During the 50’s the 7-Up Bottling company released a “7-Up Cookbook” with various recipes that used 7-Up as an ingredient. (I have no idea how widespread the beverage is, but for folks outside the US, 7-Up is a lemon-lime soft drink). A friend of mine as a book that’s a collection of horrible recipes, and has a few pages from this included.
I fear the pancakes made with 7-Up, but I have this urge to make them…
–Patch
That has got to be about the funniest thing I’ve read in this whole thread! (having a son myself, I can hear him saying this). I had to stop reading just to compose myself before I could go on!
This thread has got me laughing hysterically. In fact, its the sort of thread that you want to share with your friends (a la “The Horror of Blimps” – which is how I ended up here in the first place).
Back when I was in college, my twin sister was living one summer with her trumpet teacher’s family, and I was invited over for dinner (had never met them before). Of course, being the gracious guest that I was, I wanted to bring along something to show my appreciation, so I decided on a cheesecake. I’m a pretty good baker so I thought ‘no problem’. At the time, I was very into healthy living (a vice that I’ve since given up) and didn’t want to load up the cheesecake with all that nasty sugar stuff. This was about the time that Equal showed up on the market, so I decided to substitute it for the sugar. Using my [sarcasm]impeccable math skills [/sarcasm] (I can’t count to ten unless I’m barefoot), I figured out how many packets of Equal I needed to substitute for the sugar (or at least I tried to figure it out). The packet said one = 2 teaspoons of sugar, so I counted out how many teaspoons of sugar there were in whatever amount was called for in the recipe, and divided by two (or multiplied, can’t recall).
Proudly presented my cheesecake, which was served for dessert. You know that brief sweet aftertaste you get in your mouth after a swig of diet soda? Now imagine that diet soda with about 30 packets of Equal in it. 'Nuff said. My hosts politely said they just weren’t dessert people.
On one memorable occasion I tried to make my chicken chow mein for dinner. I have a great recipe for chow mein. The only problem is that it tends to be a little watery (flavor’s OK, just not thick enough.) To solve this I add a little cornstarch before removing it from the stove.
The cornstarch is in a yellow box. I reached into the cupboard, grabbed the yelow box, and added some of the contents to the wok.
This yellow box did not contain cornstarch. It contained baking soda.
It foamed pretty.
We ate out.
My mother used to make a dish called “beef and kidney ragout”. My father refused to eat it because “I ain’t eating anything that you gotta boil the piss out of first”.
My first experience cooking a turkey dinner was when I was in my 20s and trying to impress a woman I was later to marry. I called my mother to get some hints, specifically about making gravy, which I had never done.
She told me to mix equal amounts of drippings and flower, let brown, and add water. Pretty simple, I thought, so why all the fuss about making gravy?
What I didn’t understand was that you don’t necessarily use ALL the drippings. I also didn’t understand exactly what ‘drippings’ consisted of. I was roasting a huge bird, and when it was done there must have been two cups of grease and drippings in the pan. I dutifully added about two cups of flour and began stirring.
Grabbing a one-quart container of water, I started adding it to the roux, which absorbed the water as fast as I poured it in. I filled the container again…same result. Again…more paste. Slightly unnerved at this point, I grabbed a pot and filled it with water and began adding…result: huge amounts of pasty substance instantly formed.
As you can surmise, I ended up with a foil roasting pan nearly full of a tasteless goo that would have served well as wallpaper paste. People were nice about it though and made noises like they enjoyed it. When I went to clean the mess up, the serving spoon was firmly cemented in the middle of a now-hardened plaster. I still have a photo of me holding the entire pan of gravy up by the spoon.
That used to be in the Gallery of Regrettable Food at lileks.com. Lileks took it down because it’s in the GoRF book, but you can still see Cookin’ With Dr Pepper.
And WMN, my mom has a copy of “The Free and Equal[sup]TM[/sup] Cookbook”!
bump. cannot let this thread disappear into oblivion.
My ex-wife once tried to make ministrone soup in a slow cooker.
First, she put in a pound of frozen ground turkey. She never broke it up. It stayed in the shape of the packaging.
She put in macaroni and a can of precooked small potatos and let it sit. All day.
The results… no macaroni, no potatos… starch soup.
I agree, WMN.
I tried to make gnocchi once using leftover mashed potatoes. Such are one’s brilliant ideas at age twelve. I kept adding flour, and adding flour, and adding flour…
Half a bag of flour later, I had a sort-of-dough, rolled it into balls, dropped them in boiling water for thirty seconds or so.
My mother did eat a bowlful, but decided not to buy any more cookbooks for the coffee table after that.
As a non-American, I’m very puzzled by the mention of Miracle Whip and Cool Whip. Please explain.
Miracle whip is faux mayo.
Cool whip is faux whipped cream.
