Cinnamon on baked beans??? :eek:
I was hitting the sauce at the time 
A tiny bit of cinnamon with baked beans is not unusual at all. In fact, most Boston baked beans recipes I’ve seen have a bit of cinnamon or cloves and the such. I mean, baked beans usually are pretty sweet. But cinnamon is strong, and there’s a BIG difference between 1/8 tsp and a 1/2 tsp. I’ve ruined several dishes in my learning-to-cook days.
My biggest cooking disaster was mixing up dried habaneros and dried chipotle chiles. Both are pretty hot, but habaneros are friggin ferocious. I think the recipe called for four or five chiles, and I went for the mislabeled habaneros. Why I didn’t notice the difference right away, I know not, since habeneros look quite unlike chipotles, but that roast pork with chile sauce was off the scale. I tried convincing my SO that “C’mon, it’s not that hot,” but my rhetoric didn’t seem too successful. I was a trooper and forced myself through it, much to the consternation of my gastrointestinal system.
But I have to say, spaghetti sauce has got to be one of the most abused recipes in the whole of culinaria. I’ve seen normally sane people do the most ridiculous shit while trying to “spice up” a flaccid red sauce. Worcestershire sauce. Ketchup. Mustard. Cloves? Nutmeg?!? A1?! Ludicrous proportions of anything green and dried. Argh! It drives me nuts and, I confess, I’ve done this, too. You only need three or four ingredients for a good tomato sauce: fresh tomatoes (or tinned Italian plum tomatoes), extra-virgin olive-oil, garlic, and fresh basil at the end. (Add dried hot peppers if you’re going for an arrabiata.)
I’m starting to feel LOTS less guilty about the time I mixed a Sippy-cup of strawberry milk for my son at 3AM. And I grabbed the container of iced tea instead. To this day, if i ask him if he’d like some milk-tea he’ll reply, “How’d you like a punch in the head?”
But that story has been told. What i never told you is that I used to brew beer as a hobby. And sometimes, as a kicker, I’d add jalapenos to the bottles as I’d cap the beer.
One time as a batch was fermenting, and my wife was going shopping, I asked her to bring back some jalapenos. Well she did remember them, but they were so fat that they wouldn’t fit in the bottlenecks. That’s when I had the bright idea to cut the peppers.
Now I should tell you that when you add uncut peppers, the alcohol brings out the pepper’s heat. But when you Cut those same peppers, the heat that comes out increases seemingly geometrically over time.
Now Two weeks after they were bottled they tasted fine…but by 6 weeks after it was like drinking cold malted Pure-Cap. It was literally too hot for consumption. The problem is that I always gave away bottles of beer to the point where people almost made demands of me for free beer…and I had already given much of the 2 case batch away. At work, no less. Let’s just say it was the equivolent of giving away exploding cigars. I moved on to a different company about 6 months later.
Somehow, this seems appropriate. Trying to figure out what to do with it is going to be difficult.
Robin
My mom is the worst cook EVER. (I had a nice little explanation written up, but my computer “lost” it, so I will paraphrase.) Examples:
~ Casseroles in my house either involved macaroni and cheese from a box and tuna and green beans from a can, or else they involved “cream of [something]” soup. Usually cream of celery, which tastes like … well, it’s unmentionable.
~ I was 13 years old before I ever saw my mom season or marinade chicken before she put it under the broiler - usually it was just boneless, skinless, flavorless, and moistureless.
~ And you just have to see my mother’s meatloaf for yourself to believe it. It is nothing short of unreal. Which is funny, because I use almost the exact same ingredients that she uses (the only difference, I think, is that I use Heinz 57 sauce instead of plain ketchup), but our finished products do not look like they come from the same planet, let alone the same recipe.
Oh My this is fun! 
I have 2 one from childhood, the other as a young adult.
Raised by my Grandparents I learned early that “Nana” was a less than grand cook. She too was an “interesting” cook. Once she decided to can peaches. No adult or semi-adult would go near them. I was 9 or 10. A friend came to sleep over and we pitched a tent in the back yard. About midnight we got hungry. We found the canned peaches. They were a little “spicy” ever “hot” but we giggled the rest of the night away. They had fermented. Nana had made some passable peach brandy!
The later incident was Thanksgiving dinner at My husband’s boss’ house.
I was 19 and 5 months pregnant. We arrived about an hour before dinner was to be served. The house smelled… well… I thought it was just my all day morning sickness. When dinner was served the host, with grand flourish, cut into the 20 lb bird (turkey) to gray meat. The smell I had tried to ignore filled the room. No one said anything. Slices of the horrid stuff were placed on plates and passed around. Luckily, I’d been raised right, and waited for the hostess to start eating. She took a bite of the turkey and spit it into her water. “Don’t eat that!” I hadn’t really planned to. When questioned, she said there weren’t any gibblets with the turkey… we found them, still in the neck cavity. DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME!
Me? I would have eaten the broccoli lasagne mentioned way above! Yummy!
My mummy is a horrible cook (my dad, who is quite good, won’t cook, cos that’s ‘the mum’s job.’) Her finest hour came whilst trying to prepare a family meal, bake a cake, and argue with my then teen-aged sister all at the same time – without thinking, she poured dried pasta into the cake mix, and she and my sister were so wound up, neither noticed.
Cake was baked, duly sliced and put into various lunches – to this day (this was about 35 yrs ago) my sister won’t eat anything my mum bakes, but my 2 brothers and dad not only ate the cake included in their packed lunches, but never noticed…
My mother-in-law is normally a good cook… although sometimes her pans/methods leave something to be desired. Teflon flakes, anyone?
Anyhow.
We recently went to her house for vacation. Meals there are veggie-lite, especially fresh veggies. By Day 6, I was really jonesing for some fresh stuff, and lo and behold, there was a Caesar salad on the table.
Now, my mum-in-law’s family (except for me) detests tomatoes, so there weren’t any tomatoes in it – in fact it seemed to consist of lettuce (iceberg, natch), Caesar dressing, and pepper.
Okay, I thought. Even though the Caesar dressing was on heavily enough that lettuce removed from the bowl… dripped… I thought, well, hey, it’s still a salad. So I put a WHOLE BUNCH on my plate and bit right in.
Only to discover that her idea of salad dressing is… straight Miracle Whip. I literally gagged.
Mrs. Furthur
Tomatoes in a Caesar???
My dear woman, a traditional caesar has no tomatoes and is made of iceburg lettuce… in fact the ingredients of a traditional caesar are:
Iceburg lettuce
Croutons
Dressing (preferably mixed fresh)
Fresh ground pepper
Parmesan cheese
Any other additions (including anchovies) are just wrong wrong wrong.
My sister can’t cook as well as I can. She is a bit too creative. She does make a really good sweet & sour pork, and none of her kids are starving.
One time we decided to make cookies together. We needed two eggs, well, that’s all that was left in the carton, so it’s all good. The eggs were at opposite ends of the carton, & darned if one wasn’t stuck in the carton. We tried to get it out & broke off the top. No problem, we just got a bowl & turned the whole carton upside down & dumped it in the bowl. We were so proud of solving this problem. Would have been perfect if we’d removed the other egg that wasn’t stuck in the carton first!
We also had to eat everything on our plate, everything you’d served yourself. My sister once took a huge mound of mashed potatoes…Sister so sad, they were mashed turnips…
My only real disaster was making a pie one time for a friend, my flour had gotten old & as I rolled out the crust, it just looked funny, upon closer inspection, there were weevils humping their little weevil way across the dough. Then there was the coq au vin I made that was just wrong, still don’t know what I did to it, but it was nasty.
Tried to make rice pudding for my dad on his birthday, since he loved that particular dessert. Followed the directions carefully, but for some reason instead of becoming custard-like in texture when refridgerated, the rice pudding developed all the softness of a large brick and got so hard and dried out a friend and I had to smash the stuff out of the container with HAMMERS.
Too bad…we could’ve used that rice pudding to replace the missing brick in the front yard!
Washte, I too made the fatal “peanuts + butter = peanut butter” assupmtion when I was a youngin! Still, it wasn’t as vile as when i thought I’d save time during breakfast by putting my milk and orange juice in the same cup (this is what happens when the little ones roam free in the kitchen).
Now something from my adulthood. As you’ve probably guessed, I can’t cooked to save my life. My husband was raised by a wonderful woman who taught cooking classes and - lucky for me - he learned a lot and enjoys doing it himself.
One day, Hubby was sick with a cold and I thought I’d cook a big breakfast for him. THe coffee was good. The bacon wasn’t too terrible. But then there were the scrambled eggs. He always mixed a bit of cream or half-and-half to the eggs to make them fluffier. Well, I couldn’t find the cream, so I substituted. To be fair, I DID warn him before he ate them. First, he found the cream and then he asked just what I used for substitution. I said, “Well, it was a toss-up between the chocolate almond and the french vanilla coffee creamers, and I went with the latter since it sounded the least-gross.”
He hadn’t laughed that hard since he got sick, so it wasn’t a complete loss.
Patty
:smack:
Sorry! Guess I’m the bad cook, now.
Still, I think plain Miracle Whip (and about a jar of it, too) is just wrong, wrong, wrong as a salad dressing.
There weren’t any croutons or Parmesan, either, but I could deal with that.
Mrs. Furthur
And yet, my favourite toy when young was my Mr. Peanut Peanut Butter Mill TM . Of course, I no longer LIKE peanut butter, but I loved that thing!!
