Cooking mishaps

Cafe Society
21

Strangely, all of my cooking disasters involve 1) milk and 2) my mother.

Some weeks back, at my mother’s request I was preparing tapioca pudding from scratch for a Sunday gathering. I forgot that I had doubled the recipe when it came time to add the milk, though, and so added what the recipe had originally called for. It turned out perfectly tasty, but it was extremely thick. Like tapioca paste.

Then, there was the time when I was eight years old. I was at my cousin’s house and we decided to “experiment” in the kitchen. We filled up a big tumbler with the last of the milk from the fridge, then added maple syrup and cinnamon to it. I can’t remember if it was good or not at this point, but we stuck the glass in the fridge and wandered off to play. My aunt and mother were unaware of what we’d done, however, and when they went to cook dinner discovered there was no more milk left for the mashed potatoes. My mother was a resourceful woman, though, so simply took the glass of milk that someone had left in the fridge. Those were…unfortunately flavored mashed potatoes.

And then there was when I was four years old. My mother had made lunch for me and made me stop sipping the can of Sprite I’d had to eat it. I was told that I had to finish my lunch and the big glass of whole milk to go with it before I could have my Sprite. Being resourceful in the exact same way my mother is, I decided to make this easier on myself by mixing the Sprite and milk while my mother was out of the room. I’m not sure how long it took for her to return, but I was sobbing and begging her to pleasepleaseplease not make me keep drinking the milk. The Sprite and milk didn’t mix very well, so it was sort of separated and just trying to remember the flavor now makes me gag.

22

“Don’t drink the milk! It’s spoiled!” - Spanky McFarland.

23

In Junior High Home-Ec, we learned how to make omelettes. These soon became my specialty and Mom and Dad always requested them on special occasions. One Christmas morning, I made them, as usual and, after taking one bite, my Mom said, “Oh, these are interesting,” (momcode for, boy these suck!) Turns out Mom had made eggnog and just poured it into the empty milk carton without telling anyone. I used the “milk” to make my, now infamous, omelette.

24

I am not a good cook though most of my endeavors don’t turn out to be disasters.

Back when I was in college and still living at home, I was taking a cookie sheet out of the oven with pot holders. The one in my right hand was slick and I bobbled the whole thing. I wound up dropping the whole sheet and the pot holder.

The cookie sheet landed on the floor with a crash. The pot holder landed … inside the oven… on the element… that was still on. Pot holders catch on fire surprisingly quickly. I turned off the oven and fished the pot holder out with some BBQ tongs. The kitchen smelled horrible for days.

More recently (and thankfully more boring), I was trying out a spiced potatoes recipe for the first time and it called for cayenne pepper but did not specify the amount. I sprinkled some on. Then a bit more. Cooked it some. Added more. Cooked some more. Another dash. Finished cooking. Top it off with a little more just to make sure. I’m glad neither my wife nor I have breathing problems. These potatoes were melt-your-face-off hot.

Since then, my wife has written “RESPECT THE CAYENNE!” on the recipe card.

25

Well, now that is not a cooking mishap. That is cooking sabotage, and it serves her right. Too bad she took the rest of the family with her.

26

Add another to the list of folks to have pyrex explode into many brilliant pieces. When I first moved out to my own apartment, I attempted to make some chicken gravy in the same pyrex dish that I had cooked the chicken in. I knew that pyrex was oven safe, but had no idea that it wasn’t cook-top safe.

Unfortunately, I missed one piece on the floor when I cleaned it up. I found it a few weeks later when it embedded itself into my right ring finger. Not having insurance at the time, I waited a while (a few days) before trying to remove it… once I was properly anesthetized (self anesthesia via ethanol) I pulled it out, to discover it was a neat dagger shape, 3/8" long, and 1/4" wide. I’m very happy to have learned the lesson, and also to have grown up, gotten a better job, and insurance (professional removal would have been best).

27

The last time my mother was pregnant she ate a fair amount of boiled chicken breasts. Being the helpful son I often prepared them for her. All was well until the one time I put on the water, put the chicken in and then forgot about it.

When I returned home some hours later there was so much smoke that it looked like the house was on fire.

28

I loved your Hello Kitty cake!! I would cry with joy if someone took the time to make one for me.

I have become a pretty decent cook through lots of trial and error. In the early days I set off many a smoke alarm from cooking things on high heat, because they would cook faster that way, you know?? I’ve burned pots of boiling potatoes, macaroni and spaghetti. Now I’ve discovered the beauty of a kitchen timer so the batteries in my smoke alarm last longer!!

29

Reminds me of the time my mother put leftover potato soup in a container normally used for orange juice. My father was in the habit of drinking juice right from the container. Cured him of that forever. The bonus was that he had to clean up the vomit in the sink (he thought the “juice” had gone bad).

30

Egg nog and eggs just don’t mix. I learned that the hard way when I intentionally added some to scrambled eggs. I’m still not sure what I was thinking.

I was still new at cooking dinner for the family when I was in high school and decided to mix up a batch of pasta fagioli. I was new enough at cooking that I didn’t know how to cook pasta. What I did know was that pasta fagioli benefits from long, low simmering. What I did not know was that the pasta itself does NOT benefit from simmering for two hours. The pasta fagioli had the texture of wall paper paste (if wall paper paste had chick peas in it).

31

My first attempt at Mac and Cheese at the age of 12 was a disaster. I boiled the water, put the noodles in, things were going great until I decided to put the butter milk and cheese mix into the water before I drained the noodles. Talk about a disgusting mess. My mom had to throw out the pan because the boiled mixture decided to cement itself to the bottom of the pan.

