There was a blunder on the road, originally posed by Velma in this link concerning a driver who could scarcely have been more clueless! (I couldn’t get the Paste option to put what I blocked here, so all I can say is to look for Velma’s posting near the end of Page 3 of the thread. :o)
But here is my example of a goof in the kitchen:
A woman I’ll call Shelley invited me over for dinner. She said one of the things she would make was angel-food cake. She was going to make it with (already) scrambled eggs! I stopped her before she could create a real disaster.
I once prepared French toast for myself, and ate half of once slice before realizing I’d forgotten to cook it! :rolleyes: 
Post here some hilarious goof you or someone you know has committed when preparing food.
My wife found this out one day:
Cheese hot dogs + microwave + 3.5 minutes on HIGH = exploding hot dogs
My parents are from rural New Brunswick, and consequently, when my mum got married, she was somewhat ignorant about most everything. My father, by comparison, was something of a man-of-the-world, having been to Vancouver during basic-training, where he was exposed to such exotic things as chinese food.
So when they were first married, pop asked my mum to fix him fried-rice for dinner for a change. She was nervous about attempting it, since it was totally outside of her experience, but he assured her that it was simple – just fry up some rice with egg and sliced vegetables.
So she did, and he ate a plateful, and then gently suggested that she steam the rice before frying it next time. :o
I once accidentally made “strawberry” tarts, substituting the strawberry puree that I had set aside with seasoned tomato sauce from an identical container.
When they came out of the oven:
[First glance] “That’s unusual. What…?”
[Tentative bite] “That ain’t right! It’s…”
[Exploratory nibble] “Garlic?!!?!”
And I thought baking by candlelight was fun. :smack:
Well, back in college, I got a crock-pot. I was living in a house with four other people, and it was great. Mix the stuff up the night before, plug in the crock-pot before leaving the house in the morning, come home to dinner. Awesome, right? Yes. Yes, it was. Until the time I decided to make potatoes au gratin. To this day, I don’t know what the problem was. It was just…wrong. The potatoes were undercooked, the cheese sauce was gluey, and the whole thing was absolutely the wrong color. It had sort of a greenish tinge. Not to mention that the edges of the potato slices were actually charred. We threw it out immediately, and went across the street for cheeseburgers from Quick & Delicious.
Crock-pot au gratin potatoes…just say no. :shudder:
Oh, and my mom once made pumpkin pie…and left out sugar or any other sweetening ingredient whatsoever. We all gagged and left the pie on the counter. When we went back later, there were a few cat paw prints in the pie…but no kitty bite marks. That’s right; even the cat refused to eat this pie. I still kid her about it sometimes.
Gee, ain’t I a good son? 
My husband is pretty clueless in the kitchen - in fact, I generally discourage him from entering, except to get juice from the fridge.
Once, when work had us living apart, I’d prepared him a small meatloaf. I told him to cook it in the microwave, figuring that was the easiest for him. He did nuke it. On High. For 20 minutes. It was a beef hockey puck. I think he had a peanut butter sandwich that night.
A friend of mine decided to make some microwave popcorn. Unfortunately, I forgot that he was used to the smaller, two-and-a -half minute microwaves. Mine is more along the lines of “registered with the Atomic Energy Commision and the Geneva Convention as a directed - energy weapon” microwave - something like three times the wattage to which he was accustomed.
A few minutes later, a cloud of toxic yellow smoke began to billow out of the aforementioned WMD, filling my apartment. Mike and I yanked the plug, opened a few windows, and beat a hasty retreat to the great outdoors. After the smoke cleared, we peered into the microwave and found a charred paper bag, and a coating of yellow grease. The inside of my microwave is permanently stained yellow - notwithstanding the ceramic coating.
Needless to say, I’m just a tad bit curious as to what sort of gas we created, that could eat its way into porcelin like that. I’ve also avoided microwave popcorn since that day.