When I was learning to manage in the kitchen (ie, roughly 10) my mom learned quickly that there had to be a new house rule: If I was cooking, I was NOT allowed to touch any book but the cookbook until the recipe was completed. She decided what constituted “complete.” (Apparently mom is allergic to house fires)
I was a genious at getting my nose into a book, and forgetting that I had something on the stove, or in the oven, or thawing on the counter. She got just as excited over four rancid chicken breasts which took less precedence than Trixie Belden with me, as she did with the FIRE DEPT telling her I was a menace in the kitchen, and not properly snoopervised. Again, I blame Trixie. Nancy Drew was also very frequently responsible for kitchen hazards.
And yet it was Mom who gave me the Nancy Drew Cookbook…
Miracle Whip is just so yuck!!
I can only stand Kraft Real Mayo.
Once Mom made steak and kidney pie with real kidneys. To me it just smelled wrong. So my sister & I sat at the table and stared at our plates–Dad shovled two servings in before he asked, “How did you make it!” He made “yum yum noises” as she told about the lovely steak and peas but when she mentioned draining and rinsing the beef kidneys his face blanched and he spat the final mouthful in his napkin and said,“Cancel tomorrow’s patients-I’m going to be sick.” SisMocha and I refused to eat it. Mom had one helping, Dad had two, but BrotherMocha had three helpings (he was 2yrs old). To this day if we wish to imply a culinary snafu we refer to steak and kidney pie.
I grew up with a mom who was famous for her five alarm chili. For family gatherings where she took chili, she’d take two batches. Five alarm and two alarm. This is who I learned to cook chili from.
It’s not so much a recipe as a guideline. Beef, beans, tomatoes, onions, spices, honey… I literally measure my chili powder for the first pass by sprinkling it on until there’s a layer of it completely covering everything in the pot. Then I add about a quarter teaspoon of cayenne.
One day, I decided to make chili and I got out all my spices. The chili powder and the cayenne are in identical sized and shaped containers and they’re sitting beside the stove together. Comes time to add spices and I glance over at the jars, grab the one closest to me, which I was sure was chili powder, and then did my usual trick. I sprinkled it on until there was a heavy layer of it completely covering the contents of the five quart pot. Then I stirred it in really well.
That’s when I noticed that it was the wrong color to be chili powder.
I had just added a quarter cup of cayenne pepper to a pot of chili.
We ended up adding every ounce of ground beef and every can of beans we could find in the house as well as all the tomatoes, tomato sauce and even some tomato soup to try and cool it down. Eventually, we just bagged it in vacuum bags, froze it, and used it as chili starter for three months.
This happened when I was about 13. Not too long ago, but I’m not quite as stupid anymore. Anyway, My friend was over and it was the night before my mom’s birthday. At about 2:30 in the morning we decided that we should bake my mom a chocolate cake as a surprise.
And what a surprise she got.
So, we gatehred all the ingredients, started to mix them all together, all the while getting more tired and out of it. When we were done mixing, we tried the batter stuff, and it tasted HORRIBLE! We figured that we hadn’t put enough sugar in, so we added a cup more. It was still awful. There was just this horrible (but slightly familiar) taste taht we just couldn’t get rid of. We added more sugar, than decided that it would probably be good after it was cooked. So, we put it in the oven and waited.
After awhile we checked the cake progress, and it had risen alot, but wasn’t done. So we waited some more. Then, the second time we went to check it… Well, lets just say that we found more cake on the oven than INSIDE the cakepan. It had exploded.
“Well,” we thought, “We can still salvage the stuff tahts left in the pan. I mean, after all it IS chocolate.”
So, we took it out of the oven and tasted it. It was by far the worst cake we had ever eaten. But we couldn’t understand what had gone so horribly wrong. Sighing, we went over our procedure again.
Chocolate- check.
Sugar-CHECK.
The list went on, until the conversation went like this:
Me: " 2 cups of flour?"
Lily (my friend) : “check.”
Me: “1 cup baking soda?”
Lily: “Check.”
Me: “1/2 cup chopped–”
Lily: “Wait a second!! WHAT?! HOW much baking soda?!”
Me: “1 cup?”
As it turned out… We HAD, in fact, put a cup of baking soda in…thus causing the explosion and the horrible taste. It was so late, so we had to just go to sleep, swearing to clean it up in the morning. We ended up waking up late, and my mum got a nice disgusting crusted chocolate oven for her birthday. We were little brats.
While you are correct about the tomatoes and the (shudder) anchovies, I feel obligated to correct you regarding the proper lettuce.
Romaine. Not iceberg, Romaine.
I once tried to make a bechamel sauce with powdered milk. Not a big deal; it’s been done before, you say. Yes, of course it has, even by me, I reply. But this time I thought I’d be clever, and cook the powdered milk with the butter and flour, THEN add the water.
Clever, right. Too clever by half, I’d say. We wound up having macaroni without cheese that night.
As opposed to fake kidneys? 