hair and shaving, all at the same time, right there on the stove, in the reflection off the chrome. He'd left the hairspray right on top of the stove. It had heated up and exploded, hosing the entire stove and the wall with wet hairspray, which had then ignited off the heat from the burner with the saucepan on it.

Fortunately, this particular brand hairspray didn't BURN real hot, apparently. It hadn't ignited the ceiling (although it had scorched it pretty well) or the drywall. The only things it really COULD ignite were flammables like clothing and paper... and when the fuel had burned out, the fire had simply vanished. Luckily for Gorilla.

The fire marshal gave Gorilla a nasty lecture about flammables and kitchen appliances. Gorilla stood there, head bobbing, yes-sir-no-sir-three-bags-full-sir, and took it. Max and I examined the rest of the apartment. Max mourned the loss of his beloved fish. Finally, the firemen left.

Gorilla staggered to the couch and lit another cigarette, to steady his shattered nerves. Max and I sat down with him. Man, what a night...

About then, a sort of thin, distant, grinding, shrieking noise was heard from the kitchen.

Gorilla about had a conniption fit, right there. WHAT THE HELL NOW?!?!

I leaped to my feet, ready to flee. This place was DANGEROUS!!!

Max leaped to his feet, too... but then walked into the kitchen, toward the source of the sound.

It was the somewhat melted, damaged but still functional, kitchen timer.

Dinner was ready.