A few months ago, my mother made some fried smelt, like her daddy used to do when she was little. Unfortunately, she wasn’t paying attention and powdered sugar bears a pretty good resemblace to flour.
gag
Once when I was little my mother was making a very complex dinner of grilled cheese. Well mom some how got distracted (I don’t think it could have been because of the fight my sister and I were having) Any way The result was nice black and some what orange sandwich. Well if the smell wasn’t bad enough mom tries to salvage what could be from the cheese monster by scraping the blackness from the sandwich. When we were finally served our “masterpieces” what we got was a horribly mangled and mutilated sandwich. I would have laughed except for the fact that mom was upset at the fact that se was having such a bad day and that the charcoal monsters did not help. Sometimes I bring up the story and she laughs and then denies it.
Oh, those were the good old days. sighs
I’m not sure if this counts, but…
My dad makes ginger beer. I’ve heard its good stuff, but I never drink much ever because its alchoholic. He’s been using the same good recepie for years now.
But on to the point.
BEFORE he knew everything on this subject, he brewed the beer in glass bottles, and didn’t know to release the pressure each night or so. My parents tell me they were woken up in the middle of the night by a loud BANG and when they came out into the kitchen they smelled the beer in the air.
My dad knows to use PLASTIC bottles AND to release the pressure each night.
But the “hiss” sound scares one of my dogs.
Just remembered MrCoffee’s first attempt at cooking for me during our “courting phase”. He wanted to cook me potato pancakes. Used a Cuisanart and produced . . . .(wait for it) . . . . … . . . …potato sludge. :dubious: Totally inedible. He was SO crestfallen. However he has become a fairly decent cook. Something about actually reading the applicable recipes and having the correct equipment on hand before attempting to cook something new. 
Ah, the day my ex made her first “Shepard’s Pie”…
It wasn’t entirely her fault, the recipe didn’t actually say you had to cook the ground beef first.
So she just put seasoned raw ground beef at the bottom of the casserole dish and covered it with her sublime mashed potatoes, and stuck it in the oven.
Um… didn’t quite turn out right.
Several stories for you -
-
My fiancee’s dad and my fiancee’s brother are home alone, without the mother home. They decide to make some spaghetti.
Background: My fiancee’s mother is the type who likes to freeze EVERYTHING. I’ve found the most bizzare, crusty things in her freezer. She likes to freeze all sorts of vegetables and fruits in baggies for later use.
So, dad and brother start on the tomato sauce. They pull out a bag of red frozen stuff, add it to the sauce. Resulting sauce tastes kind of funny, but they eat it anyway.
The mom comes home and asks them, why the heck did they make Strawberry Marinara? -
I can top the jalapeno sorbet story. I had a similar inspiration, based on the concept of jalapeno preserves, for a jalapeno snow cone syrup. I added citrus zest for extra kick. I ate all of it, but it gave me such a stomachache. I think I ate it out of determination that it SHOULD be tasty. Don’t know where I got that idea.
-
I was making a pasta casserole sauce one day, and it calls for a lot of nutritional yeast to give it a cheesy flavor. Looked around, couldn’t find the nutritional yeast. I finally found a bag way in the back of the cupboard. It looked right, smelled right, so I pulled it out and dumped some in the sauce.
A few minutes later, I realized the sauce was way too thick… and way too grainy… hey…
I had dumped a cup of falafel mix into the sauce.
Many moons ago, my Dad was shopping at the neighborhood nursery for garden stock. He saw some cheap, beautiful, mexican pepper plants and immediately thought of the pepper shakers they have at pizza shops (well, the good ones anyway). So Dad bought him some pepper seedlings and stuck them in the garden.
Once they were harvested, Dad dried the peppers. He wasn’t quite sure what to do with them next. The pizza shop peppers are in little bits and he had whole dried peppers.
Ahah! Food Processor!
Dad loads the food proccessor with the peppers and turns it on. Nothing. Well, maybe a higher setting. Still nothing. But the highest setting works Great! So great, in fact, that pepper dust starts to spray out of the food processor. STRAIGHT. INTO. DAD’S. EYES. (and lungs and everywhere else)
Blinded, Dad manages to unplug the food proccessor after a few minutes. He then staggers outside, feels around for the hose and proceeds to douse himself with water. This is how Wife #2 finds Dad when she pulls into the driveway. Sitting on the porch, totally soaked, hacking, rubbing his eyes.