Once I made chocolate pie without cooking the flling for one more minute after adding the egg yolks. My husband told me the pie was a little runny. I told him it was fine. He had to eat it with a ladle. Which he probably shouldn’t have done, as it meant he was eating raw eggs. It was several years ago…so far he didn’t get sick from it.
FairyChatMom - my mom did the same thing to me - cooked me up a hot dog in the microwave, but hit too many zeros for two minutes.
20:00 /= 2:00
It was horrid yet fascinating to look at.
I recently decided to use up some slightly overripe bananas by making banana bread. Not having made it in a while, I had to dig up a recipe from one of my cookbooks, which I then had to adjust because I had about half again as much mashed banana than the recipe required. After congratulating myself for realizing in time that I had initially measured out twice as much flour as I needed, I then proceeded to carefully measure out the baking powder and baking soda. Unfortunately, when I measured out the baking soda I used a tablespoon instead of a teaspoon. I ended up with banana soda bread, which my wife pronounced as inedible. (I rather liked it, and ended up eating it all myself - a combination of my distaste for wasting food and my ability to eat almost anything (although I probably would draw the line at Larry Mudd’s tomato tarts.)
I judge my success, or lack thereof, in the kitchen by the number of empty pizza boxes I collect each week. I’m learning to cook and right now I’m down to a disaster every couple of weeks. A disaster in the kitchen means i end up ordering pizza delivery. In the beginning I put on about 20 pounds and spent a fortune eating pizza 6 days out of 7.
I was all excited to find out what I said that may have linked driving to kitchen disasters, but the link doesn’t work. What did I say?
Am I the only one confused about this portion of the OP?
Anyway, I’ll share a story. My husband has trouble telling the difference between the tablespoon and teaspoon measurement abbreviations, which made for some interesting peanut butter cookies once. The mix up was, unfortunately, made with excessive amounts of salt. The funniest part is, we took the bad batch over to a friend’s house for a party (along with the next, good batch) as a joke, and people ate them!
Even bad cookies are good cookies, I guess.
My friend from work was incharge of her family’s mother day party and wasn’t sure what to make.
So I gave her my donar kebab recipe. Think marinated chicken w/ garlic mayo and grilled onions in a pita.
I told her how to make everything…
Her problem was with the garlic. She didn’t know it came in cloves! Or that you PEELED the skin. But she’s a smart girl and got it figured out in no time, and it ended up being good!
I on the other hand. CANT MICROWAVE! See I only ever used one to make popcorn or WARM pizza. As a result I burn stuff all the time in the microwave when I try to reheat it.
Then again I use the thing maybe once every month.
mmm homemade mushu pork w/ fresh flour pancakes and homemade plum sause (and its even better cold!)
Purely for your information, I share the following observations:
Honey boils rapidly and violently. In fact, the window between ‘a little honey simmering in the bottom of the pan’ and ‘honey boiling over the top of the pan, into the burner, down the front of the stove, and all over the carpet’ can be as brief as a few seconds.
There is no known method for cleaning hot honey out of a carpet.
I hope this information is helpful.
For part of college, I lived in a co-op of 28 people. One of my workshifts was to cook dinner for everyone once a week. My shift was with this guy who didn’t know how to cook AT ALL and I always had to watch what he was doing so our food came out edible.
He would put all kinds of random spices and flavorings in tomato sauce, because he didn’t like the flavor of tomatoes. One time he put in cinnamon, vanilla, and hoisin sauce before I was able to stop him.
Another time, he was trying to make cream puffs for dessert. I was whipping the cream and he attempted to make the biscuit part. I didn’t watch him too closely, since I was busy. When the biscuity parts came out of the oven, he decided to try one. It was horrible! I tasted it…it tasted like the salt dough used to make projects in elementary school. I looked at the recipe, which called for 1/4 tsp. of salt. I said, “How much salt did you put in?” He said “a quarter cup, because that’s what it said.”
I think maybe the guy needed glasses. And my carefully hand-whipped cream ended up in a whipped cream fight. sigh
Ugh…one time (at band camp! ) I decided to make my famous chicken and rice casserole — in the crockpot. The rice became a gelatinous, slimy, gooshy pancake - and the chicken was terribly dry. Needless to say, we got take-out that night.
Another time I was making Nestle’s Toll House cookies. I absent-mindedly forgot the flour!!! When I noticed, I had butter and chocolate chips melting all over the baking sheet! So I poured it back into the bowl, added flour, and we had chocolate chocolate chip cookies. Great save!
In my novice cooking days, I attempted to “fry” liver and onions - with no grease in the pan or flour-coating on the liver. I don’t think I ever got the pan clean!
Recently, I had just purchased a large jar of garlic powder. The one previously had a lid you removed, and a plastic shaker top thing. This one had the shaker top right in the screw-top, so when I removed the screw-top - I dumped a ton of garlic powder into the hamburger meat I ws seasoning for hamburgers. I scooped it out as best I could, but they were way too garlicky!
Velma, I’m sorry. I couldn’t get the Search Engine to locate the thread, titled “Amazing, idiotic things drivers do!” in MPSIMS, so I could try a hyperlink again. All I can tell you is that it was, as noted in the OP, near the end of the thread, which I believe has had new postings in the last few weeks. :o
My husband did the microwave popcorn number the day before we were showing our house. There was soot everywhere, and the place smelled…well…like severely burned popcorn. As with galen’s, we have not managed to get the microwave back to white. Fortunately, it is now the backup microwave.
When I was an exchange student in Merrie England, my college roommate and I decided to make a dinner for our six fellow exchange students, since three of them were celebrating their birthdays within the space of one week, and it was at Christmastime, too. One of the three was a vegetarian, and mentioned that she would love to have lasagna. Neither of us had ever made lasagna before. So we bought a recipe book, and Jen decided that “Pesto Lasagna” would be ideal. I was sceptical - when I think “lasagna” I have something very specific in mind, and I figured our classmate had, too, but never mind. We went for the pesto. Then, while looking at the noodles, Jen decided that it would probably be easiest to use the no pre-cook variety. As inexperienced chefs, we didn’t realize that the way they worked was by absorbing the water in REAL lasagna, and that pesto lasagna didn’t have any. Then I succumbed to CRorex’ lady friend’s garlic dilemma. Recipe called for three cloves (in and of itself a lot of garlic, I’ve since learned) - we used three BULBS.
When all was said and done, what we wound up with were garlic crackers. SHARP garlic crackers - I cut one of my gums on a piece.
And that doesn’t even touch on what happened with the cake… :eek:
Since I never mess anything up (I was brought up by Martha friggin Stewart), I have a story about my mother, and my aunt.
When my mother was pregnant for me, she was making bread in the mixmaster. A spoon got caught in the beaters, causing the dough to become some kind of UFO. We lived in a split-level house, and it flew from the kitchen all the way to the family room and SPLAT onto the mantle.
My aunt (mother’s twin sister) is notoriously bad in the kitchen. Once she was making a recipe that called for a cup of minced onion. Not knowing any better, she figured she could safely subsitute a cup of minced garlic. :eek:
Oh, and everything my bitch ex-roommate made was an utter disaster. She is dead to me, can you tell?
A couple of Christmases ago my grandma and I decided to make some christmas cookies and some peanut butter rolls. My grandma is usually a pretty good cook, but something was off that day. The peanut butter rolls (well what we had planned to be rolls) came out so hard that it took both of us to get the spoon out of the batter.
Then we chose our cookie recipe. We decided on these chocolate chip peanut butter things that were supposed to be no-bake cookies. I told my grandma that those sounded ok, but I really didn’t want to have to wait for the cookies to freeze. She said that it was no problem and we could just take out the peanut butter and put flour in instead. The plan sounded a little off to me, but I figured that she knew more about cooking than I did. Needless to say, our switch didn’t work at all, and the cookies were a very odd consistency that started out runny, and then became hard as a rock in about 10 mins. I did, however, eat the mix before it got very hard, and with a little cinnamon it wasn’t bad.