What’s Your Cooking Disaster? Comment and You Could Win a Cooking Prize Pack!

My worst-I was making sauerkraut for the in laws, first time making them dinner and I wanted it to be great because I was already told I wasn't "good enough" for "her' son. So I had it cooking in one of those glass pans(she bought them for me)in the oven and for some reqason it just wasn't getting cooked fast enough so I put it on TOP of the stove to cook faster. Well, about 10 minutes into them being there we heard a loud small explosion coming from our small apartment sized kitchen and low and behold it exploded!! Sauerkraut every where-ceiling, floor, next room, everywhere!! I was so embarressed-of course I heard all about it and how we should have just gone out, but I just laughed and my husband laughed with me and we ordered a pizza!! Best part was, I was never expected to cook them dinner again!! :)

My Worst coooking story was my first Thanksgiving dinner after I had married. I had made some really delightfully looking Pumpkin Pies from scratch. But when my hubby and In- LAws took there first bites I knew something was wrong; maybe I did not season it properly or cook them long enough. My Mother in LAw was so polite and asked just how I made my pies; so I told her that I had followed the directions and cut up the pumpkin and placed the meat of the pumpkin into the bowl and threw the outer shell away. And then added all the required ingredients, sugar, spices, cream etc. To my horor she then started to laugh very hard as did everyone else; and then she politely explained that I had thrown away the meat of the pumpkin, and had used the guts instead which taste terrible I might add. So my first holiday dinner party had no dessert, unfortunately I still have not lived this one down it has become a topic of conversation at every Thanksgiving Dinner . But thankfully I now can cook up a mighty fine Pie.

The one cooking disaster that stands the strongest in my memory was actually a teamwork effort between my husband and I that turned horrible wrong.

One of my childhood girlfriends who lived in London, and her Italian boyfriend, who went to Stanford were meeting up for springbreak two years ago at the Bahamas. They had planned it, so they would both arrive in South Florida almost at the same time, and they would then spend the evening/night at our house.

They were my first dinner guests in Florida, and I was very excited, so I went all out. I made oven roasted potatoes, a very exotic salad, bought a chocolate cream cheese pie for dessert and to top it of, I had bought some very expensive steaks.

Since making steaks were a new area of expertise for me, I had ruined quite a few steaks on my own. My husband therefore offered to assist me with the steaks.

Well, the plane ran late, my girlfriend could not find her boyfriend in the airport, and they could not communicate together. They each kept calling my phone, and they were getting really aggravated. When they finally did show up, they were tired, it was late and they clearly had some unresolved anger issues going on.

I pulled out the food, the wine and hoped that everything would go smoothly. The first thing; however, was that the steaks which my husband and I were jointly in charge of got very very well done. They were almost to the point of no return. The fried plantains that I was making turned sour as well, and they in fact ended up smoking up everything.

So there we were all reunited with a very unsuccessful meal, but in my defense the store bought cheesecake was amazing!

My worst disaster occurred a couple of years ago. I wanted to make fish 'n chips, and was heating lard in a saucepan for the deep frying. Impatient as I often am, I went to the otehr room to read a Gather article, and then the Gather addiction kicked in and I kept reading and commenting, until my nose got suspicious. I returned to the kitchen to find the lard on fire. I ended up putting it in a dishpan of cold water, where it exploded and scared the bejabbers out of me!

The complete story is here:

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976830897&nav=MyGather

When I was first married I wanted to surprise my husband with a made from scratch applesauce cake. I got out all my ingredients and stirred it up and put it into the oven and set the timer for the required time. The timer went off and I looked in the oven and saw that the cake had not risen in the pan so I left it another 10 minutes checking it several times to make sure it didn't burn. Finally I knew something was wrong and removed the cake from the oven.

It was about 3/4 " high and solid like a very wet sponge. I told my hubby and he said he could eat it anyway, but when I cut into it it was like rubber. I found out later that evening when getting something out of the cupboard what had happened. There in the front of the section where my baking supplies were, was a my box of corn starch. The baking soda which should have gone into the cake was clar at the back. A cake just won't rise when you use cornstarch. I had to throw it away. Hubby said we could use it for a door mat. That didn't help my mood much as I recall.

My first cooking disaster happened when I was about 10 years old and my mom was in hospitable. She left the meat and potatoes for us on the stove, all we did need to do was heat it. So I turn the stove on and started to heat potatoe. I didn't know I have to put the some water to the pot. They were all black in 10 minutes and we could not eat them. My brother is still making fun of me about that even if it was years and years ago

I don't know if this qualifies as a kitchen disaster or not exactly... When I was much much younger I was heating a poptart in the toaster while I had a friend over. I pushed the lever down and went into the other room to watch MTV with my friend. About 5-10 minutes went by and I went in the other room to see if the poptart had popped up yet only to find the frosting had melted and the toaster caught fire and the fire was in the process of spreading to the kitchen wall!!! I threw flour on it and was able to smother it with no serious damage to the house but for the longest time everyone teased me that I was a terrible cook and couldn't even make poptarts!!! That experience was what motivated me to become a great cook!! I wanted to cook so well that I could finally live down the darn poptart joke! LOL

Flour could have caused a worse fire! You were lucky that it smothered the fire instead of exploding! Baking soda is a *much* better choice for smothering fires!

My cooking disaster wasn't really a disaster at all.
I made gingerbread man cookies for the first time this year.
I bought the board, the cookies mix and the cut outs I needed..
I just forgot to get a rolling pin.
So, I had to thin it out by myself.
I tried to shape the cookies but, I couldn't get the men to stop sticking to the board I bought.
I thought I would have terrible cookies..
But, luckily they came out of the oven fine.
And, tasted great.
They were way too big though and I only got a quarter of the cookies I could have, had
I been able to get the cookies off the sheet.
And, made the dough much thinner.
Oh, well. Live and learn.

My sister, cousin and I decided WE would make the birthday cake for my mom. We put over a cup of salt in the mix. We spent a lot of time frosting and decorating it. It was beautiful (well, as lovely as 3, 7th graders could make it).

It was so rubbery and bitter even my father, who was the taste-tester, gagged on the first bite. Talk about misunderstanding directions.

I had just graduated high school and had recently turned 18 years old. It was my 2nd day at my new job, I was a nanny in Southern California. I was living with the family and taking care of a cute little boy, 2 1/2 years old.

I had just started dinner, Jambalaya and Sausages on the stovetop and bread in the oven. We had plenty of time, so we decided to go outside and play in the backyard for a few mintues.

There was a door right off of the dining room and kitchen, I opened it and we walked out into the back yard. As I shut the door, I didn't think anything of it. I grew up in a small town where we NEVER locked the doors, so I didn't even think to check.

About 10 minutes later I went to check on dinner and the door was LOCKED! I had no phone, so spare key, no way to get into the house. Dinner was on the stove and we were locked outside!