Turns out that the peppers had been ground so fine that the dust went all over the house. Into the furniture, the carpets, the draperies, etc. Dad had to get everything professionally cleaned and wear surgical masks in the house for awhile.
Wife #2 doesn’t let him stay home alone anymore.
I lived in a group home for awhile in the '70s. Everyone was on the rotating cooking roster. Well, I’m a pretty good cook, and I thought I’d treat everyone by making cabbage rolls for 20. It took all morning and afternoon to do the prep, boiling the cabbage until it was just right, stuffing the leaves and making perfect rolls and the perfect tomato sauce. Twenty minutes before supper, I opened the oven to check on them. Almost done. Well, maybe I could add a little bit of water. So I turned around to go two feet to the sink and get the water, and all of a sudden, crash!!!. The roasting pan containing 60 cabbage rolls had slid off the oven rack, onto the floor. Upside down. We had hot dogs.
My wife could tell you some stories about abominable food her mother made. Her mom doesn’t have the cooking gene. My sweetie didn’t know that spaghetti was actually good until she stayed for supper at a friend’s house. As it turns out, her mom would take raw spaghetti, strew it across the bottom of a baking pan, pour in generic tomato sauce (not necessarily spaghetti sauce), and bake it for awhile, resulting in a bland, nearly flavorless sauce with pasta that was so al dente that if you bit into it, you’d have to go see Al the Dentist.
She also wanted me to mention the time she (wife) blew up the roast beef. This was not actually her fault. It was one of those ‘roast in a bag’ dinners, where you put the beef and some potatoes, onions, carrots and the flavor mix dissolved in water, into a plastic bag, inside a baking dish. You cut some holes into the bag to release the steam, and roast away. So we’re waiting for it to be cooked, and then, without warning, BLAM!!. I rushed out to the kitchen to find millions and millions of the tiniest shards of glass you could imagine, all over the inside of the oven. I think a drop of water had leaked out one of the vents onto the very hot glass dish (not Pyrex [TM]), and it exploded. We were able to salvage the roast. But despite intensive sweeping and vacuuming, I was still finding shards of blue glass on the kitchen floor weeks later.
Jellytoes- your post reminded me of another classic from my family.
We were preparing for the great cooking challenge that is known throughout America as Thanksgiving.
Traditionally, my family (from New Orleans all) makes an oyster dressing to accompany the meal. Said oysters must be finely ground before using. We didn’t have a Cuisinart at that time, but we did have an electric meat grinder. Of course, it needed to be cleaned before use, so Dad dissembled it, cleaned it, and reassembled it.
Sans blade.
Dad then loaded all of the oysters into the hopper and placed the bowl before the emission port, and left the room, since there was football to be watched and this oyster grinding would take some time.
Shortly after Dad left, I entered the kitchen to see one of our cats-as skittish a Maine Coon Cat as ever there was, all puffed up and swatting delicately at a greyish blob of something on the floor. I approached cautiously, and was almost on top of it when
PFOOSH-SPLATT!!!
I was almost nailed by another one flying out of the meat grinder. Soon followed by another.
The cat scrambled for safety; I, bravely weathered the barrage of “pfoosh-splatting” molluscs to get to the plug.
All hail my father, inventor of…THE OYSTER CANNON!!! 
I am a mid-thirties unmarried male, and I can cook. This story is about how I convinced myself that I cannot, however, bake.
I decided to make my SO a birthday cake. I went to the store, bought two boxes of cake mix (wasn’t sure how much one box made), frosting, candles, etc. Got everything home, had a few beers, and got to cake makin.
I started to mix the batter, and it felt kind of stiff. The more I mixed, the tougher it got. I ended up looking at a chocolate grapefruit in the bottom of the bowl. I read the directions (for what had to be the fifth time), and noted that I had omitted the water. I tried to add it at that point, but it was far too late.
“Hah” sez I, “I still have the second box”. After a few more beers for encouragement, I got started again. Remembered the water this time. I beilieve I even got puffed up in a “now that’s a fine batter” kind of way. I poured half of the batter in a pan, and it just didn’t look like enough. I mean, there was only like a 1/4" layer of batter in the pan. “Huh, I guess one box only makes one layer” I thought. I poured all the batter into one pan, set the timer, put it in the oven, and had more beers.
After the allotted cooking time (45min IIRC), I checked on my masterpiece. Of course, the cake had overflowed the pan tremendously. Luckily, there was another sheet pan underneath it, so no harm done. Checking with a toothpick, the middle was still as wet as the Pacific. I decide to let it cook more, and go to have more beers, checking periodically.
Approximately two hours later (did I mention the beer?), I judged the “cake” to be done. I felt the top, and the texture didn’t seem too far off. “Hah” sez I, “It’s taken a long time, but all I have to do now is ice it”. I pull the cake out of the oven, turn to take it to the counter, and the whole flippin’ cake slides off the sheet pan, does a half-gainer in the air, and smashes on my kitchen floor.
I stared. Aghast. Crushed. Half-drunk. I had a “burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp” feeling. I had to try a piece anyway, and it was good. I wept.
So I’m back in the store at 11:30 at night, buying more cake mix (I was determined to defy the Cake Gods at this point). The third cake was made properly in two layers and removed from the oven very carefully. Iced and decorated and I got my rear end to bed about 2am.
The cake went over well with the SO, but I think I got more mileage out of the story than from my thoughtful gesture.
Well, MrBoy1967, if you like that story you should like this one. This isn’t exactly a culinary disaster. But it is culinary and it is a disaster. Read on and you’ll see what I mean…
My mom is a fantastic cook. She was successfully making souffles when she was 13 (without ever seeing one or knowing what they were). She has a particular talent for taking the cheapest, most ordinary ingredients and turning them into tastebud gold.
But, sadly, Dad hated Mom’s cooking. He constantly complained about it.
One fine day (about 6 months before The Divorce, I believe), Mom came home from the grocery store with an unlabled can. The market in our area would take all the cans without labels, mark them down and sell them to people looking for a bargain. Mom guessed that it had to be peaches in the can but when she opened in she was surprised to find dog food. The cheap kind that just shlurps out in one solid mass.
We had no dogs at the time and not being one to waste food, Mom came up with a brilliant plan.
That night at the dinner table, Mom made a speech to us kids that she had made a special dinner for Daddy because he works so hard and we weren’t to bother him for a taste. Dad was all puffed up and happy about this. Especially when she placed a plate of beautifully sautteed discs of meat with a red wine gravy and garlic mashed potatoes in front of him.
Dad loved it, he asked for seconds and thirds. He made many comments about “now this is the way a man should be treated” and “glad to see you finally learned how to cook”.
To this day, I have no idea how Mom kept a straight face while Dad was wolfing down his dog food and loving it.
PostScript:
Many, many years later, Wife #2 pulled me aside and mentioned that she would like the recipe of a very special dinner that Mom made for Dad just before The Divorce. There were discs of tender meat and a rich gravy. Dad was still raving about it as “the only thing that damn woman had done right”.
I immediately knew what Wife #2 was talking about. I shook my head and calmly told Wife #2 that it was a family recipe and I couldn’t give it out. She was disappointed, but understanding. As soon as she left earshot I fell to the floor laughing.
Could you send me the recipe? opalcat@fathom.org
I’m currently looking for a good mac & cheese recipe.
Interestingly, my contribution to this thread is also macaroni and cheese. I was 11 at the time and visiting my dad and decided to make some from scratch. I didn’t have a recipe and as my mother is a Non Cooker (frozen dinners were the rule) I had no real concept of how this should go.
It turns out that just melting cheddar cheese and stirring in macaroni doesn’t work so well. My dad was a good sport and ate it anyway.
My mother is absolute magic in the kitchen. Whatever it is, she’ll burn it. Her method of cooking grilled cheese sandwiches is to put the sandwich on the hot griddle, then go into the other room and watch television until she smells smoke.
But her true tour de force was achieved during my senior year in high school. The night of my senior prom, in fact. I got home quite late, of course, after the school-sponsored after-prom party let out (which is where I’d been, of course, as several of my classmates were prepared to testify), and found the my mother had busied herself while waiting up for me by preparing some dishes for the church potluck scheduled for the next day. (I’d suggest that potluck is a poor name for an event featuring any of her cooking, but that’s neither here nor there.) She wasn’t actually in the kitchen as I passed through on my way to the stairs, but she was nearby enough to hear me comment on seeing one of my favorite appetizers on my way. “Mmmm, deviled eggs,” I said, as I headed upstairs to bed. Only to be admonished, “You can’t have any-they’re for the church dinner tomorrow.” Figures. “And anyway, they’re burnt.” Heh. That figures, too …
:eek:
“Um, mom?”
“Yes?”
“Uh … never mind.” There are some things mankind was not meant to know …
My wife was surprised when she found out I was a pretty good cook, me being a male and all. :rolleyes: She was even more surprised after she was exposed to my mother’s cooking-how did I learn to cook decently? The same way the cat learned to swim-in the middle of the pool, you paddle or drown. 
What a great thread!
One note to an old post. Caesar Dressing, when made correctly, has anchovies in it and you don’t taste a bit of fish. I’ve had some AWFUL Caesar with big chunks of fish in it and I’ve had some DIVINE Caesar with just the right amount.
Iceberg lettuce is a crime against nature.
I’ve done the gravy paste thing, only mine had beer in it. That was foul.
Ardred’s father cooked a beef tenderloin on the outdoor grill rotisserie for Christmas this past year. They did a trial run before the meal with a smaller loin (4 pounds or so) to see the cooking times, flavors, etc. It turned out pretty good, took about 45 minutes…
Christmas morning comes and he’s got this 10 pound beautiful piece of beef prepped and ready for cooking. He throws it on the grill and everything is fine. 30 minutes later he says it’s done. His wife says… “honey, the one that was less than half this size took longer, are you sure?” The thermometer doesn’t lie, but I’ll let it cook a little longer. He accomplishes this by turning off the heat and letting it sit for 10 minutes. Slices it open, cold and bloody in the middle. So, he throws it back on the grill… ON HIGH. Result: Charred mess on the outside, just this side of rare on the inside. We ate it anyway.
Chocolate in chili can be good, if there’s no sugar and you don’t burn it. We threw that pot out.
My roommate in college once made mac and cheese and discovered we didn’t have any milk. He used sour cream and BALSAMIC VINEGAR instead. Stinky. He ate it because he was starving.
Another roommate had never handled raw meat before. I had bought some hamburger and she offered to make us some Hamburger Helper. She dumped in the package of beef and browned it up, added the sauce. She didn’t look at the number of pounds of beef she’d put in. Hamburger helper with 2.5 pounds of beef is damn tasty but a bit hard on the ol digestive tract. Turns out her parents always bought beef in one pound packages. She’d also never been served chicken in a chicken shape (like a cornish game hen or a half chicken). She couldn’t eat it because it looked like a bird. She also hadn’t been taught to cut up her own meat and was embarrassed at a dinner when she was 14 because her friend’s dad cut it up for her. We unsheltered her nicely. I love that girl.
Heh. Here’s my humble contribution, actually created approximately thirty minutes ago–
About all I can make correctly–besides grilled cheese and quesidillas–are desserts. I was making a strawberry swirl cake a bit ago–basically white cake with strawberry jam and weird icing–and everything was going fine. While I waited for the cakes to cool I went to re-dye my hair. When I got back the cakes were nice and cool, so I dumped the first one–henceforth nicknamed the ‘Demon Cake’–onto a plate and set about icing it. While I did I was recalling another disaster, the affectionately nicknamed ‘Upside-Down Cake’. You don’t wanna know. Anyhow, the plate must’ve gotten too close to the edge of the counter and went toppling off in to splat onto the floor, smearing a good bit of icing on my knee.
:smack:
That’s what I call an upside-down cake!
I had to call in the Doggie Clean-up Squad and managed to salvage the other, non-suicidal cake. Now I’ve got a really thin strawberry swirl cake…
When I was but a young phouka, I decided that I wanted to make fudge. I’m not really sure where this idea came from, but I went with it. My dad took me to the store, and I used the recipe off the back of a jar of Kraft Marshmallow Creme. With one small problem. I couldn’t find the evaporated milk. So I asked my dad if evaporated milk and sweetened, condensed milk were the same thing. He advised me they were.
The fudge I made was about half an inch thick (in contrast to later batches that were two inches thick in the same pan), oily, granular, and crunchy. I didn’t know any better. I’d never even seen fudge before, let along made it. My parents refused to try it, but it actually was not that bad. So long as you didn’t think of it as fudge. My younger brother ate nearly the whole thing himself, and occasionally will still ask me for more boo-boo fudge, as we took to calling it.