I have another one that’s not so much a culinary disaster as it was a vehicle for me getting into huge trouble. I must have been 11 or 12, and we had been on a field trip to somewhere. I can’t remember where, but it must have included a candy making shop, because I got this great idea to make rock candy at home, which I did, which actually turned out pretty good. The problem was that at the time, sugar was about $827 a pound. I set said rock candy to harden in my bathroom window behind the curtain (so no one would see it – I must have known on some level it was a no-no). Unfortunately, said window was about ground level (split level house, “first” floor is half underground) facing the back yard, where Mom was out cutting the grass. My thought process didn’t go far enough at the time to realize that while said contraband couldn’t be seen from inside the house, it was clearly visible from outside the house. (hmm, maybe I was younger than 11 or 12!). When she found out what I’d done, she nearly had a stroke because I’d used up an entire bag of sugar in the process (refer back to price of sugar at the time). I was unable to sit comfortably for quite some time.
bump
DeVena, I know you wrote about the weevils in the papika way back on page one, but I just had to tell this story.
Back when I was in college, my roommate and I had just gotten back to the dorm after the winter break. It was freezing cold that night when we got in, so he decided to make us some hot chocolate from a mix in a can that had been sitting in his closet during the break (Swiss Miss, or something like that). After gulping about half of it down, I looked at it and said, “Gee, Nick, these marshmallows are kind of small, don’t you think?”
He looked at me and said, “This isn’t the kind with marshmallows in it,” then looked back down at his cup with a thoughtful look on his face.
Weevil…Eggs…Oh…My…God.
Or possible larvae, we weren’t really sure.
I shared a studio apt. in the basement of a rowhouse in a swanky DC neighborhood. There were five other tenants, including the owner of the house.
My roommate decided to make toast. Toast. Can’t screw up toast, right?
Heh.
I was in the laundry room in the back of the house when I heard an alarm go off in the landlord’s apartment. I ran to the front of the house to see black smoke billowing from my open front door. My roommate started throwing slices of burnt toast out the door into the snow. Our own smoke detector is screeching. I can’t get it down to get the battery out, so I started smacking it with a tennis racket. I knocked off the cover, but realized it was hard-wired into the ceiling. I know nothing about electricity, so I thought if I just cut the wires, the noise would stop. I had plastic-handled scissors, so I wouldn’t get electrocuted–I’m so smart! Ha. Got quite a shock, sparks everywhere, blew a fuse, burned a hole in the scissors. Suddenly a fire truck, sirens blaring, comes tearing down the street. “Did you call the fire department?” I asked. “No,” she said. “Why?” “'Cause they’re coming this way.” They weren’t happy that they had come to put out a toast fire. My roommate somehow sweet-talked them into NOT coming in, or they would’ve noticed the smoke detector. We thought we were in the clear, except…
My landlord was on vacation. So his alarm continued going off for a week. And when he came home, I had to tell him everything. I moved out a month later.
I tried to make cookies for the first time at age 12. Called my mom at work, and told her I used all the baking soda for the cookies, so she might want to pick some up on the way home. She said, “but I just bought a new box last week.” “Yeah, Mom, but I’m making cookies, so I had to use it all.” Apparently, the recipe had called for two TEASPOONS, not CUPS. Oops.
One time, I got ambitious and decided that I would cook dinner for my family. Dinner was to be pasta, as that was fast, easy to dress up, and had universal appeal (my sister’s a really picky eater). I decided to make some gnocci and some fettuchini, and I provided three kinds of sauces: tomato, alfredo, and butter-garlic.
The tomato sauce turned out all right. The alfredo sucked, but that was the brand; not my fault, as all I did was remove it from a jar and heat it up. The garlic butter sauce, on the other hand. . .
. . .well, see, we didn’t have garlic in the house; all we had was garlic powder. So I used that instead, gleefully ignoring the small print on the bottle that said, “I TBSP = 1 garlic clove.”
I must have dumped in six or seven times that. The bottom of the pot was covered in a garlic sludge. The butter garlic sauce was like pure, liquified garlic. My dad ate it, but my dad likes strong tasting food and may have been trying to spare my feelings. I knew it was bad. I didn’t feel too badly about it, though, as there was the spaghetti sauce, and the pasta turned out perfectly. But that sauce. . .::shudders::
An ex-flatmate of mine once decided he would make dinner for us one evening. It was nothing too adventurous , it was basically one of them jars of curry that you add meat and simmer for 40 mins or so.
Anyway, hard to mess up or so we thought, but we were proved wrong whem my flatmate bustled in from the kitchen with a trayfull of plates containing BACON!-Tikka-massala!!1.
mmmn mmmn rashers of bacon with the fat still on em about the size of a labradors tongue covered in a tikka style sauce.
To the bin with you.
I already mentioned this here, but I’ll tell it again.
One night I could tell my mom was tired (stepdad HATES cooking, it’s not a gender-roles thing), so I offered to make supper. We were low on supplies, so I pulled out a box of frozen swedish meatballs, some noodles, a green pepper and an onion, thinking I could make a mock stroganoff. I sauteed it together, boiled the noodles, then tried to make the sauce by using instant gravy mix (with faux garlic flavour - I think that’s what really killed it) with a little sour cream and some red wine.
It was truly awful. To this day I loathe all things with fake garlic in them. Poor mom - that night she went hungry AND tired.
Ah, yes, cooking… having lived stuffed in a metaphorical closet for years, this was the first thing I needed to learn when I finally moved out of the house. Thankfully, I was moving in with my S.O., who had been a chef for years. I’ve actually not had any serious fiascos (though I came close one time, not knowing the difference between a bulb and a clove of garlic. I was saved though). I do burn myself every single time I go to make anything involving a hot pan and oil. And I must remember to NOT be wearing glasses when straining hot pasta.
Surprisingly enough, my S.O. has been the one who managed to royally ruin some meals.
A month or two ago I bought ingredients to make a shrimp stir fry, the shrimp being the tiny canned ones. He added them far too soon, much to my dismay. The stir fry came out quasi-edible, but the shrimp mush proved too vomitous in texture for me to eat a whole plate. I remade it again by myself recently, and it came out fantastic.
He’s a vegetarian (but will eat dairy and seafood). I come from an irish/polish/german cuisined family, which is just disturbingly heavy on meat. I’d eat my meat right off the animal, if I could. Raw. (I became something of an inadvertent vegetarian myself, as there was never meat in the house, and we couldn’t afford eating out.) He’s from South Carolina, where all his family resides, but we were living in Massachusetts, where all my family resides, so all holidays were spent with my relatives. Needless to say, every holiday involved him spending the day before making something to bring that he could eat.
Our first Thanksgiving went over rather well. He made a delish veggy lasagne, and an appetizer involving goat cheese, very colourful roasted peppers, and roasted garlic.
But you should have seen my relatives. Hovering around the goat cheese plate looking like “what is this?.. it’s got no meat… how the heck are we supposed to eat it? is it edible at all?..it looks to pretty… perhaps it is just meant for decoration…” It was priceless.
Our second thanksgiving… I forget what it was exactly that we were doing the day before, but I’m sure it involved much scrambling for ingredients and such, because we put it off until the last moment. We planned on making the same thing, since it went over so well (after they figured out it was, in fact, edible). I helped cut everything up and roast things and such. But it was late, and I was tired. I helped him set everything up, so all that was left was baking the lasagne. He said he was going to watch some TV while it baked, and I should get sleep. So I went to bed.
Some hours later, I woke up with the hair on the back of my neck on end. I couldn’t smell anything off at first, until I started walking down the hall. Nothing dramatic, no billowing smoke or the like, but there was definitely a strong scent of overcooked. I looked in the living room, and there was my S.O., asleep on the couch.
It wasn’t burnt but it definitely wasn’t pretty either. He decided it would be shameful to give to my fam, but we could eat it just fine. Half of it went in the fridge; the other half got wrapped and put in the freezer.
Ah, here’s the best part: Last weekend, I bought him some frozen fish dinners, and went to put them in the freezer. Guess what’s still sitting in the back behind the frozen chicken boobs? ^__~
lol!!
One night I decided to make pork ribs roasted in a packet of wine, garlic and onions. I had done it before and they came out fabulous. This time, after 3 hours of cooking and turning the oven all the way up, they were still not quite cooked. When I tried to make cookies not that long after, they turned out as a flat, gloppy, but still tasty mess. It turns out that my oven was broken and wasn’t heating right.
Ever try baking biscuits in an oven that only has the top part of the heating unit working? Burnt on top, raw on the bottom. Took me a while to realize this. I ended up having to make 5 dozen cookies in my little toaster oven for an Easter potluck. With only 6 cookies being able to bake at a time it took hours.
My first chicken curry turned out to be a horrific burnt mess. We couldn’t get the smell out for weeks. I still don’t know what went wrong. My curry is divine now though. Still can’t get the smell out.
rather disturbing bunch of stories. hehe. i go to the local public high school and am in my third year of the program. however the teacher is an middle aged woman. for a demonstration for her food 3 students, she made cheesecake. normally you put cheesecake in a water bath at a low temperature. she got those parts right. she then proceeded to forget about it and left to go home. that was fun. i used up ten or fifteen steel wool things getting it clean
thens theres my mom - she was born in new england and has a taste for seafood. so she goes out and buys the frozen fried shrimp, heats up some oil, and proceeds to fill the house with a horrible fishy/rancid oil smell. i can’t remember the last time i ever smelled something so disgusting in my life. once, she forgot about the oil and disappeared to take a shower. i walked uot from my room to the kitchen to see and massive grease/shrimp fire. i banned her from the kitchen after that.
my friend jon is another kind of idiot. hes intelligent but lacks severely in common sense. we had skipped school one day and went to his friend andrews house. we found leftover pizza. jon can’t eat frozen pizza, so he proceeds to get a paper plate out, puts the cold pizza on it and puts it into a 350 degree toaster oven. we hear “Andrew, can you come here for a second?” andrew and i look up to see a strange orange glow emerging from the kitchen. needless to say, jon is never again allowed to use paper plates again.
and me - i decided i was going to make coffee cake one day. i needed oil, but could only find the oil fromfrying some chicken the night before. i think i broke a world record for projectile vomiting.