Now, now, allspice in spaghetti sauce isn’t all bad. One traditional topping for spaghetti sauce in my family (of southern Italian descent) is dried bread crumbs with sugar and ground allspice.
The worst thing I ever cooked was my first attempt at biryani. I vastly overestimated the amount of rice to add, and thus wound up with a huge skillet full of mealy, occasionally crunchy rice, with a few pieces of chicken scattered throughout.
::clicks Guinastasia’s link, howls with laughter::
Thanks hon! That thread is a riot.
Say, what happened to Wang-Ka, poster of funny anecdotes on that thread? Did he change username, return to RL… ? Inquiring minds wanna know!
I screwed up a box of mac and cheese, inedible.
Try to burn down the house while popping corn for the Christmas tree.
Burnt water.
Tried to make a red pasta sauce with flaked fish. Didn’t know what I was doing, we didn’t even attempt eating it. I’m not good at experimenting or making up my own recipes.
I can actually cook, not great but decent, I stick to the staples.
A few years into my marriage, the Hubby made one too many disparaging comments about the lack of zip in my cooking, I phased out cooking and he took it over. Now I’m the sous chef, I keep him from getting to crazy with the spices.
I’m a passable cook and some things I make are really good, but my husband- oy vey.
Recently he seared a buncha lefovers and other stuff in the cast iron searing pan (like the thing fahitas come in…)- he included left over baked chicken, some sausage, tomatos, carrots and cucumbers and who knows what else. Of course the kids wouldn’t touch it, but neither would the dog and she’ll eat anything. I’m actually afraid to eat some of his concoctions myself, and I have a rep kinda like the dog’s.
Okay, how the heck do you burn water? That’s the one thing my mom assured me would never happen!
My brother in law will never let me live down the carrot burgers I served him. About equal amounts of ground beef and grated carrot. I may have put some tofu in there too. I actually thought it was quite good, and it was nowhere near as bad as the liver loaf I once attempted to serve my newlywed husband. Grounds for divorce? Nearly.
A more recent disaster: When you’re making carrot cake and you have no walnuts, you can NOT substitute with peanuts. I thought it would be alright, but imagine if you’d put a few tablespoons of peanut butter in your carrot cake.
I think there’s a story here that needs to be told. 
Once, I made a yummy Chicken Baked in a Salt Crust: mix egg whites with a lot of rock salt, mound this slurry all over the chicken, bake. Moist, flavorful, totally worth the mess (I do not recommend doing this if you’ve got any sort of tiny scratches on your hands - that salt hurts).
A few months later, I attempted to make it again. Regular grocery store didn’t have that blue box of rock salt, that said it was useful for making ice cream and melting sidewalk ice. So I got bags of stuff that also said for ice cream and sidewalks. Mixed egg whites. Tore open bag of salt. Dumped in. Realized that it had sand and gravel mixed in with the salt. Briefly considered using it anyway (guests were due in an hour). Common sense prevailed, spouse made emergency run to other grocery store, results were edible.
Then there was the time I made sweet and sour pork. The recipe called for deep frying the bits of pork twice. They looked sorta done after the first go-round but it said do it twice. I wound up with sweet and sour charcoal. Literally inedible - they were solid black through and through.
My dad wanted popcorn one night - but was too lazy too make it on the stove. We were out of microwave popcorn, but he thought he’d improvise. He took a paper lunch sack, filled it with kernels of corn, and some cooking oil. Of course it caught fire and melted the top of the microwave.
My brother managed to one time put 1/4 c. salt in some sugar cookies - instead of 1/4 t.
My disasters mainly involve spilling things - like a bowl filled with the half of the cheesecake mixture that needs chocolate added to it, after I’d already poured the non-chocolate half in the pan. And I didn’t have enough cream cheese to remake the second half. I was so traumatized by the whole event I haven’t tried to make that recipe again. Mind you, this disaster happened four years ago.
Did you leave it out in the rain?
No, but I damn well should have.
(And no fair making me laugh out loud at work. I work at the library!)
…sorry…!
We were at Papa Tiger’s cousin’s house in Minnesota for his aunt’s birthday party. He’d WARNED me that Minnesota cooking is not like what I’m used to. He wasn’t kidding.
The salad was in a 9x12 pan – a layer of shredded lettuce topped with a SOLID layer of Miracle Whip.
The jello was topped with dabs of Miracle Whip.
The fruit had Miracle Whip on it.
Bypassing the salad table, I got to the main course table. There were taco shells, and a collection of bowls of bland-looking stuff. I asked what it was. I was informed it was for tacos.
The bowls consisted of:
Small chunks of utterly bland, unspiced boiled chicken
Shredded cheese – probably Velveeta, but if not only one SMALL step up
A bowl of white glop
No salsa, no spices, nothing
So I asked what the white glop was. When she replied, “Miracle Whip,” I have to admit that I probably exhibited my Worst Guest of my Lifetime behavior and SHRIEKED with outrage…I mean, who in their right mind puts Miracle Whip on TACOS???
I think I ended up eating a hot dog or something. WITHOUT Miracle Whip. :eek:
My roommates and I decided to make a birthday cake for a guy at the home fellowship from church. A girl we knew came over to help. We figured we were safe, because, you know, she’s a girl. She’ll know everything about this. Don’t they teach all this at girl school, right after how to make little kids stop crying and how to shop for shoes?
