Confessions Of A Cook

[Green12]

I have had many mess-ups and goofs in the kitchen, but one that comes to mind more recently was accidentally grabbing the salted butter out of the fridge instead of the unsalted for the chocolate frosting I made to ice a Pamela's Chocolate Cake.

I took the cake to a birthday party and it seemed to go over well, everyone was eating it (mostly children under the age of 8). It wasn't until I took a bite of the slice I took home with me that I realized something was off. I went over all the frosting ingredients trying to figure out what it could be, then I looked at the box of butter that I had used and it said "salted".

Thankfully kids will eat pretty much anything in the chocolate form

A funny story from my childhood:

My Grandma was a pie maker, she made pies for every Sunday dinner as a child and then it became tradition for her family and children when they were growing up to do the same. It was a given at every family get-together that Grandma would be making pies. Everyone had their favorite flavors, apple, blueberry, banana cream, chocolate, lemon meringue, and peach cobbler were the most requested. All were good, but her peach cobbler was exceptional.

We were having a big family reunion, this was back in the late 70s, and Grandma of course was busy in the kitchen making the pies. She needed peaches for her peach cobbler so she sent my Dad out to the store to pick some up. My dad returned with 2 huge sacks of nectarines! My Grandma asked him why he brought nectarines instead of peaches and he replied that he thought they were one in the same, these were cheaper. He asked what the difference was and my Grandma said son, the peaches have the fuzz.

For many years after that we still laughed about my dad and the nectarines and the peaches.

[sickchick]

You guys are a bunch of freaks

I'm glad you're all my friends

crazycrazy

And in high school I caught the kitchen on fire making french fries.

Wasn't watching the stove and my oil caught on fire... grabbed the pan took it to the sink where my sister decided she was going to douse it with water....

We had clearstory ceilings and the flames went up the ceiling about 16 feet.

It was in the paper the next day

My Grampa saw the article and showed up at the house with a package of McDonald's fries for me the next day lol

It was a nightare to try and paint after too!! HAHAHA

Not much a deepfryer these days! :)

Be well and don't ever throw water on flames in a kitchen!

[celiac-mommy]

My husband thinks he's a great "creative" cook. He scares us sometimes, and it all started from this...

I was sick (the only reason I relinquished my kitchen) and he decided to send me to bed and he'd make me some dinner. He was SO proud of himself when he brought me my dinner in bed. To look at it, it was just a regular tasty appearing grilled cheese sandwhich and tomato soup. I dunked the sandwich into the soup and the first thing I noticed was the "cheese", something was WAY off-I opened the sandwich and tried to figure out what the heck was on that bread--EASY CHEESE (and how the heck did that get into my house???) Totally grossed out, I decided to go for the soup. It was thicker than normal-took a big spoonful (thinking-how can you mess up a can of soup) and about choked. There was no milk to add, so he found a can of baked beans in the cupboard and thought (why?) it would be great-it was not. Rarely do I let him cook for me anymore, but he does make great reservations!

[Worriedtodeath]

I recieved a wedding present of a very nice mixer 17 YEARS AGO!!! I was a big bread maker and used to make dough by hand even though the mixer had dough hooks and was a touted to be a great bread mixer. Every time I ever tried to use it, the dough would crawl up the hooks and fling around the kitchen.

I gave up until last week - did I say LAST WEEK and tried the dough hooks again as 17 years later, my arms are just not ready to mix and knead dough two or three times a week. AGAIN SAME PROBLEM. THis time I was pissed and grabbed the mixer and for the first time realized the itty bitty pictures of dough hooks were different. Sure enough, the dough hooks are different. ALL this time, I have been putting the dough hooks in the wrong way!!!

Inserted correctly, the dough stays in the bowl and it is a very nice bread mixer.

Stacie

[kenlove]

How about you girls with pregnancy cravings?