I’m also good at forgetting when I have something baking in the oven on occasion. Always desserts too. Could this be my body’s way of telling me I need to can it with the sweet stuff?

32

I was dating a diabetic man, and decided that for Valentine’s Day, I’d find a sugarless cheesecake recipe and make it for him. I found one in a diabetic cookbook and happily set to work.

It was only when I took it out of the oven and saw the burned skin on the top that I realized something had gone horribly wrong. I skimmed the skin off and saw that the center wasn’t fully cooked and had an odd, though mild, odor.

Long story short, I’d put in two TABLESPOONS of lemon juice, instead of two TEASPOONS of lemon juice, and the thing had curdled in the oven while “cooking.”

The intended recipient insisted on taking a taste of it, despite the explanation. An hour later, he said, “I can STILL taste that.”

33

I’m a really cook self-taught cook, so good, in fact, that a friend of mine who’s a professional chef occasionally calls me in to help out at the 4-star restaurant where she works to fill in when they’re short handed.

That said, I should never be allowed in the kitchen until I have an adequate amount of coffee in my system, and never in the dim morning light.

Just the other morning I went to put together lunch for myself to eat at work.

I’ll often make a rich tuna salad, but Monday I was feeling lazy and decided to just throw together a packet of tuna with some black pepper and rice vinegar.

I emptied the tuna into the Tupperware (placing the requisite offering to my cat on the floor) and reached into the cupboard for my baggie of hand ground black pepper. I took my regular three finger pinch and started rubbing my fingertips back and forth to sprinkle it into the dish.

“Hmmm,” I thought, “that feels way too smooth.” Mental lightbulb kicks on.

Rather than black pepper, I’d grabbed the baggie of ras el hanout. Ras el hanout is a mutli-spice mixture used in North African cooking, with lots of different things like cumin, cinnamon, corriander, chili powder and about 10 other ingredients.

Since this was my last tuna pack, I immediately aborted the sprinkling, added a metric load of pepper and vinegar and hoped it would at least be something I could choke down. I’d just brushed my teeth so I couldn’t really test it.

It wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d expected, but it’s certainly something I never want to eat again.

34

Let me start out by saying I was deep frying. Right now several of you are already getting the idea. I’ll go on to say this was the day I almost murdered my brother.

Now I’d say I’m a reasonably skilled amateur cook: I’ve had injuries and I’ve had fires but I’ve learned. I had all my supplies ready, all my safety tools, and I was making fish and chips and showing my adult brother how to do it. So I gave him the safety speech, pointed out the risks and where my safety equipment was and got started.

Well once I had done the first set and I was getting batter on the next piece he said, “Should I put in the fries?”

“Go ahead,” I said not thinking of how badly this could go.

So he takes a huge handful and drops them in from height. Boiling oil spashes and flames occur.

I’ve dealt with this before so I start assessing the situation. It’s a sharp flame coming off the burner on just one side of the pot but not that bad and likely to burn out in a few seconds. I stood by ready to contain if the flame went up but I wasn’t concerned.

“OH MY GOD!” he screamed. “GET IT OFF THE HEAT!” and he grabbed at the pot.

Have you seen those movies where people run in slow motion toward something bad happening? That was me: “Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!”

And so he yanked the pot giving the small fire lots of oxygen and spilling more oil.

Now I had a large fire that would definitely get beyond the containment of the stove. Fortunately I was prepared and I moved for the baking soda to smother the flame. My brother on the other hand went straight for the nuclear option.

He grabbed my fire extinguisher and pulled the pin. Seeing that he was about to turn a quick clean up to a real problem I yanked it out of his hands. “Stop! All we have to do is cover the pot and smother the flame.”

“Oh,” he said and he took the cover and placed it almost but not entirely on the pot. He managed to leave a quarter inch gap just so things would be able to boil over and make things worse.

I managed to get the fire snuffed and get things contained, but I swear he was trying to burn my house down.

35

I certainly can’t top that last story…yet. One of my suitemates bought a deep fryer last week. It’s banned by the Student Resident’s Association, so any cooking disaster we have will develop into a legal disaster as well. Leaving behind thoughts of the future for the moment, I only have two very small stories.

  1. This summer I lived in a small house with a very small kitchen and a very sensitive smoke detector. I also had three very ditzy housemates (and two normal ones, but they weren’t involved). One morning I was woken up by loud, girlish chatter, an hour before my alarm. Grr! I eventually get close to dozing off, when the fire alarm goes off. It turns out they were making french toast and had gotten distracted by their conversation, causing a plastic spatula to burn/melt in the skillet.

The house we lived in was owned by the university, so we all had to wait outside till campus security roused itself to turn off the alarm. That was a fun morning.

The kicker is that they were borrowing the skillet of one of the normal housemates and left the melted spatula/french toast mess for her to clean up. That sort of set the tone for the three vs. three relations of the summer…

  1. I am a fairly decent cook–I have never had anything I made from a recipe turn out inedible. However, I have messed up microwave popcorn. During finals week last spring, a group of friends and I were having a “study”/watch Labyrinth (see username) party. I put the popcorn in the communal dorm microwave and pressed play on the movie. And promptly forget about the popcorn. During Jareth’s first scene, a friend asks “Weren’t you making popcorn?” To which I reply, “Huh? Shh…wait till the scene is over!”

When I am no longer hypnotized by Bowie, I check the popcorn. The popcorn bag looked kind of flat. It was cold by now, but maybe I could cook it for a minute and a half more and the rest would pop? Never do this. It doesn’t work. We had to figure out how to quickly open the basement windows of the dorm in order to toss a bag of smoking, burned popcorn into a window well. This lesson on popcorn may be the most useful fact I learned all semester. Also, I should never be expected to do anything rational when Labyrinth is playing.