I started to panic, they trusted me with their child and their house. What were the parents going to think of me? How could I do such a stupid thing? Was the house going to burn down? I was on the verge of freaking out but I knew I had to figure something out, how could I fix it?

I tried all the windows, of course they all had locks on them. The garage doors were closed and all the other doors to the house were locked as well!

After about 20 minutes, the smoke alarms started going off, you could clearly hear them as I tried to find a way into the house. The neighbor heard the alarms and came to see what was wrong.

He told me everything was going to be okay and not to worry. We noticed that it looked the the upstairs master bedroom window was cracked a tiny bit - so he got a ladder out of his garage. Sure enough, it was open and we got in.

Well, dinner was a totaly loss - black and crispy. My boss arrived about a half hour later and put me at ease. LOL! We ordered pizza for dinner.

I ended up working for them for 2 1/2 years before I decided to move back home to be closer to family and attend college.

Wow! My worst cooking disaster was sooooo embarrassing! I was cooking a spinach quiche for a new boyfriend that I really liked and wanted to impress... So, I put together the ingredients in the pie crust and baked a beautiful golden quiche! I took it out of the oven, and cut the first piece to serve to my waiting beau... dismayed, I realize that I forgot to take out the wax lining from the pie crust!!! So, the quiche itself and the pie crust had a nice wax paper lining separating it! In order to eat the quiche, you had to peel apart the wax paper. I was mortified!!!!!!

The worst cooking disaster I ever had was when I was first learning to cook. I dredged my chicken in flour and salt and pepper, put it in the skillet to fry it up. I cooked it until both sides were a beautiful and perfect golden brown, YUM! It was gorgeous I must say. I served it up for dinner to my husband and his brother and when they started to eat it, the chicken was raw in the middle! No one ever mentioned that you had to cover the chicken and cook it for 30 to 45 minutes or so to cook it all the way through! It was very gross and quite embarrassing especially with my husbands brother there to see it too!

ok I really cant beleive I am going to tell this one but here it goes i was 16 years old and still in high school and had just found out I was pregnant with my first child I was single and scared to death yet I was determined that I was going to have my baby and raise it so first off I knew i had to get a job as well as finish school i went to the local cafe thinking I could get a waitress job but alas all they needed was a cook thinking that I could fake my way through it by following some recipes I lied to the owner and said oh! yes I can cook breakfast on the weekends and I was hired my first day on the job I ask my dad who was a great cook what all went into gravy for the biscuits and gravy he tells me and off to work i went I poured a entire 5 lb sack of flour and a gallon aof milk and some salt and pepper into a pot and called it gravy well it was a bit thick so i added a gallon of water and served it to the customers needless to say I was let go the same day
but i am happy to report that now some 30 years later I have learned to make gravy and quite well i might add

I am learning to cook on a gas stove and I continually burn rice. Don't know why it is always rice, but it is.

When I was first learning to cook dumplings, I don't know what I did wrong! I don't know if I stirred too soon, or not soon enough or what! BUT all of my dumplings swelled up into one giant dumpling and swelled up over the top of the pot and had a horrible rubber texture to it. To my dismay, when I threw it outside not even the dogs would touch it! They'd sniff it and then run. It literally layed in our yard for four days before my dad took pity on me and threw it away. I was fifteen at the time, and although, I've since learned to make dumplings just like my Nanny's, my family still gives me heck about it! lol

I swear I have more and more flashbacks from my goth/heavy metal days. It's not that I'm longing to wear black, listen to loud music or grow my hair out. I keep having moments reflecting on when I was a bleach blond and I think some of the dye leaked in through my roots and lightened my brain. I can be such a forgetful ditz at times when I'm having a blond moment, or in my case, a blond day. Not that I really forget; I just don't remember when I should...in time. My most recent bout of temporary senility I blame on Gather; at least part of it.

It's a long, drawn out story I'll present in the condensed version; or at least as short as I can make it; which could end up being pretty long, but it won't be the full 8 hours. I assure you, though, this is not a recipe...at least not how you should cook. While I was taking my can of ground coffee out of the refrigerator yesterday morning, I happened to notice the "sell by" date on two dozen eggs had passed three days prior. Not being one who likes to throw away food; it costs me money and I'm cheap when it comes to things like this; I decided I'd better use them up, even though I knew they'd still be good for at least a couple more weeks.

It was too early to deal with cooking them up now; I needed some coffee flowing through my veins first...and I had to get on Gather to crunch my numbers and write a morning post. It was only 8:00...I had lots of time. I got my "work" done and as I was dumping my grounds, I remembered those eggs. I'll have to get them going, but I have to shave and shower first. I took care of making myself all pretty and presentable. Okay, so I got through the first layer, but to complete that task would have been an all-day project...and half of the night.

I wound my way back downstairs around 10:30 and turned the burner on high to heat the water up. I was smart enough to fill a pan and place it on the stove before I went upstairs or I might have remembered those eggs again...tomorrow. The water should start to boil in about 20 minutes. I placed the cartons of eggs on the counter...so I wouldn't forget what I was boiling the water for. 45 minutes later, it popped into my mind I had a pot on the stove and I discovered half the water had boiled away. I filled it back up again and started all over. I made sure I put extra water in the pan this time...in case I forgot again...which I did.

By the time it dawned on me again, it was noon. Good thing I put the extra water in because by the time I checked, it had boiled away to just the right level I needed. I lowered all two dozen eggs in one by one using a huge kitchen spoon. I had done so well until the end. Why is it that one damned egg always has to crack so the white leaks out and makes a mess in the pan? Not like this hasn't happened before. I'm used to it taking place every time. At least they were on their way.

Back to the computer I go to see who has posted what; to read, rate and comment some more as I wait the 20 minutes until the eggs are done. I might have gotten a little involved because two hours later, when I was crawling into bed for a quick, afternoon nap, I got whiff of an odor I shouldn't be smelling. It hit me and I bolted from bed streaking through the house. I had forgotten about the eggs again and they were sure done! Every drop of water had boiled away and half those little cackleberries had broken open. There were lots of black shells with some of the whites now brown. I started spitting and sputtering and had to try and salvage what I could. Hey, they cost me a whopping $1.76 for 24!

I threw, no, slammed the pot into the sink and turned the cold water on full blast to bathe them. Of course, you all know that's how you make them constrict inside their shells so peeling is a breeze; usually coming off in havles instead of having to pick at tiny pieces to remove it all. Nothing worse than biting into something made with an egg and have it be crunchy. Normally, I'd just put the eggs back in their cartons and throw them in the 'fridge to have one or two for breakfast so I didn't have to bother cooking. These pitiful looking things wouldn't last long before they spoiled being all split or busted wide open. True to form, while the eggs were going through their cool-down process, I forgot them yet again. Luckily, it was only cold water running on them for an hour.

What do you do when your eggs are cracked? You make egg salad. Peeling them was no problem, but the shells where the eggs sat on the bottom of the pan had burned on. In some cases, I had to tear away a quarter of the egg just to save the rest. I tasted one and could identify the flavor right away...not a hard boiled egg, but more like an egg that had been fried hard. I set about chopping them up in a bowl and threw some green olives with pimentos into my small food chopper. I dumped them in and added some spicey, brown mustad and mayonnaise and mixed it all up. I don't know about you, but I can't eat egg and olive salad right after it's made. It has to sit in the refrigerator for a few hours to get cold, even though all the ingredients already are, just so the flavors blend properly and soak in.

I first thought of boiling those eggs at 8 AM and now that it was 4 PM, they were finally taken care of. Dinnertime rolled around about 10:30 and I was ready to dig in. My French fries were done and I fished a couple of old hamburger rolls out to make sandwiches; not wanting to throw them out, either. I took my first bite and wouldn't you know it. Not only had I failed to add an ingredient; olive juice from the jar; but that first bite just had to crunch. I missed a piece of shell. Back out to the kitchen I go to pour in my "extract of olive" and throw the bowl back into the 'fridge. That little crunch had made me lose my appetite.

Now, here I sit, waiting for it to get later so I can try it again...leftover fries from last night and another shot at having an egg salad sammie. I am going to get so sick of the same thing by Saturday. By gosh, though, with all the trouble I went through making those blankity-blank eggs, I'll eat them until I start scratching in the dirt and sprouting feathers.

Oh my, could it have been the first time I tried to make biscuits and you could have played hockey with them?
Or the time I had guests and the roast chicken I was pulling out of the oven decided it like the floor better?
I'm still teased about the Christmas Day that I pulled (what I thought) was a piece of pork loin out of the freezer, planned my whole meal around the pork, only to discover it was a beef roast............................
My first attempt at potato salad.....it was the first time anyone was served mashed potato salad;
We won't even talk about my tuna casserole attempt;
Or the time I cooked the turkey and forgot to remove the plastic bag that was inside with the gizzards and gravy packet;
My orange cranberry cake was probably the worst...I guess I didn't measure the ingredients well and not only did it smoke up my entire kitchen, it rose high and then imploded. The baking pan was such a mess, I just threw the whole thing out, pan and all. I've never attempted that one again.

I forgot the time that I boiled some eggs for my husband to take for his lunch at work. I placed the cooked eggs in a bowl, and when I packed his lunch for work, I put one of the eggs in his lunch bag. Unfortunately, I picked an egg from the wrong bowl and when he came home he was not too happy with me as when he banged the egg on the table to break the shell, he discovered it was a raw egg.

I tried to make mozzerlla sticks once. I saw them prepared on the food network and decided it looked easy enough and I wanted to try to make it. I didn't bread them enough and they popped, some of them only leaving the empty bread crumbs, which fried anyway.

This past Christmas I wanted to bake my own pumpkin pie. I told everyone NOT to bring one as I wanted to bake it myself..... Well I baked it.... But I just knew it did not look right but couldn't put my finger on what was wrong. Until I took a bite!!! I forgot to add the sugar!!!! It was terrible!! I was so upset! I love pumpkin pie it is one of my favorite parts of the holidays, I felt like I had ruined Christmas.

Well, this couldn't have came at a better time!

I fancy myself to be a good cook, seeing as that I have been cooking since I was 8, which was a little over 20 years ago. Not to mention, I took Home Economics all through school, making A's every time. I'm no Rachel Ray or Paula Deen, but I can hold my own.

Last Thursday was my husband's birthday. I try my best to indulge him as much as I can on his special day. With the economy the way it is, my husband settled on a simple dinner out(his meal was free), and he wanted me to make him a chocolate cake. This request couldn't get any simpler. Well, that's what I get for thinking that. All I can say is, thank you Mother Nature...

Yes, Aunt Flo came by for her monthly visit. If you're like me, you lose all rational thought and common sense when your body takes over. I am over-emotional, snippy, and of course the pain is just too much to bear, especially for someone who suffers from Endometriosis. All I wanted to do Thursday was go home and cuddle up to my heating pad, all while Tylenol PM gently rocked me to sleep. It did not go that way thoufh. Being the good wife I am, I went to dinner, and made the cake. Yeah, the cake.

I was so proud of myself when I took the two round cake pans out of the oven. Oh how light, how fluffy, how perfect! These cakes were to die for! I couldn't wait to put icing on them, and live in the moment. I lived in the moment alright. After letting the cakes cool, I turned the first one over onto the cake plate. Shake, shake. Tap, tap. Looked under, no cake. Shake, shake. Tap, tap. Looked under... My cake had stuck to the pan! I started freaking out. No, no, no!!! This was not happening! I worked too hard, through emotions and pain for this to be happening. It did happen though, to both layers. After trying to stack and straighten, the cake didn't look too bad, until I started putting the icing on. The ENTIRE cake fell to pieces, leaving me with what I can only call a mound of chocolately defeat. I was so upset I just sat down on the couch and didn't say a word to my husband. He went and looked at the cake and laughed. He wanted to know what I had done to it. Being the good sport that he is, he at it anyway. :)

My biggest cooking calamity involved a big batch of hot wings and a glass baking dish.

As I was pouring the buffalo sauce over the top of the wings, the pan burst. Needless to say, I had hot buffalo sauce everywhere. That stuff stains!

And now I use metal pans almost exclusively.

My other calamity involved hot wings and too much beer. Needless to say, they were hotter coming up. I thought I was going to die.

I guess I can not qualify because i have never had a cooking disaster. Since i was young I always cooked with my step mother and always enjoyed it. She taught me how to manage my time so that things came out at the right times. She taught me well and because of that I have never had a disaster in the kitchen.

In grad school, my friend lived off campus. One day she drove in to school on a flat tire, called her husband to come to her aid. Then she got impatient because she didn't want to be late for class, so she stuck the jack under the floorboard of her car and caused the jack to break through the floor board and lodge in the floor. So, by the time her husband got there he had to calm her down and send her to class in his car then fix that calamity. After her class, she came back and had to pulverize some samples in the lab with a mortar and pestal (heavy marble)...I don't know how she did it but she broke the pestal. So, she just drove home and tried to cook herself some spagetti because it was quick and on hand. Later she told me she had cooked the noodles and put the colander in one side of the sink because the other side had dishwater from washing dishes. Well, in her haste to eat she brought the spagetti noodles over to the sink and dumped them into the dishwater by accident. She said that she just gave up after that and went to bed. Now, that is by far the worst day I have heard in a while.

My worst cooking disaster has to be my first and only attempt at risotto. It looks so good at restaurants and I thought it can't be that hard to make. Good news, it is not hard to make it just takes a lot of stirring and patience. I made a simple risotto with parmesan cheese. I was so proud of myself and eagerly shared my new dish with my hubby. He choked down a few bites before I tried it. He was so good about it. It was so salty that we couldn't bear to eat it. Instead of using low sodium chicken broth I had used regular old chicken stock. It is loaded with salt and that salt just gets amplified in a dish like risotto. Then add 3 cups of cheese. It was terrible. I have never made that dish again. God bless my husband. He was such a trooper.

It was one of those days where you try to use leftovers. I had a Hamburger Helper Beef Stroganoff mix, but no hamburger. I did, however, have some leftover beef. I started preparing the mix, and realized I was really short on meat, so I went rummaging into the fridge again and found some leftover pork my husband had made. I cut it up and added it to the beef. After it had cooked, I tasted it and to my horror discovered THAT was the pork my husband had made with a very sweet sauce! Yuck! So then I thought, okay, what can I do to offset the sweet? Well, sweet and sour chicken is pretty good, so I added some vinegar.

It didn't work. Let me tell you, not even the DOG would eat sweet and sour beef/pork stroganoff! To say it was awful is an understatement.

My worst cooking disaster happened when I was in college and working during the summer at a retirement home in their kitchen! A male friend and I had gone there one summer looking for jobs because my grandmother lived there and my mom knew the manager of the retirement home. There were two ladies in charge of the hiring in the kitchen, and they had a job as a cook available, the only job available other than a dish washer, which is the job my male friend took. During my interview, I was honest with the two ladies and told them I had no cooking experience other than using a microwave in a college dorm/apartment and would need to be taught how to cook anything more complicated than a microwave meal! They told me that the cooking mostly consisted of making finger foods and sandwiches and that it was very simple. I agreed to take the job after they assured me I could handle it. Well, on my first day on the job, I found out that they had lied to me! They expected me to follow recipes for complicated casseroles, soups, cornbread, etc. in a gourmet cookbook that were supposed to feed 4 people and multiply them for over 100 residents! One elderly lady that worked at night in the kitchen took pity on me and showed me step-by-step how to make the cornbread from scratch, so I became skilled at making the cornbread, but I was at a loss for everything else. I could not even find the ingredients in the freezer for half of the recipes and certainly could not calculate how much I needed for over 100 people! The two ladies in charge abandoned me after the first day, so I had no help! One night, the main course on the menu was oyster stew, and the residents only got it once or twice a year, and they lined up at the door at 5 p.m. ready for it! I was told there would be a riot if they did not get their oyster stew that they looked forward to so much each year. Well, a college student like me had obviously never made oyster stew and would never eat it anyway. At 4 p.m., I was in a panic and still looking for the oysters in the freezer! No one was around but me and my male friend washing dishes, so there was no one to ask how to make the oyster stew. I finally saw the oysters on the top shelf of the freezer, but there was not even a ladder around for me to get to them! I then told my friend I was going on a search of the retirement home for the manager, so I left the kitchen and took off looking for some help. I found my mom's friend in her office and she managed to get in touch with the kitchen manager who hurried back to cook the oyster stew before there was a riot. Needless to say, that job did not last any longer after that, and that was the end of my cooking career! The day I left, the two ladies that originally hired me acted like I had not said a word about my lack of cooking skills and told me that they didn't realize that I really had no cooking experience or they would have never hired me. What did they expect from a college student? I mean, seriously! I told my male friend later that I wish I had taken his job as the dish washer because it was a whole lot easier. Plus, he even got paid more than I did!

I did the same thing Teresa W did with the fried chicken. It was my very first time making fried chicken and not only was my fire to high I had not covered it.. Not only was the chicken itself raw the outside was burned. I have never made fried chicken again.

I guess mine would be Easter dinner for Bill and I and his folks and his brother. I make everything...no help from anyone else. So I was running around getting trying to get everything to the table at once. I had just finished boiling my potatoes for mashed potatoes...removed the pan....and forgot to turn the burner off. It was on high to boil the potatoes. I reached in the oven and pulled out my ham. It looked great. I had a lid on the roaster. I promptly set it on the burner. I guess with the big roaster I didn't see the burner was still on. I'm running around the kitchen and I hear BOOM! The roaster with the ham exploded off of the hot burner and promptly turned upside down on the floor. Luckily it landed inside the lid so it was saved. But all the juices....sticky juices went all over my kitchen. All my guests ran to the kitchen to see what the boom was and why I yelled F@$K!!! loudly. Umm...I would never say that word around Bill's folks. I didn't know I had even said it. They were all laughing at my poor ham that sat in the middle of my kitchen floor in the upside down lid.

The ham was good.....but I was pretty much a frazzled mess the rest of the meal. lol

First off I want to say that I am a really good cook - lol! I usually don't have too many blunders but when I do they are biggies! This one involves my mom's new turkey recipe, a turkey and Christmas dinner. My mom is an amazing, amazing cook and she's taught me a good deal in the kitchen so when she told me about a new recipe my aunt had tried and how well the turkey turned out, I just had to try it. She said it was the nicest looking, moistest turkey she had ever tried.

It involves slathering up your turkey with lots of butter, soaking some cheese cloth in butter and broth and then wrapping your whole turkey up nice and tight in the cheese cloth. Then you just keep marinading the cheese cloth with the turkey drippings throughout the cooking process. So that's what I did I soaked my cheese cloth according to my mom's directions, slathered him up good and seasoned him the way I normally do.

Christmas morning around 11 I stick him in the oven, cooking at the recommended 350 degree temp. I basted it every half hour, it was a little more often then my mom had said but I like to keep the turkey well basted so it doesn't dry out.

Everyone arrived for our Christmas celebration. I took the turkey out of the oven so it could rest for the required 20 minutes and then I removed the cheese cloth covering the turkey. My Lord I had never seen such a perfectly cooked, golden brown turkey! I was just beaming with joy as I carried that turkey to the table. I had slid him on to a beautiful serving platter and brought him to the table for my hubby to carve. In all the years I have done tukeys I had never had one turn out so perfect looking! It looked like something out of a magazine! Everyone oooooh'd and aaaah'd over the beautiful turkey and I kep thanking everyone for the wonderful comments.

Hubby grabbed the carving for and knife and went to put the first slice into the turkey and his face literally dropped to the table. He just looked at me with the dumbest look I've every seen and said "I think you better come here a sec". So puzzled I went over and took a look at the turkey. There was nothing left to the turkey at all - a perfectly beautiful outside shell and not one bit of meat!!! I don't know if you've ever seen the turkey on the Christmas Vacation movie but that's exactly what mine looked like!!! no insides and the bones could disintegrate like dust!!! I always thought that part of the movie was hilarious and thought nothing like that could ever happen in real life - boy was I wrong!! I could have died!! I was never, ever so embarrassed in my life. I guess with the turkey wrapped in cheese cloth you don't have to cook it as long and it gets much hotter internally/ Needless to say we had no turkey for our Christmas meal and I vowed never to wrap anything in cheese cloth again!!

I swear the turkey looked stunning on the outside! I do have pics somewhere - I just need to dig them out - when I do I'll add them here. I felt absolutely horrible that we didn't have any turkey for our Christmas dinner but everyone else thought it absolutely hilarious!

Shelli's exploding sauerkraut story cracked me up.

My friends and I had just found this recipe for Add About Anything Cookies - a basic cookie recipe where the last 3 ingredients are a cup each of "About Anything". For example, one could add a cup of oatmeal, a cup of peanuts, and a cup of raisins. We were trying to outdo each other with creative concoctions. I had a bright idea one night. I used a cup of chocolate chips, a cup of rice crispies, and...a cup of mini marshmallows.

Marshmallows do not keep their composure at 350 degrees for 12 minutes.

Actually, I have a group here that I created awhile ago. It is called Kitchen Bloopers.

I once set a pot of eggs to boil and forgot about them when I hopped into the shower. The smoke detector went off and I rushed out soaking wet and the house was full of smoke! My pot had twelve egg-shaped blackened marks in the bottom, permanently.

my 1st turkey on thanksgiving as a newlywed, i forgot yhe bag of 'innerds' in the turkey...what a surprise upon carving it....LOL

When I was about 19 years old. I worked 2 jobs. I was single with no kids. I came home one day and thought I would roast myself a chicken in the oven. I put it in a cooking pan. I thought I would just lie down for a few minutes, and then I would get up and wash the dishes. I was so tired from work that I accidently fell asleep. WRONG choice! I fell asleep and sleep like 4 hours. Needless to say I almost burnt down the whole apartment complex. Smoke was rolling from my front door and it sat off the fire alarm in the hall. Someone started banging on the door and work me up. I had the day before took the batteries out of my fire alarms because I burnt something like bacon for breakfast. It took me a long time to learn to cook but today people tell me that I am a good cook. I make sure and not forget my past!

When I was in junior high, and my little sister was in 5th or 6th grade, we decided to make chocolate chip cookies one day. My mom told us we couldn't use frozen butter so we needed to thaw it first. We got impatient with letting it thaw on it's own, so we threw it in the microwave. We didn't realize how much melting the butter would change the cookies!

We mixed the cookies all up, and they looked fine. We put them on the cookie sheet and put them into the preheated oven. When we checked on them a few minutes later, they were all melted together, and the mess had even dripped over the edge onto the bottom of the oven.

That was the last time I made chocolate chip cookies from scratch for about 10 years!

My first attempt at making homemade pizza was a total disaster. I made the crust, and then topped it with the ingredients, making sure to use lots and lots of sauce, that was my big mistake. The pizza looked done on the top and on the bottom, but when you bit in to it is was a big disugusting soupy mess of uncooked dough. It was so gross. My husband has never let me live that one down.

The first time I ever tried to bake a apple pie for my new husband, we had been married about a month, and I was using my nana`s pastry recipe, * how can you go wrong right* Ha...the dough seem to roll out nicely,,,I sliced the fresh apples added the spices and placed the topping on it.. baked it for about 45 mintues in the oven..Mmmmmmmmmmmm it smelt so good...When my new husband came home I was so proud of the pie I had baked him..UNTIL he tried to cut into it..I mean it had that nice glossy look you see in the bake shop windows to it but Tried as he might he was unable to get the knife through the crust.Needless to say I cried when that happen I though how could it have gone wrong, He was such a sweetheart about it we ended up laughing over the whole thing..Later that night we used the pie to play frizbie with the dog outsite...even the dog couldnt bite his teeth into it, so now secertly I have my mother do the pastry for me..and he still hasnt caught on after 25 years.

I have several so I wasnt sure which one to choose. The biscuits that were so hard my brother in law hit them with a baseball bat and they didn't break and the roast I cooked all the way on pre-heat with no water in it were long ago so I'll share this recent one.

We have made mostiaccioli many many times and our whole family loves it. This time however, we were all chewing and looking at each other and just could not figure out why it didn't taste right. It had been made the same as always. My 18 year old son said "Mom, I just cant eat anymore of this." Usually any leftovers are eaten right away by both of the boys.

My husband was determined to figure out what went wrong and went into the kitchen. He came back before too long with the cheese packages that were on the top of the garbage. It turns out instead of mozzarella he had accidentally bought swiss cheese and we're so used to making this dish, no one noticed. It's still white cheese after all. So now every time we have it one of the boys double checks the cheese packages before he'll eat. lol

It was Thanksgiving, and the whole family of 18 people were over. We had a huge bird and my hubby and I were lifting the bird out of the pan when it fell spilling alll the hot grease all over the two of us. What was most amazing was that neither one of us got hurt, and it was bubbly grease.

Purple Pork... yep, this time it was my husband's turn to botch the meal. He was making a white wine and pork dish... but we didn't have any white wine. Well, he decided to substitute with red wine... wine is wine, right? NOT!

The dish turned a horrible purple color. When he plated it and brought it the table, the family was NOT impressed. If we had been blind-folded and not able to have already made up our minds that it was going to be awful, we may have tried it and been pleasantly surprised... but as it stood, seeing it was just too much to handle! We threw it out and ordered Chinese.

This happened about 3 years and we STILL crack jokes about it!

HockeyPuck Pancakes... My bad. We love to entertain and have guests from out of town spend the night. One holiday we had a HOUSE FULL of people to feed for breakfast. We like to all eat together so I figured I would make pancakes ahead of time and keep them warm while I got the rest of the breakfast ready and the tables set. Great plan... except I had turned on the broiler instead of the oven! I burned an entire tray of pancakes into perfect little 4" hockey pucks! Smoke was everywhere... the smoke detectors were piercing our ears, the house alarm went off, everyone was laughing so hard that they were sucking in major smoke trying to get the alarms reset, etc. We coughed and laughed for days! Ever since then, when someone from that fateful breakfast spends the night, they beg me to NOT cook pancakes for breakfast! LOL!

The worse and most embarrassing I was cooking pizza and I kept it on the cardboard and put it on a pizza pan. You can imagine what happened I soon smelt burned cardboard, went to kitchen and seen smoke rolling from my oven. Thank goodness it didn't start a fire, sent hubby back to store for more pizza and let him cook them.

This isnt my disaster but I am going to use it anyway.

I used to work for a clinic/hospital in Council Bluffs Iowa and one night I was doing graveyard shift.

About 12:30 a woman comes running in the door. She was in her mid 60's and said her husband had just gotten burned by hot grease.

Seems the husband and his wife's hobby was cooking...in the nude.

She was so distraught when he got hot grease on him that she threw one of her fruffy aprons on him and raced to the ER.

It took me 10 minutes to check her in I kept having to excuse myself to go to the bathroom AKA I couldnt stop laughing...that poor woman must have thought I was the most incontinent person in the world.

The doctor wasnt any better he kept leaving the room to laugh.

On a positive note the mans burns werent bad and he was treated and released.

The reason I hate to cook and the reason Keith does the cooking is that I drop and spill things on the floor and counter. Spilling on the counter is something I do regularly because of a problem with my eyesight. I misjudge where a glass or bowl is so drinks and eggs land on the counter.

That's not so awful, but one incident really wasn't funny. It was dangerous. Once I was "assisting" Keith by pouring juice from a gallon-size glass container for something he was making. I dropped it on the floor. Broken glass was everywhere.

We don't wear shoes in the house, and I have little feeling in my left foot. I stepped in glass and did not realized it until I saw the blood.

Our dog and our cat liked to be where we were so wanted to come in. We could yell at the dog not to come in, and she obeyed. We had to shut the cat up in a bedroom, but Keith was being an a__ and wouldn't, and I couldn't with my bloody foot.

So, yes, the cat came in. Keith was cleaning the floor and yelling at me not to move because he didn't want me to step on more glass. As it turned out, the cat was better off than I was. She just hopped on the counter.

Ha, a cooking disaster- I have to pick just one? LOL.

My most recent one was burning rice. Yep, it is ONLY rice and water. Still I managed to burn it black one day.

I blame it on my pregnancy brain... Basically I totally reversed the cooking instructions and was doing other things so I didn't notice the burning madness until the smell wafted through the house burning my nose hairs along with it.

Instead of 1 cup rice 2 cups water heated to boiling (uncovered) and then turned down to simmer for 20 minutes covered. I did 1 cup rice 2 cups water heated to boiling (COVERED)
and I never turned the heat down. So it boiled until all the water was gone, then it charred the rice in the dry pan. The white rice was black when I finally noticed my mess up.

I am normally a good cook and can have fun with recipes but since becoming pregnant cooking has really become a challenge...

My worst cooking disaster was making a homemade apple pie. I filled it too full so it bubbled over in the oven. There was a very sticky mess left at the bottom.

I've since learned to always put tinfoil and a pizza pan under a pie while it's baking. The pies have been delicious though.

So many rice mishaps...................1 cup rice, 3 cups water, salt, covered micro safe dish..........20 minutes........fluff...........perfect............ every time!
I made chow mein for a gang at a house painting party and added more and more corn starch to thicken it ..............to NO avail. I finally just used some flour to do the job.........imagine the embarrassment when we sat down to eat..............I had added almost a full box of 4X powdered sugar from a container that I thought was Corn Starch!

This is an easy one for me....it was a cold and rainy day, a perfect day for Chicken soup. So all day I simmered the homemade chicken stock with onions, carrots and all the good spices. The house smelled amazing. So I go into the kitchen to cook the noodles as the final step to this great meal, homemade soup, homemade bread and peach cobbler for dessert. I put the noodles onto boil and set the colander into the sink. Now during the whole day hubby had been working in the garage, coming in and out of the house. The last time he came in I told him dinner would be ready soon, so he washes his hands in the kitchen sink. I was not paying attention to him and did not notice that he washed his hands in the side that held the colander. So he sets the table and I drain the noodles and while they are cooling just a bit slice the bread. Well got the soup all together and put this wonderful smelling stuff on the table and ladeled into bowls. Here we all are, me, hubby, son and mother-in-law. The first bite and let me tell you chicken soup flew out of everyones mouth....so dinner that night was peanut butter sandwiches on wonderful homemade bread and peach cobbler, So now when I make chicken soup everyone asked if hubby has been in the kitchen.

This is so simple but my worst cooking disaster would have to be once when I was cooking some hotdogs and went outside and forgot all about them and smelled something and they were burnt! Smoke in my kitchen, pot burned, had to throw it away, I will never do that again.

I've had tons of calamities but I don't have pictures of them. I had a picture of one of them but I don't know where it went. The microwave burnt a hole right through my Pampered Chef Microwave Cooker! I sent my Pampered Chef friend a picture so she had proof so I could get a new one. I don't remember what I did with the original of the picture though.

well one year i told my man i wanted to cook a turkey just like martha stewart and cook it breat side down in the pan he says fine this year you cook thanks giving so here i am cooking the turkey all happy about it was going to be just like matha stewarts and all of the trimings that where in her cook book man i am still being teased over that turkey it was so tough and dry i dont know what i did wrong but i will just let my man cook on holidays from now on

I got a mozzarella cheese making kit because I had tasted some that was light as a cloud and deilicious, so I wanted to make my own. My daughter and I tried, but the end result was RUBBER, not CLOUD!!!

i once tried to make barley in the microwave. i figure you can cook rice that way and cooking barley on the stove is no different than making rice on the stove.

needless to say, i ended up with a bowl of flaming roasted barley and a house filled with black smoke. it took a month before that smell would go away and my husband at the time banned me from using the microwave for a week.

my worst one was when i tried to make boiled eggs to make egg salad sandwiches one year. i forgot about the eggs and me and my husband were watching t.v. and heard this huge BOOM from the kitchen. the water had boiled away and the eggs had exploded!! and a few years later we were remodeling the kitchen and we found pieces of eggshell in the weirdest places like on top of the cabinets!!! LOL

Surely you have heard my "purple gravy" story!? NO? Well, thank goodness there aren't any pictures, it was not pretty!
In 1985 I was married and expecting my first child. This was a year of many firsts for me, including making cream gravy. I was raised by my mom of german heritage, and untill my first marriage the only cream gravy I ever saw or had was in a resturant or someone elses house! My mother used potato water, and we always had thin or what I call clear gravy.

This particular evening I was preparing smoked sasuage and I thought, possibly, a cream gravy for the mashed potatoes would be good( my husband of the time was raised with good ole homestyle cooking and his mom made great cream gravy!) In my attempt to "pull" the meal flavors together, I added liquid smoke to the gravy! Who knew it would turn the gravy purple?! Well more like dirty lavander?! It didn't taste bad, but it looked aweful, and I heard about it for YEARS! Needless to say I choose to make fried potatoes from then on whenever I prepared sasuage!

I consider myself to be a pretty good cook, especially when dealing with my personal area of expertise, baking. I am a wonderful baker. I have only ever had two bad experiences with baking. The first was not my fault. I was a member of 4-H when I was in school and went to a bread making workshop, and our instructor forgot to have us add salt to our bread recipe. Needless to say the bread wasn't the tastiest thing ever.

Ironically enough, I recently made the same mistake in a different fashion in my own kitchen. I usually cook with self-rising flour, because I do not make many "dainties" where the usual baking flour can make a big difference. However, recently, I did end up with all purpose flour in the house.

On Valentines day this year, I wanted to make my husband a favorite treat: a pineapple cobbler. My recipe is simple, a cup of flour, a cup of milk, sugar to taste a stick of butter, and the pineapple (I use the juice as a partial substitute for the cup of sugar the recipe typically calls for.). I used these ingredients, followed my directions, and put the cobbler in the oven. About 30 minutes later I began to monitor my cobbler and was expecting to pull it out of the oven at any minute. When I peeked in the window though, my cobbler had not risen up around the edges of my pan yet, so I wandered off for ten minutes and came back...not yet! After doing this one more time I opened the door and saw my cobbler had in fact turned lightly brown but was barley a half an inch above the bottom of the pan.

I had my husband come and pull it out of the oven, and then I saw the flattened, rubbery looking concoction. At first I had no idea what the problem was, and I thought maybe I had substituted too much pineapple juice for sugar, so I began to try to cut myself off a piece for a taste test. Emphasis on the word try! It not only looked rubbery, it also had the consistency of it...even the pineapples looked off from having been in the oven so long.

After I managed to saw off a piece of the cobbler, chew it up, and actually swallow I immediately recognized the problem. I had forgotten that I was using all purpose flower and did not add my baking powder/soda and salt. The pineapple cobbler was completely inedible, and I had no pineapple left over for a redo. So there went our Valentine's treat, into the garbage can.

I suppose it was all just as well though. Cobblers are awfully rich, and we were both already back into healthy living mode, so I may have saved us a fitness set-back by butchering the cobbler.

My worse cooking experience was when I saw on a cooking show how you can shred a block of parmasean cheese on a cookie sheet. spread it out, and cook it for like 20 minutes. It come out with this lacey look to it and is crisp. All of a sudden the oven started smoking and the smell of that cheese came out of there with a vengence. My house smelled so bad we had to open up all the windows and 3 days later it still smelled like dirty feet. It was terrible

I once had an Angel Food Cake keep going out right out of the pan on my kitchen floor. My biggest problem was company was at the door and they were expecting to eat cake. I quickly seated my guests and informed them I would be with them shortly, as I needed to finish the cake. I had to serve them a different cake.

Oh geez, I have a doozy for this one. It involves a foreign country, cheese, loads of pasta al dente and a smoke alarm! I'll have to come back at a sane hour to post it.

When we were first married, I attempted to make baked pork chops. I don't remember what I did, or how I did it...and that's probably a good thing. The chops were pure rubber. There was no dinner that night, as they were absolutely inedible. My husband told EVERYONE about it, and he made me miserable over it from teasing me for so long.

Ironically, the next time I cooked them they were really good...but he had a virus and puked them back up. He has refused to eat pork chops since then.

Calamities? Where do I begin? The applesause jars that exploded when I tried to can on my own? The mac and cheese that baked so long it became paste? No. I think the worst were my attempts to bake bread. The loaves were either doughy or tough or full of holes. It never worked.

Mine has to with boiled eggs and the fact when you add heat to eggs with out them being in water they explode.

I learned a valuable lesson when it comes to boiled eggs, never walk away and forget you put them on. It can become a real kitchen disaster. One day I put some on to boil to make egg salad. when I got a call to come next door to my moms house to get a package UPS had left there for me. So I planned to just run over grab the package and leave. But we all know how moms are they always want to chat. So we got to chatting and I had forgotten all about the eggs. All of a sudden I get a call from my adult son that something is exploding all over the kitchen. he grabbed the safety glasses we use when cutting grass and put a towel over his head and went in and shut off the burner.
By the time I got there, there was eggs all over everything even the ceiling the house smelled like burnt eggs for days!
Learned a valuable lesson that day don't walk away when you cooking (now I always set my cell phone alarm with the ring tone "burning down the house"my son thinks its fitting :( as a reminder since I'm forget when Im busy)and eggs do explode!.

i made a chocolate crazy cake and instead of using baking powder i used baking soda and it blew up in the oven! It was crazy!!

I once was going to make garlic baked potatoes in the oven. The recipe called for one clove of garlic crushed. I had no idea what a clove of garlic was! I used a WHOLE bulb of garlic. What I remember is being outside while the potatoes were baking and suddenly smelling the garlic like crazy. I swear you could smell it for a 2 block radius! Then I did some research to find out that a clove was just one section of the bulb. The house smelled like garlic for 2 weeks too.

I cooked a cake for a carry in and low and behold a huge piece of it was gone before i could take it in. somebody thought it was for them instead of the co workers.

I tied cooking a cake once. I thought it was done let it cool and flipped it over and it oozed everywhere. Needless to say cupcakes are ALOT easier.

I was warming up some oil in a pan to cook with. I normally use Vegtable oil, but I was out so I used extra virgin olive oil. Did not know that the combustion tempature was so much lower. I was in the other room for a second, when I smell smoke. Look into the kitchen, flames are about 4 feet out of the pan. I freak, grab the pan and run outside and chuck it into the yard, luckly non spilled in the house. But I now have a nice burning spots in the back yard. The ceiling still bears the smoke damage from the day.

Cooking disaster
I always enjoyed cooking when young. Many years ago, when making my first pan of lasagna, I read the recipe incorrectly. Instead of putting one clove of garlic in the sauce I put the whole bulb! WHOA was that ever a powerful garlic sauce. No one could figure out why it was strong tasting and it completely consumed the refrigerator with garlic fumes. We finally solved the mystery. It was really funny. :)

Well I have had a bunch of them my self, but the funniest happened to my mom one thanksgiving......(well something happens most thanksgivings, another year it was Kathleen what the heck is so gosh darn funny and eventually every one even the dog hies when turkey comes out...)
Any hoo...this particulat year, my dad was trying to take the turkey and put it on the platte, and it fell back in the grease, splattered and got my moms nose....she has a little nose and it looked like she had a big green booger on the end......it was healed up by Christmas when we went to visit grandma, mom says I bet she notices....even though there wasnt a scar at all.......first thing we get off the plane and see grandma....Pam what the heck did you do to your nose?!

I really don't have many....about the worst I've ever done is get side tracked and leave a pan of cookies in the oven for almost an hour. Ick...they had turned to charcoal.

Now I had a roommate in college that mixed up the sugar and salt in her cookies...it was so funny...they were the saltiest things I've ever tasted.

This one is actually about a friend (Isn't that what they all say? :))
She was a great cook, and we always loved everything she made. One time, she brought a beautiful pie over to a gathering. It looked delicious, and we couldn't wait to dig in! I can't remember who had the first bite, but you could tell immediately that something was horribly wrong! They were trying so hard not to immediately spit it out!
Turns out, she accidently used salt instead of sugar in the pie! I'm not sure how it happened, but it made for one unappetizing dessert!

Okay, here's mine. It was the Fall of 1998, and I was studying abroad at Oxford in the UK for the semester. Some Briton friends and I got permission to use a tutor (professor)'s home to host a small dinner, so we arrived in the afternoon with all of the supplies we needed to make a spaghetti dinner with garlic bread. Or so we thought.

The four of us squeezed (and I mean *squeezed*) into the tiny kitchen and got to work. We put on a huge pot of water to boil to cook the pasta, and once it was roarin' hot, we added the noodles and waited. The sink was loaded with the tutor's dishes and there was clutter everywhere! I made the garlic bread using the teeny tiny amount of counter space available, and slipped it into the oven to broil.

It was about 5 minutes into the pasta's cook time when I realized we'd forgotten a colander. Operating on extremely limited time, one of the guys searched every cabinet, but for some reason, the tutor didn't have one. With seconds to go and no way to drain the pasta, another guy came up with a brilliant idea: Drain the pasta in the bathtub. (It's so much grosser now than it was then. Really.) So the four of us heaved and ho'd this enormous pot (seriously, it's the biggest pot I've ever seen, even to this day) into the bathroom. I threw a clean (gosh, I hope it was clean!) towel over the top of the pot and the three guys slowly and carefully flipped it over, allowing the water to drain. Well, the pressure of the water and the pasta was too much, and the towel ripped right down the middle, sending the entire pot of pasta into the bathtub drain. We panicked and grabbed up as much of it as we could, tossing the almost burning-hot spaghetti strand by strand back into its pot. We couldn't figure out how to rinse it without having the same result, so one of the guys thought it would be a good idea to clean it off with soap. I have NO idea what he was thinking or if he was thinking at all, but before I could say anything at all, we had a huge bowl of hot, soapy noodles and no way to rinse them. I would've gotten mad, but hey, what's the point? We briefly entertained the notion of serving it up anyway, smothered in tomato sauce with the hope that no one would taste the soap, but nixed the idea pretty quickly, deciding instead to go with salad as the main course and the garlic bread as the side item. The spaghetti hit the trashcan.

And then we saw the smoke and heard the alarm. We all scurried back into the kitchen to find the garlic bread ablaze (fortunately it was just a small fire, but a fire is a fire!) in the oven, with the smoke detector wisely tooting its warning signal. We quickly emptied the sink, one of the guys dove into the oven with mitts in place, and tossed the whole loaf under running water. Fortunately, there was no permanent damage done, but it sure did stink.

After we managed to get the smoke alarm to stop sounding (which took 30 minutes - the guests were very confused when they arrived to find a stinky kitchen and a whirring alarm, but didn't ask many questions, thankfully!), we threw together a rather nice salad. Fortunately we had plenty of lettuce, otherwise the spaghetti and garlic bread dinner without the spaghetti and garlic bread would've been quite the flop.

That's probably the worst kitchen disaster I've ever had.

My very first cooking disaster was the first Thanksgiving after I got married. I cooked the turkey just fine, and it was out of the oven cooling. My Mom said she would come by and show me how to make giblet gravy. When she arrived she asked where the giblets were. I didn't know what she was talking about. Then she went to the turkey and pulled them out. I did not know there was anything there. I never seen Mom laugh so hard. What can you expect with some that's never seen a turkey being prepated before.

Alright, cooking is my good quality so I usually do very well in the kitchen. I do have two funny horror stories in the kitchen to share.

The first story took place on Thanksgiving. My ex-husband and I just moved into a new little cottage and I was looking forward to preparing a Thanksgiving dinner for my family to show off the new house. I asked my ex to clean the oven because I was working overtime the day before Thanksgiving. He assured me he cleaned the oven well. On Thanksgiving morning, I prepared the bird and opened the oven door to cook it. Lo and behold, not only was the oven dirty - it was housing a live mouse that stared right back at me! Of course this is when I learned the hard way my ex didn't live up to his word...

The second cooking disaster is all my fault. I was a newlywed with my second hubby (the dear man I love today) and wanted to impress him with his favorite soup. He is a good cook, too, and makes his own soups and stews. He always loved my cooking and could not wait to try my pea soup. It was the first time making pea soup and I did not realize how much water it needed. Within a couple of hours, my soup turned into a solid block we had to extract from the pot like cement. Needless to say, hubby takes over pea soup preparations these days unless they are from a can, LOL.

Long long ago...lol...I baked my very first turkey for Thanksgiving. I had never seen one baked before and had noone to instruct me in the how-toos. Needless to say I did not remove the neck or the bag with the giblets. What a disaster that was.

my most craziest cooking experance was thanksgiving--- the food was alright but while pulling the turkey out of the oven I started my hair on fire from the corn cooking on the stove top..........needless to say now I own an electric cook top and the oven is on another wall!! :)

My mom went to Virginia one weekend and my dad stayed home with the six kids. While she was gone I had to cook. I was not used to it and the food to me tasted nasty. I burned the buscits which by the way were premade by my mom before she left. I had made fried potatoes and they were mushy and greasy. My dad ate every bite and told me how good it was. Then right before my mom came hold we cleaned the whole house. It was spottless. Then my dad got to thinking and made us dirty the house and dishes by squirting ketchup all over them. We asked him why and he said he wanted my mom to think we could not live without her!

It had to be the first Christmas I was married. I decided to roast a turkey- something I had done many times before. For some reason, the turkey was not cooked through at dinnertime, and of course, my mother-in-law, a very good cook, was there. In a show of real maturity, I went in to the bedroom, threw myself on the bed, and had a good cry.

I invited my mom and sister over for Cauliflower Cheese soup. I had made it many times and it always was good. This time I decided I was going to try to make it a little healthier so I used reduced fat cheese.......My husband renamed it Cauliflower Cheeseball soup. The reduced fat cheese did not melt like regular cheddar and formed "really chewy" cheese lumps instead. It really was awful but they were good sports and ate it. I have never used reduced-fat anything in a recipe since!

I buy the spices that I use often in the big warehouse sized containers. I use a lot of cumin and a lot of cinnamon so I always have big containers of those on hand. I use cumin in just about everything.

One day, in my very hectic household, I was making spaghetti sauce. I got the cumin out of cupboard and poured a generous amount into my large pot of sauce. Unfortunately, the the cumin and cinnamon containers look exactly alike and they look alike as well. What I though was cumin was actually cinnamon. Luckily I noticed me mistake before i stirred it in. I scooped out as much as I could, but there was still a fair amount in the sauce.

The funny thing is that no one really noticed anything until I told the. Which, of course, I didn't do until after they had eaten the meal.

My cooking calamity stories are mostly about not getting things done. Like for Thanksgiving one year everything was finished BUT THE TURKEY! Or the first time I prepared a meal for my mother-in-law I made lasagna. I was at my mom's house so I wasn't used to her oven and of course the lasagna didn't get done. Everyone was sitting around waiting to eat and finally my mom said that I could give my MIL and her husband the outside pieces and she and my dad would eat the inner pieces that weren't quite fully heated. LOL

Where to begin! I bet this brings some hilarious stories.

I have two cooking disasters. One happened in the distant past. I tried to fricasee(?) some chicken--quick browning it on the stovetop before allowing it to simmer or bake. What a mess? The apartment still held a haze of smoke as I and the young man that I was trying to impress sat down to eat. He was a great sport; he ate it as if everything was fine. He definitely got points.

My next victims were my poor children. They were about four and five and I was attempting to learn how to cook with tofu. So once again I went to work with the skillet and a seasoning packet. It was supposed to be a stir fry. I sat it in front of the kids, and they looked at their plates and then at me. I suggested that they at least taste it, and they did. Quote:"Mommy, this is bad." I assumed that it was the usual child's reaction to something different and then I tasted it. It was bad. The tofu was too mushy and the seasoning entirely too healthy. It definitely needed some salt. Needless to say, we found something else to eat. We still laugh about it.