About 30 years ago (yeah time flies) when my wife was expecting #2, she woke me at 3am needing a chocolate cream pie STAT! Not having much in the house, I smashed graham crackers into a pyrex with melted butter. Poured in a half can of Hersheys syrup -- knowing she liked marshmallows, decorated the top of the syrup with them.

She ate half and went back to bed! At least I got to eat the pickles I kept for such an occasion <G>!

You guys are a bunch of freaks

I'm glad you're all my friends

crazycrazy

And in high school I caught the kitchen on fire making french fries.

Wasn't watching the stove and my oil caught on fire... grabbed the pan took it to the sink where my sister decided she was going to douse it with water....

We had clearstory ceilings and the flames went up the ceiling about 16 feet.

It was in the paper the next day

My Grampa saw the article and showed up at the house with a package of McDonald's fries for me the next day lol

It was a nightare to try and paint after too!! HAHAHA

Not much a deepfryer these days! :)

Be well and don't ever throw water on flames in a kitchen!

[home-based-mom]

1) As a kid I misread the instructions for making brownies and added w-a-y too much water. The results sort of resembled chocolate flan and were fed to the ducks!

2) My husband thought he was being helpful by lining the oven with foil before I baked our daughter's first birthday cake. Problem was he lined it so well there was no air circulation and the cake was a lumpy shapeless disaster. My mom and I found a cake at Baskin-Robbins - not personalized but what the heck does a one-year-old care about personalization!

3) My brother was going to make pop corn "the old fashioned way" and forgot about the oil heating up until it got so smokey that Mom and Dad wound up with a whole new kitchen! It's a good thing he caught it when he did or he could have burned the whole house down!

[imsohungry]

Interesting, ladies and gents: Now that I have your background information, let's start the show...

1. lcbannon: Is it true that you once made a sugar pie with a cherry on top?

2. Cara: Have you ever tested the speed, velocity, and damage caused by a tomato explosion? The people want to know: Are you working undercover for the government? Did you consider your family's safety when you created this tomato volcano?

3. Locoladi: Did your mother once hide pillows in the oven to be eaten for lunch the next day? More importantly, do you think the warning "DO NOT BAKE" should be added to those little "Do not remove under penalty of law" tags?

4. JnBunnie: Has your husband ever taken your home-baked hockey pucks to feed to his Mexican American co-workers?

5. Lisa16: Do you recall dropping a fourteen pound cheesecake on your lactose intolerant dog?

6. Missy's Mom: Are you a closet cookie-hoarder? Do you feel compelled to place all baked goods in your garage?

7. Juliebove: Have you ever made deviled eggs with legs?

8. Julie: Did your father once try to convince your mother that a nectorine is a fuzzless peach?

9. Collette: The 16 ft. french fry flames sound horrific. The question is: Do you still have eyebrows?

10. Rachelle: Has your husband ever fried you an Easy Cheese sandwich and served it with baked beans? Since that time, have you ever considered "adding something" to his food to even the score?

*Host's notes*

Collette, if the flames really did burn your eyebrows off, please disregard my question.

Missy's Mom, my master's is in counseling. Laughing is very therapeutic.

Side note: Anyone who participated after Rachelle will be updated tomorrow!

[sickchick]

Collette, if the flames really did burn your eyebrows off, please disregard my question.

Julesie

[celiac-mommy]

Interesting, ladies and gents: Now that I have your background information, let's start the show...

10. Rachelle: Has your husband ever fried you an Easy Cheese sandwich and served it with baked beans? Since that time, have you ever considered "adding something" to his food to even the score?

This is so great! I needed a good laugh today!!

DH isn't allowed to cook for me any more, if he hands me something that resembles food, I examine very carefully and have him take the 1st bite I'm really not sure, especially after that, that there's ANYTHING I could possibly add to even the score--he ended up eating my leftovers-thought it was great

As for me, I have frequently cooked items in the microwave that I thought were finished in the oven, but turned out, it wasn't and dinner was already on the table--rolls, cornbread, pizza dough once. Never had I had a problem. One day I was in a hungry and I wanted a cookie-no time to bake, I thought I'd just pop it into my brand new professional series microwave--that thing can do miracles--except bake a cookie from scratch. Black smoke shortly began pouring from the vents and I ended up with a solid, cemented onto the plate, puck-it left a permenant black ring on my plate and it took 30 minutes of boiling a heavy lemon solution to get rid of the smell

[Juliebove]

1) As a kid I misread the instructions for making brownies and added w-a-y too much water. The results sort of resembled chocolate flan and were fed to the ducks!

2) My husband thought he was being helpful by lining the oven with foil before I baked our daughter's first birthday cake. Problem was he lined it so well there was no air circulation and the cake was a lumpy shapeless disaster. My mom and I found a cake at Baskin-Robbins - not personalized but what the heck does a one-year-old care about personalization!

3) My brother was going to make pop corn "the old fashioned way" and forgot about the oil heating up until it got so smokey that Mom and Dad wound up with a whole new kitchen! It's a good thing he caught it when he did or he could have burned the whole house down!

I once did the oil thing too. Put a small amount of olive oil in a pan and set it to heat so I could put it in my hair. Went into the bedroom for a nightgown. Came back and saw flames shooting from the pan. Luckily there was a lid nearby. I just put it on the pan and removed it from the heat. But what a scare!

[Juliebove]

This is so great! I needed a good laugh today!!

DH isn't allowed to cook for me any more, if he hands me something that resembles food, I examine very carefully and have him take the 1st bite I'm really not sure, especially after that, that there's ANYTHING I could possibly add to even the score--he ended up eating my leftovers-thought it was great

As for me, I have frequently cooked items in the microwave that I thought were finished in the oven, but turned out, it wasn't and dinner was already on the table--rolls, cornbread, pizza dough once. Never had I had a problem. One day I was in a hungry and I wanted a cookie-no time to bake, I thought I'd just pop it into my brand new professional series microwave--that thing can do miracles--except bake a cookie from scratch. Black smoke shortly began pouring from the vents and I ended up with a solid, cemented onto the plate, puck-it left a permenant black ring on my plate and it took 30 minutes of boiling a heavy lemon solution to get rid of the smell

I had to use the microwave for a tuna casserole a couple of weeks ago. I had assembled it the night before and put it in the fridge so I could make a quick meal before daughter's dance class. But I didn't get it put in the oven quickly enough. Daughter was starving so I checked it. Stuck my finger in the top and it was very hot. I served it. Turns out only the very top was hot and the rest was cold. Probably wouldn't have mattered since it was already cooked through...at least the sauce and the pasta. But cold casserole doesn't sound too appealing. So I put our plates in the microwave.

[bekalu]

One Thanksgiving I offered to bring banana pudding to my in-laws. My sister has a great recipe so she walked me through it on the phone. When I a made the recipe i followed her instructions and the instructions on the pudding box...doubling the milk! I took it anyways thinking it would surely thicken as it sat. It did not! Everyone ate it and pretended it was great. I should have served it with straws!

[bekalu]

My husband thinks he's a great "creative" cook. He scares us sometimes, and it all started from this...

I was sick (the only reason I relinquished my kitchen) and he decided to send me to bed and he'd make me some dinner. He was SO proud of himself when he brought me my dinner in bed. To look at it, it was just a regular tasty appearing grilled cheese sandwhich and tomato soup. I dunked the sandwich into the soup and the first thing I noticed was the "cheese", something was WAY off-I opened the sandwich and tried to figure out what the heck was on that bread--EASY CHEESE (and how the heck did that get into my house???) Totally grossed out, I decided to go for the soup. It was thicker than normal-took a big spoonful (thinking-how can you mess up a can of soup) and about choked. There was no milk to add, so he found a can of baked beans in the cupboard and thought (why?) it would be great-it was not. Rarely do I let him cook for me anymore, but he does make great reservations!

Ok this one wins!!!Hahaha!

[imsohungry]

Hey everyone,

I'll try to post later tonight. Just thought I'd share: I got the idea for this thread from a hollywood news special. The host said that the contestants are given a list of 75 questions to answer about themselves and the show does a background check on them. Anyway, I had a random thought it would be fun to do a cooking "questionairre/background check" on everyone...and then recap., just like the show.

How random am I? This thread is a blast though! You guys are awesome!

-Julie

[mmcdaniels]

This is such fun.

My biggest goof is still a cake a baked for my mom's birthday when I was in high school. I was in a hurry to do it as a surprise for her while she was out of the house. I grabbed the wrong bottle from the cupboard and put in Lestoil (cleaner) instead of vegetable oil. When I proudly served the cake, my parents commented politely on the "minty flavor." Then I tasted a piece, spit it out and said "This tastes like soap." Fortunately, no one got ill but I did get to talk to the nice folks at poison control. My mother now keeps Lestoil and vegetable oil in separate cupboards.

I could tell a few on my husband who is a good cook on a stove or grill but needs to stay far from the oven or microwave. The frozen pizza he cooked in the microwave for 17 minutes stunk up our house for well over a week. He used to think if the red light on the oven came on it wasn't hot enough so he would continuously turn it up.

Marsha

[Glutenfreefamily]

I have a few

First you should see my freezer, many batches of messed up cookies and breads that have been chopped up into crumbs for desserts and breading.

When I had been glutened early on after getting my diagnosis my brain fog was horrible and I couldnt hardly think straight. I was going to bake some chicken and turned on the oven. I forgot my new plastic cutting board was sitting in the oven and all of the sudden I could smell something burning with a chemical smell. I went in there and it was on fire. I got out my fire extinguisher and put it out and had to open the windows and turn on a box fan and the ceiling fans to get the smell out in the middle of winter since it was so overpowering. I could never get the smell out and it stunk after cleaning it a dozen times so I put it out to the trash and got a new one. Thankfully it was old anyways.

My mom, a seasoned cook, ran out of big pans to use when she was cooking my daughter dinner over here when she was babysitting and put my crock pot stone as a pan on the stove to cook in it, It cracked and had to be replaced. I have no idea why she thought she could use it on the stovetop

My husband when I was sick with the stomach flu made me some mac and cheese, it sounded ok and it was quick. We didnt have any milk in the fridge (powdered milk in the pantry but he didnt ask and didnt know) so he put in 2 1/2 cups of pure butter melted in one little box of mac n cheese. I had a cold so I couldnt smell the difference and it looked good but one taste made me toss my cookies of eating pure butter. I felt so bad for him since he tried so hard but I couldnt hold it in.

[Mom23boys]

I was at a meeting and asked him to bake some cornbread with my gluten-free recipe. It is easy and pretty much a no fail recipe. Well, he starts and couldn't find my baking powder so he subs baking soda. Then he cannot find the salt so he uses rock salt. There was one other ingredient he subbed to that I cannot remember. Anyway I get home and everything SMELLS good then I take a bite...right into the a chunk of salt.

Then there is my Mom and her first meal in the microwave. She didn't know you had to reduce cooking time for things in the micro. You could have killed with those chops.

My kids love the day I forgot to put the top on the air popper!!

[hannahp57]

this thread is kind of old.. but i had one to share!

i decided earlier in august that i was going to make some biscuits and gravy for my hubby beofre he got home from work ( he usually gets home around 8am or so). anywyas i decided to use what was left of my regular bleached wheat flour since he hardly ever gets wheat products at home and its just sitting there. so anyways needless to say i was very distracted the whole time trying to make sure that flour didnt fall anywhere i couldnt easily clean. anyways i somehow managed to accidentally turn my stovetop on instead of the oven and laid my plastic mixing bowl on the burner. im putting flour in and baking soda... and i start smelling hot plastic, almost like a hot glue gun. i look in the oven... and then pick up the mixing bowl and the flour starts pouring out of the bottom of it. the burner had burned little rings in it... it was sooo funny... well now its funny. at that moment i saw absolutely no humor in it whatsoever. when my husband got home he saw the holy bowl in the trash and was laughing hysterically at my expense.

but he didnt get any biscuits either so serves him right!

this thread made my day, im glad i found it

[Juliebove]

I just thought of another one. Bought some no boil lasagna noodles and attemtped to use them as directed on the box. Well, I now know what happens if you don't totally cover them with a lot of sauce! They come out hard and crispy.

I had worked all day making a sauce from scratch. This was many years ago when there weren't too many pre-made sauces available. I was trying to impress my now husband who is Italian. He was not impressed!

I had to drive to the store, buy a can or jar of whatever kind of pre-made sauce they had at the time and then cover it and bake it longer.

[hannahp57]

I did the same thing with lasagne noodles very recently! it was my first time to make lasagne without my momma there. i didnt even consider the fact that she usually covers the whole top of hers with more red sauce... and since it almost always spills out i decided i would rather have an easier clean up than extra red sauce so i skipped the top layer of sauce.... and the top layer of noodles was almost completely unedible. here and there were pieces that had somehow been covered with sauce upon being put in the oven but most of the top layer was peeled off and discarded. and i know for next time!

[Roda]

I was a teenager and my mom wanted me to bake the pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving. I followed her recipe to the tee. It called for this and that and it also called for cloves. I got into the cupbord and found the cloves and proceded to add it to the mixture and baked my pies. When it was desert time I sliced my pumpkin pies and served it. I was so proud of myself since I made them all by my self. My dad started eating and bit into something hard. He spit it out to find a whole clove. My mom looked at me puzzled and asked why I put whole cloves in the pie. I told her that it called for them. She proceded to explain to me that I should have used "ground cloves". We still ate the pie, we just had to spit out the whole cloves when we found one.

I try not to boil sweet potatoes any more. When my oldest son was around 6 months old or so I worked Saturday and Sunday 16 hour shifts. Then I was on call for third shift (we did not have a third shift person) and from getting called into work between shifts and breastfeeding, come Monday morning I was shot. I was home alone with him when I decided to put on a pot of sweet potatoes to boil. I had fallen asleep on the couch only to wake up to the smoke alarm going off. I had left the pot on the stove and it boiled dry and burned them to the bottom. Thats when I decided I needed to find a different shift and vowed never to boil sweet potatoes again. I think that episode has jinxed me because since then I have boiled them dry on several occasions.

[RDR]

I have one or two stories from the kitchen that I usually try to hide .

One night we had friends and relatives coming over for dessert. They got something they wouldn't have expected instead, glutenfree bakery-style sicilian tray pizza. They loved it and couldn't even tell is was glutefree until I told them. The secret was, I was just getting into recipe conversion and miscalculated on a lemon squares recipe. It said the layers would come out almost like a piecrust, due to too much guar gum and baking powder they came out almost two inches thick and breadlike. Well, after tasting them and realizing they didn't taste bad at all I improvised with the pizza, just finishing minutes before everyone walked through the door.

A recent bad incident happened a few weeks back. I use sausage rolls for my cooking (due to no corn-related dextrose) and decided to attempt italian sausage raviolis. I spiced up the sausage, fried it up, filled the dough, boiled it and sauced it up. I was hoping for the best with this attempt, little did I know the worst already happened. I picked up the wrong sausage roll at the store...maple flavoured. Maple and italian spices DO NOT taste good together...especially in tomato sauce.

And finally a junior high school story. In a rare incident indeed my entire cooking lab group got detention for getting a recipe wrong. It seems one of our crew accidentally put salt in the cupcakes instead of sugar (the teacher had then in unlabeled containers together), 2 1/4 cups of it. It wouldn't have been so bad except our teacher wasnt paying attention to what she was doing, liked the way our cupcakes looked and ate half of one before she actually stopped to actually taste it. After 10 minutes of drinking water and another 10 of yelling at us we were given a week worth of detention until the vice principal explained to her you can't give kids detention for screwing up recipes.

[JNBunnie1]

I have one or two stories from the kitchen that I usually try to hide .

One night we had friends and relatives coming over for dessert. They got something they wouldn't have expected instead, glutenfree bakery-style sicilian tray pizza. They loved it and couldn't even tell is was glutefree until I told them. The secret was, I was just getting into recipe conversion and miscalculated on a lemon squares recipe. It said the layers would come out almost like a piecrust, due to too much guar gum and baking powder they came out almost two inches thick and breadlike. Well, after tasting them and realizing they didn't taste bad at all I improvised with the pizza, just finishing minutes before everyone walked through the door.

A recent bad incident happened a few weeks back. I use sausage rolls for my cooking (due to no corn-related dextrose) and decided to attempt italian sausage raviolis. I spiced up the sausage, fried it up, filled the dough, boiled it and sauced it up. I was hoping for the best with this attempt, little did I know the worst already happened. I picked up the wrong sausage roll at the store...maple flavoured. Maple and italian spices DO NOT taste good together...especially in tomato sauce.

And finally a junior high school story. In a rare incident indeed my entire cooking lab group got detention for getting a recipe wrong. It seems one of our crew accidentally put salt in the cupcakes instead of sugar (the teacher had then in unlabeled containers together), 2 1/4 cups of it. It wouldn't have been so bad except our teacher wasnt paying attention to what she was doing, liked the way our cupcakes looked and ate half of one before she actually stopped to actually taste it. After 10 minutes of drinking water and another 10 of yelling at us we were given a week worth of detention until the vice principal explained to her you can't give kids detention for screwing up recipes.

Ok, how do you NOT NOTICE?!?!!?!

[celiac-mommy]

My dd's birthday party is tomorrow. In an attempt to get most everything completed for her requested Italian feast and petit fours, I made the lasagna, 75 mini cakes (! ! !) and 3 loaves of garlic rosemary bread. That bread had 2 cups of whole garlic cloves! In the middle of it all, my best friend calls, there's a family emergency and needs me to watch her kid, I have to get both of my kids to the dr for check-ups-i'm in such a hurry that I forget the 3 loaves of bread in the oven I came home, the house smelled AMAZING, and I'm screaming "Oh S*!t, Oh S*!t" running for the stove. The bread had completely sunk in on iteslf, couldn't pry it out of the pan, but what I could chunk off oddly tasted amazing so I guess I can dry it out tonight and make gourmet garlic croutons for our salad....

[Googles]

I have two stores, one for my brother and one for myself and my mom (mostly her fault).

My brother did a lot of baking when we were youth. One time he was making cinnamon rolls and forgot the eggs. Once it came out of the ove my mom and I came into the kitchen to check it out (and eat some). We looked at the cinnamon rolls and they had not risen at all. He was like what? Eggs? Oops.

My other story starts with my mom going grocery shopping. We have a recipe from an old cookbook that takes yogurt. My mom had gone to the store and asked me to make the recipe. We only had large tubs of yogurt around for this type of recipe as my mom was the only one who liked eating it by itself. So when she asked I reached into the fridge and grabbed the one large tub of yogurt. I added all the spices and other ingredients. We never usually stay exactly to the recipe because we flavor to taste. However, this time when I check, it tasted awful. I tried adding more mustard and garlic to see if that helped. But it didn't. I couldn't figure out what I had messed up. I asked my mom to come over and taste it to tell me what was wrong. She told me that it did taste off and hence I must have added the wrong amount of some ingredient. So I went through what I had added again. We got to the point where we decided we didn't know how to fix it and so we were going to have to throw it out. I lifted the lid off the counter to put it on the yogurt to throw out and looked at the label. She had accidentally bought Vanilla flavored yogurt instead of Plain flavored. I swore it wasn't my fault that it tasted bad (i hadn't messed up the recipe). We both got a good laugh after that. I don't think either of us at the time had thought about the possibility that the yogurt had gone bad.