So… We bought PIE pans at the grocery store. Mistake #1. Then we got the mix baked. Of course they had these wacky angular wedges at the edges. It hadn’t occured to any of us that they weren’t vertical on the sides.
Then we discovered that you’re supposed to cut off the hump of the lower layers so that the top is horizontal. We hadn’t. So the cake not only had three jutting ledges, it cracked wide open as it settled on the crowned lower levels.
It tasted right, but it looked terrible, and you could tell some of the women at the group were trying not to laugh.
Thank you, all, Mr. Maureen & I have not laughed this much in ages. I had to stop reading them out loud to him because I couldn’t get the words out.
Here we go:
We went to my father-in-law’s place for Thanksgiving 3 years ago. His wife should NEVER BE ALLOWED NEAR THE KITCHEN. Ever. We all know this. But still, Gordon lets her do a little dish. Like, cutting up pickles. Her own daughter (as God is my witness) walked through the door one Christmas morning, smelled something burning & said: “What is Mom cooking?”(It was rolls). OK, you get the point.
So, Thanksgiving, she is allowed to make…Pumpkin Pie. Not from scratch, they wouldn’t still have a house. Frozen. And I mean, still frozen in the center. A big lump of ice. The crust is BLACK. I look accross the table and ask (in as even a voice as I can manage) “How long did you defrost this for?” She looked back with a very blank look and said…
you already know, don’t you?
“Was I supposed to defrost it?”
As a 11 year old boy, I was left in the mornings to prepare my own breakfast. One morning I was running late for school, and hungrier than Homer at a buffet, so I decided to make something quick. Toast…no, pop-tart…no too sweet, fruit…no I’m a 11 yr old boy. So what am I going to eat… Eggs!. Yeah, easy. Two eggs, a bowl, some water and a microwave. No problem. Set on high for five minutes…ok see that was easy. While that cooks I’ll finish watching cartoons. I had just sat down when…BOOM! I jumped so high I hit my head on the ceiling. When I returned to the floor I was overtaken by the worst smell in the history of smells. Gaging I managed to make my way to the kitchen. I turn the corner to find the microwave door had been blown off the hinges and egg was sprayed in every corner of the room. A hard lesson learned in elbow grease alone.
Mama Tiger, your story just reminded me of a family BBQ I had managed to block until now. For starters, I’m vegetarian, but my aunt had assured me that I didn’t need to bother bringing anything as there would be plenty of stuff I could eat. I believed her, since in past years there had always been lots of pasta salads and so on. That year, however, she decided to make something different instead. IIRC, it consisted of canned corn, apple chunks, and Miracle Whip. It looked like someone had vomited in the bowl. I’m not sure if it was supposed to be like that, or if something had gone wrong and she just didn’t have time to make anything else. I hope it was the latter, as it scares me to think that anyone would make that on purpose.
I ate green salad and bread that day.
Miracle Whip is Satan’s jizz. (Can I say that in MPSIMS?)
Blackdragon, welcome to the boards!
My father used to torment us by calling himself a “natural born cook.” Actually, he wasn’t bad. But he was not what you would call a keen observer of reality nor a terribly competent listener, which is OK because he made a living as an ophthalmologist.
In any case, he once bought us what he thought was a yummy treat from the Knox gelaten company (it was on sale, natch). The packaging made it look like some kind of Kool-Ade knock-off but was actually some kind of gook that was supposed improved the quality of a woman’s nails. When you drank it, it started out on the top as tart water and ended up on the bottom as sour gelatenous goo with just the faintest hint of possible citrus flavoring. It was disgusting. Still, we somehow finished it, probably because we knew from habit that our parents would refuse to get us anything tasty until we finished the god-damned stuff.
Finally, after a week of suffering it was gone. My father then charged himself to go to the supermarket. “What do you want?” he asked.
Unanimously we said, “Whatever you do, don’t get us any more of that Knox gelaten drink.”
An hour later he was back with FOUR boxes of the sh**. “WE TOLD YOU NOT TO GET THAT!.” was our unmuted response.
“Oh, but I thought you said you liked it.” His manner seemed genuinely and maddeningly guiless.
For weeks the stuff went untouched. No other sweets? No problem. We were not going to drink it. We were adament. Dear old dad, unfortunately also got some adamence. So one afternoon we had a “party” where we were forced to drink every last drop of the stuff. Thank God we were a large family.
Everybody in my family remembers this incidence and its memory still provokes outbursts of withering sarcastic wit directed against the deceased whenever anybody brings it up.
PS: Don’t ever put eggs in chili.
This is an old thread but I will still post a reply because it’s a goodie!
When I was living by myself for the first time (a lot of these posts start that way) I had negative amounts of cash at my disposal so I would frequently cook things like Jiffy corn cake and eat it all week.
One time I went to the cupboard and lo! It was bare. Except for one can of baked beans.
Now, I am pretty much an expert at making chili, so I thought I’d make a meatless and spaghetti-less chili using the baked beans.
When it turned out frightful, I tried to add cinnamon.
It sat in my fridge for a week, turning the bowl orange, before I threw it out.