Years ago, the rest of the fam discovered just what kind of culinary hell my brother must suffer through on the rare days when they don’t go out to eat. SIL baked a cake for one of their kids and it looked gorgeous; she had taken a cake decorating class. But the inside…horrors! It was so dry that we had to drown it in ice cream just to choke down a courtesy bite. She blithely explained that she’d left out the oil because she knew “some of us were trying to lose weight.”
Fast forward to the present day. My mom had given her a recipe for lemon creme sponge pie, and what did SIL come up with? A runny dish that vaguely resembled pie but was more like a lemon soup.
Earlier this year, she copied down mom’s recipe for red velvet cake–which, when made according to instructions, is very moist, with a deep dark red hue and a topping called elegant icing. SIL brought a reddish, dry cake with lousy icing and absolutely no flavor.
Come forward a bit more to mother’s day. SIL brings a strawberry pie–or at least something she referred to as such. It was one of those frozen Pet Ritz crusts that tastes like crap, with some tumbled strawberries and no glaze. She then covered the damn thing with whipped cream and left it into the fridge, thereby turning it into a soggy pink mess. After she went home, mom had to chuck it out because it was inedible and lacked the slightest hint of flavor.
Sigh. Oh, we all know she means well, but what can you do when someone refuses to follow a recipe? She has been known to blame her results on the high altitude of the high desert, but we don’t buy it.
What shall we do when she insists on baking again?
Ask her to bring potato salad? I mean, it’s impossible to mess up potato salad. Seriously, dude, tell her thanks very much, but that dessert has already been taken care of.
Feh. At least she tries. My sister was asked to bring the dessert to some family function. She brought a box of individually wrapped Little Debbie Ho-Ho thingies. I shit you not.
She was once asked to bring a vegetable to the family reunion. She brought a can of corn. In the fucking can. And asked the hostess for a can opener. I “double” shit you not.
Hey, I know her. My sister’s sister-in-law (her husband’s sister).
Ask her to bring deviled eggs and she shows up with a dozen raw eggs and asks where your big pot is and then needs mayo.
Ask her to bring a green salad and she shows up with a head of lettuce, an uncut cucumber and no salad dressing.
Ask her to bring dessert and she shows up with two dozen donuts. But, hey, they were Krispy Kremes! :rolleyes:
Back in college my best friend’s girlfriend and her roommate decided to be domestic one weekend and made cookies. My friend bit into one and asked “did you use the baking soda from the back of the refrigerator?”
Back when I was a kid, I had a sister through Big Brothers and Big Sisters. We decided to make chocolate chip cookies one day. Little did we know, she didn’t have any white flour. So, we used wheat flour :eek: .
The cookies were terrible. At least we were both aware of what we were doing. We knew they would taste like cardboard but it was fun.
My mother is one of the worst cooks I know. She once started a fire while boiling water…on an electric stove…with nothing flamable in sight
Yeah, my sister once started a fire while boiling water, too.
She was boiling water for pasta, put a slug of oil in the water and left it to boil.
Then she forgot about it.
The fire was so bad once the water burned away that they had to call the fire department. Pan and stovetop were ruined and the wall and ceiling were black and burned. Landlord was not pleased.
That’s actually an excellent idea… Maybe a contest? Kalhoun, your idea, do you want to start the thread? I’ll pony up the prize: The Sopranos Family Cookbook (I ordered one, ended up with two).
Jello is too hard to make! At least when I make it, it never jells. Pudding is a good idea, even my brother can’t mess pudding up.
My brother once tried to make Easy Mac. It turned out to be more of a soup with cheese chunks and hard noodles. It made me gag.
I’ll ask for Jell-O or pudding next time, but I’m still iffy on the potato salad. Honestly, the woman will not follow the damn instructions. She thinks she’s too smart for that.
Watch out on the pudding, my sister has ruined even box pudding. She cut down on the calories by making it with water instead of milk. We weren’t surprised; she makes solid soup!
I don’t know whether her husband does the cooking because he actually enjoys it, or out of self-defense.
Nobody can invite her over and do a demonstration of a “difficult” dessert dish to cook, and have the woman supervise? Or is it more that when it comes to cooking she couldn’t get minute rice right if she had a week?
My mom can cook decent dishes (or at least relatively edible) when she wants to, but sometimes she just can’t resist screwing them up somehow.
Once she offered to make me Macaroni and Cheese, from the Kraft box mix. I said (knowing of her habit of SCREWING THINGS UP), to follow the instructions on the box to the letter. To the letter. She promised that she would.
She presented me with macaroni and cheese with this reddish powder stuff all over it. It turned out that she had added cayenne pepper because it’s “good for you”! :eek: It was freakin’ hot and too damned spicy for Mac and Cheese! She got all offended and bewildered when I refused to eat it.
She often “substitutes” ingredients and wonders why people won’t eat her food. She’s also not to be trusted preparing instant pudding mix. I swear, I did not think that an intelligent woman (and she is intelligent) could screw up something as simple as “put in cold milk. Mix. Chill.” But she does. Oh my word, she does.
And let’s not get started on the dishes that she prepares for herself. At least she does not inflict them on everyone else (though she’s very vocal about suggesting that everyone else try them out). The latest favorite of hers is breakfast cereal with fresh bean sprouts. Yes, you read that right. She grows bean sprouts at home, and they are good—in salads and sandwiches. BUT NOT IN CHEERIOS!! She’ll also put bean sprouts in spaghetti, other pasta dishes, bean sprouts in just about every frickin’ thing imaginable. Yikes.
Jello can be very dangerous! When I was a kid, we’d go th potluck dinners at our church. Several blue hairs always brought Jello topped wit Miracle Whip :eek: :smack:
Every time she watches my mom (a fine cook who follows directions) make something good, SIL says, “I’m going to make that at home! Please give me a copy of the recipe.”
Later, she complains, “It never tastes the same/comes out the same way when I make it.” Or, “I lost the recipe.”
Long, deep sigh.
There’s a good reason why the fam goes out to eat nearly every day or goes to Grandma’s to chow down!
Reminds me of my father. Now, I will say that at least the stuff he makes usually ends up being delicious-my dad is a GREAT cook. But he cannot follow a recipe. He HAS to “improvise”. This is fine, most of the time, but sometimes you just want to try out a new recipe, you know? Only Dad takes over, and it’s something completely different.
My mother had a new potato dish recipe she wanted to try, from a coworker. Dad took over it, changed it, and it wasn’t the same. Mom was very disappointed, as she had sampled some of the original at a work function, and she said it wasn’t as good.
Or the time I tried a recipe for Noodles Romanoff, and my dad insisted on making it with chicken. (Which is no longer Noodles Romanoff, it’s Chicken Romanoff).
So, at least it’s never a DISASTER, but sometimes it’s annoying. (Although knowing my dad, even if it was a disaster, he’d STILL eat it. You could put dog turds on a plate, cover them in gravy, and he’d gobble them up, even if you told him what they were!)
:smack: