The Contest
Do you win stuff? Does this happen to you? It never happens to me....I'm not sure why. Probably because I say things like "winning stuff never happens to me". Then I got to thinking that maybe it's not just me, maybe no one actually ever wins things. And everyone just thinks that they don't win anything. Not that I'm one to believe in conspiracy theories...obviously.
To counteract this negative string we've decided a Contest is exactly what this blog needs. Given this blogs focus on cooking we're giving away puppies....just kidding. We're giving a way some cooking stuff. Because really, you can never have too much cooking stuff.
Tell em what they win:
A beautiful set of 9 glass bowls, bamboo salad servers, and these FANTASTIC Silicone needs no paper liner muffin pans all from Crate & Barrel. Now there's a reason why you're getting this stuff...and it's because we want you to 1. Mix it up 2. Serve it up and finally 3. finish everything with a cupcake or a muffin because everyone likes one of those two things. It's the law. (or, if you didn't want to cook and you just wanted the C&B gift certificate we could work that out too)
So now to the effort part:
1. Leave a comment. Funny comments get two entires. Funny comments about food disasters get three entires. Non-funny comments get just one entry.
2. Pimp out Chop.Stir.Mix on your blog or e-mail it to people....you don't technically have to do this, but it would sure be nice. Because I'm a sucker for incentive, how about this? If you help this post get to over 50 comments we'll throw in a $50 gift card from American Express...so basically we'll give you $50 to buy groceries so you can make all of this stuff we're chatting up.
3. Have a recipe that you want to share...send us an e-mail...up there in the right hand side there's a link that says Email Us Here. Do that.
The winner will be selected with random number generator in ONE WEEK, that's Monday, the day after Mother's Day, May 12th . You must comment on this post before Sunday night.
95 comments:
I suppose I can't enter, eh?
Bollocks.
Ok, so I do have 1 major recipe disaster (imagine, a girl who can make pancakes has a disaster? ha. I digress).
When I was pregnant with my oldest, I was unwise in the ways of cooking. That was 8 years ago mind you. God I'm old. Again, I digress.
I decided to make an oregano meatloaf. However, I only had dried oregano, not the yummy fresh smelling stuff that I now cannot live without. SO..........can you see where I'm heading? Can you? Come on, guess....yes, I used the dried. The exact amount I can't remember, but I was UNAWARE that you don't use the same amount of fresh seasoning as you do dried. UNAWARE until I ate the first bite. It was, as you can imagine, awful. My husband still doesn't let me live it down. And I stick to my awesome meatloaf......want the recipe?
funny recipe disaster stories? hmmm...i'm not funny or a disaster in the kitchen. that bites.
I like baking bread. I was just trying to get the hang of a good whole wheat sandwich bread. I'm not sure what I did wrong, but the bread, which looked so pretty and nicely risen when I put it into the oven, had collapsed around the slash by the time it came out. While it still tasted fine, it has ever after been referred to as "That a$$ bread" because of how it looked.
Let me see...
I made brownies and forgot the eggs... Hmm, that was bad...
Another attempt at brownies recently - I ended up with a slightly leaning to the left two layer cake with frosting everywhere trying to make the cake NOT look like it was leaning. I seriously thought it was a brownie recipe I was making until it dawned on me that there were an awful lot of ingredients for one pan of brownies... I decided the cake looked like a giant Elephant poop on a plate & told everyone so yet I still brought it to work and made them eat it (Nice, eh?!) Despite the ugliness of this cake it was quite yummy if you got past how horrid it looked!
And this does not exactly count as a recipe disaster but it makes me laugh to this day. When I went away to college at the rip age of 17 I had never used a microwave. My mom did not want one so we never had one... SO imagine my delight to find a microwave when I moved into an apartment my 2nd quarter with two other girls. I went a little crazy and gained a ton of weight eating everything microwavable on earth.
One afternoon I decided to make a bagel dog (like a corn dog essentially.) The phone rang as I put the bagel dog in for ONE minute. I ran to answer the phone which was for me. Suddenly my roommate was yelling "OMG Christina what is that?!?!" I ran out to the kitchen and sure enough there was bagel dog with flames shooting out of its million tiny pieces and the smell... I set the microwave to go for TEN minutes rather then one... OOPS!
You guys (I means gals, sorry, that word is a habit) are going all out to promote your site and I think that's super swell!!! I will do my part!
I really wanted to do a funny comment, but as your post said, there's no extra credit for doing so.
;-)
I always get so excited to enter contests! And I never win either!
My very worst food disaster has to be the time I was making instant pudding and I used water instead of milk. Eww. Granted, I was a teenager! After thay my mother decided it was time to teach me to cook.
So does having you on my blogroll count as pimping you? :) I only have like, maybe six readers so I won't win on the chatting you up anyway!!
Once, my mom and my new SIL were going to make pumpkin bread -- a holiday tradition in our family. Sort of a "welcome to the family" kind of thing. So, we all three gathered in my SIL tiny little galley kitchen and mixed and sifted. When we finally put the bread into the oven, it kept rising up over the top of the pans and catching the oven on fire. We couldn't figure out what in the world was wrong. We put another pan in. Same thing. It was only when we gave up and were cleaning up the kitchen that we found the three cans of pumpkin and realized that we had never added the pumpkin. To the PUMPKIN bread. Nothing says "welcome to the family" like "Let's set your kitchen on fire!"
There was that time I cooked lentils in a pressure cooker (shut up). The story can be found here.
The truth is, I don't need any kitchen crap. I will pimp your blog, though.
Blog pimped. I love that phrase. :)
Madame Queen sent me over here for a contest. She's the best like that!
I have so many cooking mishaps but I'll tell one of my first. We were newlyweds and I was determined to do everything perfect. Upon getting the casserole out of the oven I dropped it on the floor. That was bad. The next night I repeated the performance and was in hysterical tears. Dear hubby bought pizza. And you know? I've never had that happen since. I've no idea how I did it twice.
Pimped you, and happy to do it!
Love the recipe blog - its already pimped out on my site!
Cooking disasters? There was this one caramel apple making fiasco with my husband & I. People still make fun of us, but its not all that funny.
Our favorite recipe creations and experiments arise from this:
Sometimes when we're bored, we'll drink a few glasses of wine, go to the store w/a little buzz, and come home, keep drinking, and cook up some amazing food - still my all time favorite (although not creative) was our drunken gourmet nachos at 4am probably about 4 years ago.
Alexis
I heard about you over at Madame Queens! Sadly, this is an unfunny comment, probably because all my humor got sucked out today while I slaved for two hours over homemade spaghetti sauce & meatballs (a recipe I got on the food network) whose ingredients I had to go to two different stores to find on the way home from work and all for a dinner that was completely underwhelming AND I burned my tongue *sigh*
Did you know that pumpkin filling is not a reasonable substitution for yams? 'nuff said.
Aside: you are aware that "The Contest" is a Seinfeld episode about, uh, (how do I make this food related?) uh, "choking the chicken", right?
Kitchen disaster? How about when my wife cooked frozen RAW chicken, but followed the thawed cooking time? Or when I was twelve and decided to "mix it up" by making roasted potatoes with orange juice? Or the first time my wife made gravy and it was technically a solid (we sliced it on our plates)? Good enough?
PS - you have been appropriately pimped.
Um, despite knowing that "Deceptively Delicious" was getting mixed reviews and staunchly believing that no good comes of hiding foods in recipes, I somehow decided on Valentine's Day that my children would LOVE a special breakfast of pink pancakes! With BEET PUREE!
It didn't work out so well. Truly disgusting.
But hey, now the kids talk about the Beetcake Incident twice as much as they used to talk about the time I made a cheesecake without an extra pan to catch the butter dripping out of the springform pan. The next thing I tried to cook -- a frozen pizza, I believe -- was the unfortunate victim of all that butter finally catching on fire.
Really, it's a wonder I'm allowed to operate in a kitchen at all.
I was making a cake with my stepdaughter, red velvet to be exact. And she wanted a hand in everything, she's becoming quite the little bakers' helper =o) At the end of mixing, I usually pull up the kitchenaid to clean the batters a little, and then turn off the power. Well, the mixer was angled a different way than usual because it gave her an easier reach to add ingredients....and because of that I didn't turn the mixer OFF...I turned it to HIGH! At that moment both her and I were splattered with red cake batter. My husbands hears the shriek only to come into the kitchen to what looked like a bad, bad accident ;)
My SIL and I decided to make Bananas Foster Carmel Cake from Bon Apetit for Christmas dinner a few years ago. We apparently did NOT read the recipe thoroughly because it took us AT LEAST 10 hours of slaving away and in the end the cake looked NOTHING like the cover of the magazine. Apparently they aren't lying when they say you need a candy thermometer to make your own caramel and incidentally if you over mix said caramel with whipped cream you end up with big brown mess that looks like a turd. The cake TASTED good though...I remind my husband and BIL of that every year when they start the day with "Remember Jill & Gina's cake..."
First off, Kristin… sent me.
Before my husband and I were married, our first Thanksgiving in our house, I decided to cook for us. I thought that I had followed all of the directions for making a turkey perfectly; the skin was a delicious golden-brown and I’d even remembered to pull out the neck. As Hub started to carve the turkey though, something was a bit off---I forgot to take the bag of giblets out—this was before those safe paper bags were used. The plastic was coagulated and stuck to the inside of the carcass. A whole turkey was ruined, or at least we weren’t taking any chances.
In all honesty, I forgot again the following year, BUT thankfully, they were in a paper bag and we were free to eat our turkey. It’s been nearly 10 years and it still comes up without fail when I am preparing Thanksgiving Dinner.
This looks interesting....oh, and I did not know that my daughter was a PIMP!!
I found a fabulous Pumpkin Bread recipe and decided to double the bathc and knock out a bunch of "Hi Neighbor" Christmas gifts. I mixed it all up and then -packed the oven with loaf pans.
20 minutes later - smoke,fire and burning sugar. I opened the oven to find pumpkin batter bubbling all over the place. I had forgoteen the FLOUR,for God's sake!! In a BREAD recipe.
Oh I got a good one for 3 entries.
When I was living at my mom's I tried to start the grill. I turned on the gas and started trying to light matches...well, it took a few too many tries and by the time I got a match lit there was a big ball of fire. Luckily all I did was singe my eye lashes and the very front of my hair, no lasting damage or skin burns, but have you ever smelled burnt hair? I did for a few days!! Ewwww. It wasn't funny to me...but it was to every member of my family.
And I pimped you out when the blog first started and I will again today! :) I could really use that gift card!
My banana chocolate chip muffins are in the oven...I will let you know how they turn out.
Did you know...
that you should pierce the skin of your sweet potatoes before baking them in your small convection oven?
(I know now.)
On the bright side, the oven needed a good cleaning anyway. The walls? Notsomuch.
Love, peace and chicken grease :)
moodyhomecooking
oh boy, back in my city days we started having dinner nights with our guy friends. each night a different person hosted and cooked a meal. on my night i made baked ziti b/c i was not a cook and that was all i could muster. i like the cheese to be burnt, so i cooked it the way i liked it and the ziti was crunchy !! so as we ate this meal my friends were crunching their pasta. nice huh ???
Me! Pick me! I'll let you know when I pimp!
All my latest food recipes are on Psychotic Hobbyist blog. Which I need to update big time.
I once learned two really really important cooking facts in a single morning:
1) Trying to bake cinnamon rolls when you're relaly hung over and oyu have a cold is not the best idea ever.
2) Ground cinnamon and garam masala look almost identical from the top if you're really hung over and not paying attention.
On the bright side -- i later learned that if you leave the sugar out, garam masala and cumin seed buns are pretty tasty with Paneer Korma and the like...
I pimp, therefore I am.
Have you ever cooked a cheeseburger (it looked more like a bloody baseball) in the toaster oven?
I play Bunco. We always eat dinner at that months hostess' house then play. Then we eat dessert. Last summer, around this time, I got all excited about a red, white, and blue cake recipe that I found. I made it. It looked awesome! I put it in the fridge and prepared my chicken dish for the evening. I put it in the fridge. When it was time to start cooking, I took out the chicken dish and put it in the oven. Except, it wasn't the chicken I put in the oven. It was the lovely, needed to be refrigerated, already been cooked, heat was the enemy, cake. It was aweful. I even posted pictures on my blog. I can't find the post right now, but when I do, I'll comment with it.
One pitiful Thanksgiving I made a meatloaf in the shape of a turkey because we were that broke.
I wonder if this makes for a funny or disastrous cooking story ... or maybe it's still just pitiful.
Wendi sent me here, she's pimpin'! Like the site! Recent disaster, just last week tried to pulverize granulated sugar in the processor to make powdered sugar...totally forgetting that you have to add cornstarch...the frosting was AWFUL.
Hello...Wendi sent me here too. I'm not sure what this pimpin' thing is all about, but for Wendi I will do it!
This site is very interesting. I have a lot of cooking disasters, too many to list, mainly about burnt food. I am trying harder lately. Maybe this site will help me with my cooking handicap!
Yet another sent by Wendi! What a great site...I plan to check back often. I have to share one of my many cooking disasters too. Years ago, I made Spam casserole for my boyfriend (now husband) and his brother. The disaster is not the fact that I made spam casseole. It's actually quite tasty and one of my childhood favorites. Well, the boys took a couple of bites and said, "Where's the Spam?" D'oh!
If Monday, May 12 is my birthday, does that mean I get special treatment???
All my cooking is disastrous. I just suck at it. I love to read stuff like this blog, though, so you have a new reader in me. & I will put this on my blog as well.
Wendi sent me here. I will check this out more often.
Cooking disasters - My first married Thanksgiving turkey. My husband asked me where the giblets were. I told him this turkey didn't come with any. Needless to say they were still inside the turkey in a bag. Opps.
More recent: I was boiling eggs and it wasn't until I heard the eggs cracking that I realized the water had boiled off. I yelled a swear and ran to the kitchen. My husband said he can always tell when our meals are ready because I yell and run like a mad woman to the kitchen.
Wendi's mom
OKay, even professionals make mistakes....
Occasionally when I was living closer to my parents, they would ask me to cater dinners for them. They had gone out that afternoon, so I took the oppurtunity to go to their house and prep. I worked on dinner, and then decided to make chocolate bowls to hold the Tiramisu for dessert. I melted chocolate and proceeded to dip small balloons halfway into it, then placed them on a cookie sheet to set. Well, I had not tempered (cooled) the chocolate enough and the balloons started popping. There was chocolate EVERYWHERE. Ceiling, walls, floor, my speckled face, and everything else in the kitchen. Unfortunately, that happened to be the moment my parents came home. Needless to say, I served the tiramisu in martini glasses and spent HOURS cleaning up the chocolate.
Great blog! I have a little cooking disaster posted in my blog here:
http://www.happyhomewrecker.net/?p=1107
Wendi, this is great!! Thanks for e-mailing it to me!! ~Amy G.
My name is Rich and Wendi Friend sent me here. Nice site... You gotta love foo, eh!
I keep meaning to send in some recipes. One day when I get time...
I don't have one big cooking disaster story. I have several stories of substitutions gone horribly wrong. Or there was the great creme brulee disaster of New Year's 2004, where I made it for company for the first time (not the first time I ever made it but I'd never made it for company) and I must have had a bad vanilla bean because both batches turned out gritty. I've been traumatized and haven't made it since....
I don't really have a baking disaster story, but I do recall from a very early age that Mom had my brother & me in the kitchen helping. It never seemed like a chore, but more an opportunity. But she always insisted that we had to eat what we made - so, yup, even if the egg yokes didn't survive the easy-over flip or if the cake was lopsided, it was still edible. And she always insisted that we clean the dishes used for cooking while waiting on whatever we had prepared to finish cooking.
These basics have always stuck with me. I don't make too many big goofs, but usually can still make 'em edible when I do. And I'm constantly cleaning so there's never a big dirty pile after the fact.
Mom had one other rule - "He who cooks doesn't have to clean" - but somehow that doesn't hold so true in my household now where I usually cook and still wash dishes... Shucks!
My mother has been dying for a set of bowls like that. I might have to make a trip to Crate and Barrel on Saturday. But then, maybe not. She stole my idea for LFMs birthday present and gave it to LFD for HIS birthday. Scooped!
Recipe disaster story: I made cupcakes in a silicone cupcake pan. Greased the pan according to mfg directions, baked according to directions, all ready to remove them from the pan AND THEY STUCK! Like a snail to a rock being pounded by waves! And they fell apart, crumbled to bits. With witnesses present!
I decided to make my first homemade French apple pie for Christmas Eve at my parents house. I even made a cheddar cheese crust from scratch, and it looked and smelled divine. I was rocking my 3 day old niece when I heard a "SPLAT" from the kitchen. My dad somehow lost his grip on the pie while removing it from the oven and it "crumbled" beautifully all over the floor. I had to refrain from any "French" over my destroyed work of art. Marie Callender's apple pie never tasted worse.
I made rice krispie bars and after my husband spent a few minutes working on one particularly chewy piece, he finally discovered that it was a piece of the plastic spatula that had melted off into the concoction, and that I hadn't noticed.
Well you finally got me to comment. I love drawings!
The most recent kitchen disaster was a few months ago and my husband's fault. In his defense our baby was a newborn and we were sleep deprived. We made banana bread, mmmmmmm yummy. We thought we were out of sugar and just too tired to go to the store. Luckily my husband found a small container of sugar in the cabinet (he tasted it to make sure). After waiting what seemed like an eternity for the bread, I took a bite into what tasted like a salt stick. Yep, my husband's found tub of sugar was salt. We were so tired and it was so sad. I can't believe he tasted it and didn't notice it wasn't sugar.
Recently I decided I wanted to make chicken enchiladas. The recipe calls for cream cheese and I was out and too lazy to run to the store for a brick. I had some laughing cow spreadable swiss cheese and thought...hey I can use that. Well, that on top of too many jalepeno's and what I got was a vile mess. Just one of the many mishaps in the lazy cooks kitchen. :)
I will have to try some of these recipes! Looks good!
Ha! When I moved in with my husband, right after we got married- I decided to make him a cake- a really nice chocolate cake. I was pregnant, and I fell asleep while the cake was baking, only to wake up to a smoke alarm going off. I freaked out, jumped up, unplugged the alarm and got the cake out. I couldn't get it out of the cake pan, it was so burnt. I sat down in the kitchen a bawled my eyes out, in a fit of embarrassment, I took the cake pan (cake still in it) and wrapped it up in a garbage bag and threw it in the dump.
A couple of days later- my husband asked me where the BRAND NEW cake pan he'd bought right before I moved in was.
I lied and told him I had no idea.
:)
i love a good contest. i posted about it on the moms board i chat on. (http://momscorner.activeboard.com/index.spark) i think it should bring some people over! hope it helps!!!
oh dear lord. most of my disasters are a result of me forgetting something is in the oven. whoops!
i am going to pimp the livin' heck out of your blog! whoop!
The most memorable cooking experience? Making an angel food cake for the first time. Besides being in 5th grade and not knowing how to handle the eggs (separating them? what?), I also had cream of tarter that was at least a decade old. My family still refers to the "angel food pancake" incident.
Madame Queen sent me. :)
Let's see, cooking disasters. There was that time that I decided a recipe for Chicken Stroganoff sounded good. I mean we like Beef Stroganoff so Chicken Stroganoff would be lovely. It smelled and looked sort of like that stuff they put on puke in elementary schools.
This was about 8 years ago when my husband and I were still all new and dewy in our relationship, he took a bite and tried to appear as if he was not about to vomit. I then took a bite and was like "oh my god that is terrible, blech" He promptly spit out his food and said "oh thank god."
We still talk about that incident sometimes.
I so LOVE Crate & Barrel. We just re-did our kitchen and finished it up with C&B furniture. The funny part of ME having a BRAND NEW kitchen is I told myself "Once I have a NEW better functioning kitchen I'll cook more and become better at it." That is SO not what happened. I still cook the same crap and only do so 3 nights a week - MAX. Having said all that - I'd LOVE to win and I SWEAR to use the items. I did make some fat free cranberry orange muffins last week - does that count?
hey--i'm scifi dad's sister and heard about your contest on his blog...so, here's a story...
my dad ALWAYS prepares the salad in our family. growing up, we never had salad dressing in our house. it was always the classic--oil, vinegar, salt and pepper. no fancy bottles or grinders either. big containers from the store would never be replaced by more aesthetically pleasing (and easier to use) dispensers. but truly, he has 'the touch' (as he says) and people comment that they never knew such a simple dressing could be so good.
so, every day dad makes the salad. when i was still a kid (prior to kitchen renovations) the oil and vinegar were kept under the sink. one day, dinner is coming together nicely and he's called in to do his daily task. however, on this day as he's tossing the salad he notices something strange--the salad appears to be foaming. confounded he tastes a bite and spits it out. only then does he realize that in his auto-pilot mode he inadvertently added Palmolive in lieu of oil to the mix.
there's a lesson in a properly organized kitchen. :)
hope that makes you chuckle!
Ok, so I'm not sure I technically qualify for the contest, but I do have a funny cooking disaster...
I was pregnant with my first and we all know when preggers, our brain is half mush.
I made a chocolate pan cake (made in a deep cookie sheet) for my Mom's birthday and transported it up to the cottage in the back of my car--did I mention it was in July?
Got to the cottage and the icing had all slid right off of the cake and all over my back seat/trunk/you name it! WHAT A MESS!!! Thank goodness the bears never found it.
My Mom helped me repair the cake and when we went to eat it, there was clearly something "missing" from the cake. This is a cake that has been made for many, many years in my family. Yup, after going over the ingredients with my Mom--I left out the stinkin' sugar! THE SUGAR PEOPLE!!! Who leaves out sugar in a cake???
food disaster? i can think of one in particular. i had gotten a recipe off of the kraft website for a packet chicken dinner. just needed some chicken breast, some veggies and some italian dressing. fold it up in a foil packet and grill until done. the recipe called for some cooked noodles on the side. so i thought,"hey, this can't be hard and it sounds good" wow, i brought those babies inside the house. gave one to my husband and one for myself. he opened to packet and nearly lost his lunch. he tried to take a bite but couldn't swallow. he actually had to walk into another room because they smelt soo bad. then we ordered pizza. oh and did i mention that i was a newly-wed. sorry honey, i promise i will learn better cooking techniques.
awesome blog by the way! i now love to cook/bake and am very good at it. i would like to think that my chicken disaster made me want to be a better cook.
chow!
I'll share a funny. My husband's great grandmother wrote many, many cookbooks and his favorite one is called Viennese Chocolate Cake from one of her cookbooks. I decided one year to enter it into the county fair and at the last moment told my neighbor across the street that she should enter her chocolate chip cookies. In the end, she won the Blue Ribbon for cookies and I got 3rd place for chocolate cakes.......there were only three entries. I was crushed! LOL
Here's a comment. It's funny, and food-related. Three entries for me?! Hope so!
My husband and I were on a road trip from Minnesota to Colorado. We spent the night at a hotel in NE, and the next morning got up early to hit the continental breakfast buffet and then get back on the road. So we're peering at the food on the buffet, and I'm wondering what kind of milk they have to go with the cereals (2%, 1%, etc), so I lean my head on my hubby's shoulder, and say something along the lines of "can you tell what kind of milk that is?" And then I look up at the head that's connected to the shoulder I'm leaning on, to find that it's NOT my husband I'm snuggling up against!! I quickly apologized to the guy and ran away.
This also constitutes my most embarrassing moment. So I think I should win:) hee hee.
I can't cook to save my life.
But I certainly can read blogs and add comments when comments are requested! ;-)
Sometimes I hope that I'll stop eating Kraft Dinner as often as I do and maybe try to make some real food.
But then I remember how much I love Kraft Dinner, and I'm just not willing to give it up yet. ;-)
My husband and I once ate dinner off the floor. It was almost like that episode of Friends where Chandler and Rachel eat cheesecake off the floor, in fact we made jokes about it being like that.
I made a crab casserole, and don't remember how, but dropped it on the floor as I removed it from the oven. Since crab isn't cheap, my husband suggested we just eat it... you know, the parts that weren't actually TOUCHING the floor. So we did. And it was good.
Okay, disasters? How much time do you have? *checks watch*
Well, I'll just give you a few highlights...
Before I got married, I had never cooked a meal that didn't come out of a blue Kraft box. Seriously. My parents actually GAVE my husband boxes of Mac & Cheese to sustain himself during his lifelong sentence to moi.
Well, one of the first things I wanted to make was my mom's vodka sauce. We were entertaining, and I figured that was sure to impress. Her recipe called for 4-6 cloves of garlic.
I didn't know the difference between a "clove" of garlic and a "head" of garlic.
I'm sure you can imagine the outcome of this story...
Then there was the time I decided to make a "microwave cake" and didn't realize that the box had expired like 2 years prior. THAT was one interesting cake...
(What's worse is that my parents ATE it, since I made it for their anniversary. Ahh, a parent's love for a child...)
Hmm, what else... A couple of months ago, I made risotto and didn't think that it really mattered if I used Arborio rice or not. Well, guess what? It matters.
(Okay, that one wasn't that funny, but I'm grasping at straws here. Your giveaway is just really cool!)
Just commenting to maybe be chosen by your random number generator! I never win anything and those prizes sound awesome!
I've never been to your blog before, but thanks to a fellow blogger, I have found you! I don't really have recipe disasters, but I did make an oopsie last night. My daughter eats terribly, no veggies and only a small array of foods. Well, I made her mac n cheese last night and decided to add pureed cauliflower to beef it up a bit. Well, apparently I didn't puree it right and she spit out every bite she took. Poor kid, now she probably won't eat mac n cheese again! cross that off the list.
Oh, I have another. A long time ago, I made spaghetti for my boyfriend, my hubby now. Well, growing up, I always saw my mom add some brown sugar to the sauce. Well, let's just say I added A LOT of brown sugar and the sauce was so sweet. Poor hubby ate all of his and never said a thing about how bad it was. Now he's not shy to mention that. That same night, I made garlic bread to accompany the spaghetti, well I used garlic salt instead of powder. It was the most terrible tasting thing ever. My poor hubby, he must not have cared because he still married me!
I forgot to add that AliThinks sent me here!
...so does this count for two entries?
My disaster stories usually center around me spilling something all over our hardwood floor. Like the time I put eggs out on the island and instead of staying in place, they slowly rolled off and cracked onto the wood floor. Or the time I opened the refridgerator and a bottle of Coke fell out, hit a jar of kalamata olives and caused that jar to open and spill out all over the refridgerator + wood floors. Yeah, I should cover the floor with a tarp when I cook :)
Baking disaster...
In college I decided to bake a cake for two friends who had birthdays that weekend. We didn't have any vegetable oil so I went to borrow some from the guys next door. They gave me the only bottle of vegetable oil they had and I went on to make my chocolate cake. I was SO clueless about things and didn't think it would matter that it was vegetable oil that was 'seasoned'...maybe that's called infused. I really don't know. Basically it was like italian seasoned vegetable oil and I baked a chocolate cake with it. The smell was horrible and I had to open the door to air out the apartment. The neighbors started coming by wondering what the awful smell was! We did NOT taste that cake.
Wendi Friend sent me. I don't cook, but maybe now she'll feed me!!
First, I should probably mention that Alison sent me. I should also mention that most people that read my blog also read hers, so I'll try and pimp you out, but I don't know that it will do much good.
Now, that said... I'm actually pretty good in the kitchen these days, but the one mishap that stands out in my mind is the eggplant disaster of '97.
Let's just say that I didn't realize I should poke holes in my eggplant before I roasted them whole in the oven. I put them in the oven, walked away (being that they were going to be in there for a while), only to come running back to the kitchen about 15 minutes later when I heard an explosion rattle my kitchen. I was cleaning eggplant from the depths of my oven for hours afterwards, and continued to find eggplant seeds over the next couple of weeks each time I went to cook something in the oven.
my sister-in-law anne sent me over here. and i am still laughing at her story.
this is a non-funny comment. i'm not an over-achiever. :)
Enter me! Enter me!
Oh wait, that sounds bad.
So I followed a link off of a food blog that I read over here, and decided that:
1) I want to enter your contest and win your goodies (not that I will, because I too never win anything)
2) I will come back and read your blog regularly
3) I will tell my blog friends about you.
So, my funny recipe disaster... I don't know if it counts because there really wasn't a recipe involved. In high school, I decided that I was going to bake some cookies. I went to the store, and bought a roll of the cookies you just slice off and bake. No way I could mess this one up! So, when I got home, I put the first batch in the oven, and went to go watch my soap opera while they were baking. I proceeded to burn every single batch of those cookies because I was paying more attention to the tv than the cookies! All of them! GAH! You would think I would have started setting the timer...I have no idea why I didn't!
Wow, 71 comments! I think you've had a lot of lurkers!
The funniest thing about me in the kitchen is just that: ME in the kitchen.
I won't go so far as to say I can't cook, but I avoid it as much as possible. Don't know why. Maybe one of these days I will be inspired by one of the yummy-sounding recipes here and give it a whirl!
so here is my funny cooking disaster..
i was making a new recipe for chocolate chip cookies...it was a finicky recipe so i had to stay on it and bake it EXACTLY...well when the first batch went in, i turned to get the next cast iron baking sheet off the counter to put dough on...well i missed it and it fell onto my foot breaking a toe...i immediately felt dizzy and almost threw up...dh came to my rescue and said he would finish baking the cookies for me..now he ISNT a cook or a baker AT ALL...i sometimes wonder if he knows where the kitchen is..
anyway, he got me all set up on the couch to rest and ice my toe and calm me down...he then follows my direction and gets started on the rest of the baking..
while resting i keep hearing the oven ding as if it is cooling or preheating..thinking it is the pain meds kicking in, i ignore it..
but i keep hearing it..so i calming ask what the dinging is..he replies with a very snotty, i am shutting the oven off and turning it back on, DUH? this sounded VERY strange to me, so i ask why? was there a problem? he says no, that batch was done, so i turned the oven off, and prepared the next pan. when i was ready i turn the oven back on and preheat it and put the next tray in...WHAT??????? i say..he says, isnt that what you are supposed todo? why would i leave it on while i am not baking?? OMG needless to say the cookies for his work came out just ok..
a few days later i remade the cookies and sent another batch to his work in which his clueless coworkers say, thank goodness your wife remade these..we felt bad for you and how awful the first batch was..he never told them he made the first batch and baked them soo POORLY!! HAHHAHA i did however tell them a month later at a work dinner!! HAHAH ahhh men too organized and too anal!!!
hope this amused you!
karen
So, should I tell you about Naked Thanksgiving? It all started with the making of some iced tea. Simple old iced tea + dumdumnewlywedcook + untempered glass pitcher = disaster.
Yep, you guessed it-- hot water into the pitcher that immediately exploded onto my legs. I frantically stripped the piping hot pants so that they wouldn't end up melding with my skin.
On cue, my husband dimmed the lights, busted out a "wow-chicka-wow-wow" riff on the guitar as the disco ball swung madly from the ceiling...........
Well, actually, I just finished making dinner in my underwear and nice cashmere sweater upon his request. The 12 other guests seemed a little uncomfortable......., kidding! It was just the 2 of us. Our first married Thanksgiving all cozy & romantic. Everything else about the meal turned out just fine! And for the record, I now stick to plastic pitchers.
Hi! I found your site from Shelly at Scenic Overlook.
Two stories:
1) When i was maybe 14 I was making cookies with my mom, she was doing half the ingredients, I was filling in the rest as we went down the recipe. Once they were mixed I went to watch tv and a few minutes later she came in demanding to know how much flour I had put in, because clearly I put way too much. The cookies weren't forming, and it was all my fault. I retorted that I had done exactly right and she would not back down. Ten minutes later she came in looking sheepish. Yeah. She had forgotten to add the butter.
2) My husband is a chef: went to culinary school, has won compititions, etc. We were making Christmas eve dinner last year and he had this elaborate menu of lamb and root vegetables and some sauteed mushrooms. I was drinking wine with my father-in-law and walked in the kitchen to help start plating the dinner when all of a sudden there was a huge POP and a shower of glass everywhere. We both started at each other, like what the hell was that, and I looked at the stove and saw that there was a piece of glass covered in mushrooms sitting on an open flame. My professionally-trained husband had put a PYREX DISH on the gas burner! And naturally, it exploded everywhere. Luckily, neither one of us was hurt, and we salvaged some of the mushrooms, but he insists that Alton Brown puts Pyrex on a burner all the time. What?
I found pieces of glass in the kitchen for several months after that.
I'm sending the word out tomorrow in Haiku form. Anything for you A.
I did it. I knew better, but I still did it. It was the first rule of hostess-ing, and I disregarded it like a cavalier convertible driver ignores a “BEWARE OF FALLING ROCKS” while whizzing along a mountain road. I should have known better, but, alas, I was 22.
I threw a party on a brand new recipe.
Now, in my defense, it wasn’t brand new. My friend Bobbi had made it before and I loved it. “A frittata”, I thought, “can’t be that hard to make. A little egg here, a little veggie here. Chop, stir, mix! It’ll be a snap!” So, I emailed Bobbi for her recipe and, presently, along it came. Eggs, potatoes, onions, ham, etc. “Not too challenging”, I told myself, “you can totally rock this recipe for your first dinner party”. It seemed a little strange to be putting in two pounds of potatoes into a recipe that called for a dozen eggs, but sometimes strange things yield great results. So, onward I proceeded. (And, somewhere, rocks rumbled on a mountain high above a windy mountain road.)
The day of the party came. I chopped. I stirred. I mixed. I let the eggs set on the stove and I popped the whole concoction into the oven. It smelled fantastic. A lot of potatoes, but hey, it was supposed to feed 6. “And, don’t eggs fluff up when they are cooked?”
So, they came. Boyfriend, boyfriend’s sisters, boyfriend’s sisters’ boyfriends. The whole deal. So, everyone sat down and I floated into the kitchen to retrieve my masterpiece.
It was an honest-to-heaven brick of potatoes, with shards of ham, onion and egg poking through, as though gasping for freedom from their starch prison.
And, then, because there were so many potatoes, the top hadn’t set the way it was supposed to, so it was slightly charred and smoking.
And, the fire alarm went off.
And, then the sprinklers went off when the frittata, with the olive oil I had carefully brushed on top for that “golden appearance”, went up completely in flames.
Trying to put out the flames, I picked up the pie plate that held my unfortunate flaming masterpiece, slipped on a stray piece of onion and sent the flaming frittata crashing to the floor.
All this time, my guests, who had stood up at the first sounds of chaos, had their wine glasses in hand. One boyfriend had even thought to grab the wine, in case of an all out mad dash for the front door. After the frittata made its short flight through space, my boyfriend grabbed my purse, “fireman carried” me over this shoulder and headed for the door.
We went to the pizza place around the corner to recover. And, we ordered in the next time that guests came over for dinner.
About a month after the glorious event, I got an email from BOBBI. “JOY” it said. “RECIPE WRONG! I mistyped it. It’s not two POUNDS of potatoes, it’s TWO potatoes. I was feeding the baby when I was writing to you, and only after trying to make it myself did I realize my mistake. Hope that you haven’t tried to make it yet!”
If she'd only known.
To their credit, after years of teasing, the boyfriend, boyfriend’s sisters, and boyfriend’s sisters’ boyfriend finally let me make another frittata. They said that they kind of wished it would flambé itself, for old time’s sake.
I had more of a food drama then disaster. We were making tilapia, which is a feat for us since we don't like fish. We made it blacked but didn't realize how smokey it would get. We are in an apartment with a stove hood fan that doesn't work well. I put the fish on the stove top and it puffed up in smoke. We grabbed the fish off but the room and most of the apartment was filled with the smell. We went back to cooking it at a lower temp but I had to watch it from the other room. The fish was so spicy that it was too hard to breath in there. I learned my lesson and the next time we didn't have the issues.
I love being introduced to new blogs. When I get a chance I'm going to look around here! Fun contest!
When I was a senior in high school, a friend and I decided to make chicken spaghetti for a friend who was having treatment for thyroid cancer. Well, we were all excited...until we realized that we should have filled the pot with water and brought it to a boil BEFORE we put the spaghetti in. We had a huge glob of noodles that didn't cook and we had to pull out. It ended up okay...but we felt like idiots!
The other funny was from my dad...he makes really good pizza and was making it one night. After the rising time he went in and all I heard was "Dadgummit!" He had forgotten to put the yeast in...no rise! He decided to bake it anyway (after making new pizza dough) and joked that they should have taken it to church to be the Lord's supper bread! :-)
When I married my first husband he wanted me to make Spanish rice. My family never ate rice so I had no idea how to cook it or even buy it. I bought parboiled - thinking that since the recipe called for cooked rice I could use that. Yes..I browned the hamburger and onion, added the other ingredents and servied it. It was like gravel! Not only did he tease me about it for the 24 yrs we were married...when he met my new husband at my grandson's birthday party he warned husband #2 to not let me cook rice for him! At least we all had a laugh about it and now I know how to cook minute rice!
Ok here's my story, I too never win anything, course I guess you have to play to win!!! So I figure what the hay and I enter my name into BlakeMakes blog to win some chocolate but the stipulation is that you plug his site and the chocolate...so I'm thinking no biggie I can do that!!! And BINGO I win some freakin good handmade chocolate from Amano's!! Then I think ohh shoot, now I have to do something with it...ooh crap...I just won...ooh no...THE PRESSURE...THE PRESSURE!!!!!!!!!!!
Food Disaster Story: I made cookies for my husband's new high-profile boss. He ate one with my husband standing there talking to him in his office. While chewing his first bite he pulled out a really, really long piece of hair. That would be bad in and of itself. But it happened AGAIN on the second bite. Now I wear a hair net during all my baking endeavors. I'm not kidding.
NO funny stories here - I'm finally learning to cook!!
I am not funny darn it! But, I love your blog! I will share it on my recipe blog.
http://lizbets.wordpress.com
I never win either so I am due ;)
I love to cook (total foodie) so I have a few disasters...let's see I had a Jamie Oliver recipe that involved leeks, bacon and chicken. I don't know what went wrong but it was a soggy bitter mess :(
Oh, have I got the funny cooking comment for YOU!
While renting a house several years ago, we were having some plumbing problems that prevented us from running ANY water down ANY drain in the house. I had planned on making lasagna, and decided to just do it in one of those disposable pans - so there would be less to clean.
After getting everything layered and ready, I held the edges of the pan, lifted the pan, and turned toward the open oven. At this point, the pan COLLAPSED, folding inward, causing me to drop it. Red pasta sauce, noodles, cheese, and meat flew all over the kitchen AND me.
Did I mention we were having plumbing problems? I cleaned the kitchen the best I could with paper towels and spray cleaner and my husband HOSED ME OFF outside. When we moved out a few years later, I was still finding pasta sauce in crannies. I haven't made lasagna since.
This isn't a cooking story but it is a food story. The day before my Bat Mitzvah my mom drove 30 minutes to the kosher bakery b/c the temple would only allow kosher food. we went out for fri night shabbat dinner, came home, and the dog ate the hundreds of dollars of kosher baked goods. The kosher bakery was closed for shabbat so my mom had to get entenmann's for my post bat mitzvah lunch.
You have been pimped! Better late than never, eh?
I don't have a funny story from my own kitchen, so I'll borrow one from my mil.
She and her new hubby, the fil, had just been married and moved to a new house. They invited the priest of the local Parrish over for dinner, roast chicken. The mil neglected to remove, not only the giblets, neck, and organs, but never took the bird out of the plastic wrapper.
She called poison control to see if it was still edible (knocking off a priest is rarely a good idea, regardless of what you think if religion). PC said it should be fine, but they couldn't guarantee the taste. She served it anyway.
And I wonder why she hates cooking...
Here goes. New Kitchen Aid mixer. Not knowledgeable enough to put guard on top of bowl. Flour everywhere. : ) Cookies still tasted good.
Great prizes, thanks for the giveaway!!
Howdy.
My partner Russ has pimped you out already. I get half of what he gets.
Once, when I was 10, I had to make a meatloaf. I followed my mother's recipe to the letter: groundbeef, onions, egg, green peppers, seasoning, etc. It was prepared and cooked to perfection. When it was served for dinner, the family was shocked by the rather spicy hot flavor. When interegated by my agitated mother, she discovered the problem... Just because peppers are green, it doesn't mean they are green peppers. It seems that I had used jalapenos!
I had a really rought first Thanksgiving. I invited my future in-laws and a few friends. Of course I woke up to prep the turkey and get it in the oven. After washing the turkey and getting it ready to be stuffed, I went ot the refrigerator to get the stuffing I had made the night before. When I turned around, my dog had bit into the uncooked turkey and was pulling it down from the counter. I fought the dog to get the turkey out of his mouth and then washed the turkey again. I cut off the part with his teeth marks, stuffed the turkey and hoped for the best. After the turkey was cooked, I put it on the counter to cook. As soon I turned around the dog jumped on the stool and bit the turkey again. He was startled when I yelled and jumped down from the stool. I chased him to see if he was okay and my guests saw me running after him. The dog was okay, the twice bitten turkey was okay and the guests enjoyed their day without realizing that dog lips touched their food.
Please enter me in your great giveaway!
I'd totally pimp you out on my blog, but you cost too much. My readers only like the "cheap chicks" *wink*wink*
I totally bonked on commenting before Sunday night. Sorry Cass, but I am going to pimp you out on my blog for sure!!!
can you say 1 cup of salt instead of 1 teaspoon salt in BROWNIES? OMG, I was such a silly kid, I think I was like 13. God bless my mom who didn't freak out, but let me just try it again. I e-mailed your blog to my mil who loves to cook!!
NOt sure if my comment is funny enough, so i'll leave you with a joke: How can you tell if an elephant has been in your refrigerator?
Footprints in the cheesecake.
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