Ever since I was little up untill I was 7 my mom entered a pie contest at The Springfield Fair, which conviently was held every year right across from our house.
Well anyways, one year my mom entered an apple pie with no sugar what so ever. I bet you wish you could see the faces of the judges when they tried that pie…although my mom did it as more of a diliberate thing than a goof. It was still funny though, or so I have heard.
Try this link, Velma. 
It’s near the end of the thread. --dougie_monty
I had invited my boyfriend (later to be my husband and father of my kids) to dinner, after deciding to make a lamb curry ala a very traditional Kashmiri recipe.
Now, I was a poor student at the time, and had paid an absolute bloody fortune for a de-boned loin of lamb, which I proceeded to cook as per the recipe.
In those dark-ages, they didn’t sell coconut milk in tins like they do now, so I soaked some dessicated c’nut in water, and used the resultant ‘milk’ in my conconction.
Unfortunately, I didn’t read the bit where you had to strain the coconut itself out of the milk.
Instead of making passionate love all night, we spent the evening picking bits of coconut out of our teeth.
Well, a friend of mine is notoriously terrible at anything involving cooking, and her husband no longer allows her in the kitchen at all. For example, when she was a student, she was boiling peas. Simple, right? Take the peas out of the freezer, pour them in a saucepan, add water, boil until they reach whatever condition you like your peas in… However, she was under the impression that if peas floated to the top of the water, it meant they were bad… so she kept fishing them out… ended up being annoyed because all the peas were ‘off’
In case you’re wondering, it’s eggs that are meant to float if they’ve gone bad… not sure if she’d misremembered this, or just assumed it applied to any food you boiled…
Well, a couple from my friends: My friend, Dan, ended up in the hospital once when his girlfriend made some sort of turkey dish for Christmas dinner. Somehow, and the exact how escapes me at the moment, she somehow mixed up “a pinch” of nutmeg with “a packet” of nutmeg. (She’s Hungarian. Perhaps it was an English recipe.) Dan, being a nice boyfriend, decided to eat the off-tasting dish anyway. Now, a packet of nutmeg here is something like 3 or so tablespoons. Nutmeg in high doses is Not a Good Idea. He became red, fevered, and intensely sick. Luckily, three days later he recovered.
Same girl, whilst visiting Dan in England decided to eat some sausage in the morning. Now, most Hungarian sausages are smoked and cured, so they may look raw, but they’re okay to eat. It’s preferable if you hang 'em out and dry 'em up for a couple weeks, but you can still eat them without cooking. So Dan awakens to find Eva chewing on some raw breakfast-type sausages. Botulism much? Anyhow, she was okay, but freaked out upon discovering her error.
My girlfriend was wondering why her store-bough garlic bread tasted funny. Ummm…putting it in the oven would be a good start.
My only semi-memorable kitchen near-disaster was back home in Chicago. I was heating up a pot of oil to deep-fry some wings, and my father suggested putting a lid on to speed up the process. It didn’t seem like a good idea to me, but I couldn’t figure out why, so I did it. Several minutes later, as some water vapor condensed on the lid and dripped into the oil causing HUGE spattering and rumbling of oil did I realize the reason we don’t put lids on pots of oil. Luckily, I caught the error before the oil splattered all over the stovetop and started a fire. But only just.
My first attempt at cooking came when I was maybe ten years old and decided that a BLT would be a nice lunch. Since I didn’t know what kind of grease to use, I fried the bacon in butter. Have you ever seen (and eaten) soggy bacon?
My next attempt involved a meat loaf. My mother always topped her meat loaf with a strip of bacon. I loved her meat loaf, particularly that nice strip of bacon. I loved it so much that I topped my meat loaf with three (3) strips of bacon. Have you ever seen (and eaten) soggy meat loaf?
My mother’s mother died when my mother was sixteen, leaving my mother to care for her father and brother. One of her early attempts at cooking was a “coffee pie.” The recipe called for two cups of coffee, so my mother ground up coffee beans until she had the requisite two cups–of course it should have been two cups of liquid coffee. Her father and brother never let her live it down, even after she became the worlds best cook.
Once upon a time The Devil’s Grandfather turned to me in the kitchen and innocently asked, “How do you make bread crumbs?”
Turned out what he meant was, “Do I have to make breadcrumbs or can I just use the pre-packaged Italian-seasoned breadcrumbs?”
No disaster ensued, but I can’t let him forget it.
I got plenty to tell. Perhaps that speaks poorly for me.
I’ve fallen prey to that problem. I was making quaking pudding (out of Lobscouse and Spotted Dog) and I used plain, pre-packaged breadcrumbs. It turns out they’re a lot smaller, thus a lot more dense than home-made breadcrumbs. The quaking pudding didn’t quake. In fact, it was quite solid, and tasted like…bread. Still, while it was a disaster as pudding, it was still delicious when sliced, fried, and covered with maple syrup.
Long ago, while my mom was away, my dad decided we should do a family project. He decided we’d bake bread. Of course, he had a recipe that made two loaves of raisin bread, but he thought “All that work for two measly loaves? Let’s increase the recipe.” I think he multiplied by ten. We had huge vats of dough, and of course it had to rise, and it would rise over the edges of the bowls and take over the fridge. When my mom got home she found the laundry room filled with aprons, as stiff as boards from dried dough, and the freezer and fridge filled with stacks upon stacks of bread. It was good, though.
When I was first learning to cook, I decided I’d make spaghetti sauce. I got those little cans of tomato paste. And I added stuff. Random stuff. Like cinnamon. And Bisquick. It was totally inedible.
My housemate John wanted to make cookies. He had a recipe that called for applesauce. His experience cooking was limited to microwave dinners, but somehow he decided that he knew better than the recipe, and he tripled the amount of applesauce. The cookies came out as flavorless, inedible disks of rubber.
I discovered at an early age that if you want to warm up marshmallow creme, microwaving it isn’t a good idea. POOF, all over the inside of the microwave. Oops.
In the garden at my parents’ house, horseradish grew as a weed. It had grown under the concrete walk, so we pulled it up time and again, but it always grew back. (This was before the days of systemic weed killers) One day, I decided I’d really go after it, so I tunneled down under the walk, and got a gigantic chunk of horseradish root. “Why waste it,” I thought, and washed it and threw it in a blender. My dad came into the kitchen and asked what I was making, and I told him and handed him the blender jar. Now, my dad’s a chemist, so I expected him to gently waft the horseradish fumes towards his nose. Nope. He stuck his face in the blender and inhaled deeply. He uttered some sort of strangled howl and immediately stuck his face under the kitchen tap, clawing at his eyes all the while. Hee.
dougie_monty , that link didn’t work, either. No one else cares, but I do dammit! What does that thread have to do with this one?
Are you teasing me?
Why can’t I remember what I said? This is makin’ me crazy :smack:
My sister once made brownies from the mix, only she forgot she added the water required, and added it again. The resulting brownies were not as moist as you would think. My dad called them “drownies.”
When my parents bought their first (and only – they still have it) microwave about 13 years ago, I was entranced by the quick cooking possibilities outlined in the harvest orange and avocado cookbook that came with it. I followed the instructions for peanut butter cookies to the letter. When I took them out, they still looked a little pale (I did not realize the microwave doesn’t brown food like a conventional oven does), so I popped 'em back in for a few more minutes. They still looked pale, but they were set, so I bit into one. It was burned on the inside. Truly horrid tasting, but oddly fascinating.
Found it, found it, found it! Had to go back a few days. I remember that thread, but for some reason I was thinking my post would have something to do with driving and food, but it was just about stupidity, and blunders…and now this thread is about stupidity, and blunders…
I get it now.
Carry on.:o
Sengkelat’s bread experience put me in mind of a disaster that really wasn’t anyone’s fault, but was funny nevertheless.
We had a bread machine. It was nice - I bought it for Mr Winnie one year for our anniversary, since he LOVES bread. Unfortunately, the bread machine had emotional difficulties which caused it to hurl itself off of the counter during its mixing cycle, in apparent suicide attempts. The first time it did this, the dough was very nearly finished mixing, but had to be tossed out because it had been on the floor and had fur in it. So I put it in the trash, where, of course, it continued to rise. Fascinating.
We put the machine back together and would use it occasionally. Most times it would be fine, but, on two other occasions, it succumbed to its depression and tried, again, to kill itself. Its third attempt succeeded. We have since replaced it with a machine that is much more emotionally (and physically!) stable.
At a bridal shower I attended last year, we made the bride-to-be make a cake for her fiancé (to be eaten later on that night at a Jack & Jill party). However, we didn’t give her a recipe. We just told her to make the cake out of whataver she thought best, in whatever amounts she thought best. (we didn’t even tell her how long to put it in the oven, or at what temperature, after she decided she was finished) Someone was even writing down the “recipe” in case it actually turned out.
She didn’t really know much about baking cakes, so I guess it was sort of understandable that she forgot about the sugar. That is, until someone asked about it. :o Besides the normal things one might add to a cake (flour, eggs, sugar, etc.), she added chili powder, OXO cubes, soy sauce, and cornflakes. (plus what we judged to be just a little too much chocolate, but it was her cake) I think she baked it for about an hour or so, but I can’t remember the temperature she decided on.
Later on that night, we told her Fiancé that we had a surprise for him: “She made this cake just for you, you know… you should try some.” At that pronouncement, he instantly leaped over the countertop and pretended to vomit in the sink. Then he actually tried a piece: the expression on his face was priceless!
F_X
Gundy, dammit, you’re stealing my thunder with your peanut butter cookies! But I’ll tell my story anyway.
First off, I’m a damn good baker. I used to work as a baker, and people would come to the little crappy pretentious mall-shop where I worked just to get my luscious cookies and pies.
Anyway. I was at my mother’s house one holiday and decided I’d make biscuits for everyone. Biscuits are tasty and all. Her oven was wonky, so I figured I’d use the new convection oven/microwave she’d bought. It was new, therefore more reliable.
Heh.
The second error that I made, apparently, was not understanding how to use the thing: when I baked the biscuits, the convection-oven and the microwave were working simultaneously to burn the shit out of the biscuits.
The first mistake was entirely my mother’s fault. You see, she’d gone on a health kick recently, and what I innocently thought was flour was actually wheat gluten.
Baked (and nuked) at 425 for 10 minutes, the biscuits came out of the oven pale, rock-hard, and smoking. When I broke one of the pallid pucks open, I discovered it was charcoal inside. Weirdest thing I’ve ever made.
My father, when he was learning to cook (after the divorce) decided you could save time when sauteing onions by using onion flakes.
Uh, no.
Daniel
Velma, I’m sorry. I had just typed in the URL that appeared on the bar below the page, on the screen. :o I’m glad you found it eventually, though.
A few of my own blunders:
Slightly off-topic here, but not really – I put cinnamon in spaghetti sauce quite often. The first time I did it, it was an accident - I think I was reaching for crushed red pepper. I only added a TEENY bit, but it came out very nice. Then a Greek friend of mine gave me a pasta sauce recipe that called for a little cinnamon and a lot of garlic, and this has since become my second-favorite kind of spaghetti sauce.
Now ON topic: 1. I cannot make pancakes to save my life. The first one always takes 15 minutes to cook and ends up stuck to the pan, and subsequent pancakes burn instantly on the outside while remaining liquid in the middles. I dunno what the hell I do that screws them up, but I give up.
LifeOnWry You’re running your griddle too hot, but not giving it time to warm up first. Don’t turn the temp up so high, then test the griddle by dropping a few drops of water on it. When the water “dances” the griddle is hot enough. Turn the pancakes when the top is bubbling.
LifeOnWry I couldn’t make them either until I bought a Perfect Pancake (this is the part where I’d make a cool linkie thing if I knew how)
I’ve never really messed anything up really bad. One time when my fiance and I first moved in together I added 4cups instead of 2 cups to instant potatoes. Potato glue anyone?
One time my fiance decided to make a nice dinner for when I got home. He made the chicken, took it out of the oven and put it on the back burner while he made the potatoes. He didn’t realize that he put the wrong burner on and couldn’t figure out why the water for the potatoes wouldn’t boil. Then, the dish that the chicken was in exploded and threw glass all over the place. We ate out that night.
I think the funniest thing was from my grandfather. He made ice tea out of Thai rice mix gag Well, the container looked the same hehehe
That should be 4 cups of water DUH
I tend to overcook things a little, but only occassionally do things turn out wrong (e.g. the meatloaf that I put in too small a pan – the grease didn’t drain away and the meatloaf ended up swimming in grease…Bleeeck.) At the time I got married, one of the only things I knew how to cook flawlessly everyting was a tuna-and-rice dish that I had loved since I was a kid. Naturally my wife and stepson hate hot tuna (please refrain from off-color jokes here), they can only eat it cold. :rolleyes:
However, the Award for Best Kitchen Disaster in Our House goes to Kid CaptMurdock (the stepson) for his Impossible Cheeseburger Pie. He followed the recipe on the Bisquick box to the letter – except for one thing:
He forgot to brown the ground beef.
What came out of the oven was a large nearly-done doughy mass with chunks of almost raw hamburger.
Mrs. CaptMurdock and I still laugh about that one. Poor kid! He has gotten better, though.