I'm not a bad cook... Really! - Page 2

veejer · 09-06-2008, 02:48 PM

I was baking potatoes once and must have gotten distracted and forgotten to pierce them with a fork. They exploded in the oven and coated the inside of it with itty, bitty, bits of potato. Fortunately no company was involved.

My MIL must have been away one time without my FIL, because we had just him over to dinner for beef strogonoff. The strogonoff was fine but I didn't double the water for the rice (something I knew perfectly well how to do!!!!) and it was crunchy!!!!

Early on in our marriage we had mr. veejer's grandparents over for dessert. I don't remember what else we had, but I wanted the cookies to be really fresh, so I had a pan all ready to pop in the oven when the doorbell rang. When they were done, I tripped while holding the pan and they all went on the kitchen floor. I was in tears, but mr. veejer simply picked up the unbroken ones and served them anyway to his grandparents in the other room!!!

Another time, I was doing turkey for Thankgiving and turned on the oven light to see if it was brown enough to be covered. Instead of turning off the light, I turned off the oven (the switches are right next to each other) and didn't notice it for about 45 minutes. Dinner was a little late and nobody got food poisoning.

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livin4reality · 09-06-2008, 03:54 PM

There was the time I sprayed the muffin pan with oven cleaner instead of Pam. We thought the muffins tasted odd and smelled strange, but ate them anyway (and didn't get sick!).

Of course the first turkey I ever roasted I left the giblet sack in. Isn't that a rite of passage or something?

This past week I cooked rigatoni. I pride myself on being able to tell when pasta is done by how it looks. It was slightly crunchy.

luvsginger · 09-06-2008, 05:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by veejer

Instead of turning off the light, I turned off the oven (the switches are right next to each other) and didn't notice it for about 45 minutes. Dinner was a little late and nobody got food poisoning.

I've done something very similar many times. I wasn't used to our new oven and went the time went off, I would hit the off button which would also turn off the oven. Many roasts later, I realized that you had to hit the timer button to turn it off (otherwise it would buzz every 30 seconds as a reminder).

This didn't happen to me but when we were first married, my husband was basting our first turkey, I asked him a question and he turned to answer me with the baster filled with hot juices. He inadvertently squeezed the bulb and it squirted all over my chest and I received second degree burns. I down played the discomfort because he felt so bad! Oh, and the giblets were definitely left in the turkey that time!

**waywyrd** · 09-06-2008, 05:57 PM

I love these stories.

Ages ago when I was learning to cook, I roasted a chicken in a glass baking dish. When it was done I put the chicken on a serving platter and set the glass dish on top of the stove burners to make gravy...well apparently the dish didn't like being on the burners and exploded into a million little glass shards all over the kitchen. Never mind the chicken drippings all over the ceiling and walls - no wonder why I never got my security deposit back at that apartment.

myrosiedog · 09-06-2008, 06:16 PM

My mom who was a very good cook, decided to make stuffed shells. She had never made them before and she talked about this recipe for a week. My mom could BBQ anything on a grill. She could make great traditional Southern dishes, but "ethnic" food like Italian, she didn't have much experience with.

My husband and daughter and I show up for dinner on the appointed night, she pulls the shells out of the oven and they smell divine.

We go to eat them and they are crunchy. I asked my mom if she had boiled the shells first. She says: "boil them???"
Later she said that they had been really easy to stuff. I bet they were. hard pasta is probably way more easy to stuff than cooked pasta.

We teased her about that meal for years. We ate the stuffing and the sauce. They were really good. The shells? We tried to add water to the sauce in the baking pan and cover with foil to see if we could get them done, but it didn't really work.

Lil Bit · 09-06-2008, 09:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by livin4reality

Of course the first turkey I ever roasted I left the giblet sack in. Isn't that a rite of passage or something?

I did the same thing when I first got married, and a few years ago my daughter had us over for Thanksgiving and did it too? I teased her about it for a couple of hours before I admitted that it was becoming a family tradition because I had done the same thing!

doxie · 09-07-2008, 02:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by luvsginger

Doxie, You must post that recipe in the recipe thread! (not the exploding one!)

Done!

Critical · 09-07-2008, 04:43 AM

I had a particularly bad run in with a recipe for Chicken Diane. It called for slices of lemon to be cooked with the chicken and the recipe said it would add a nice citrus-y taste to the chicken. It was so sour we couldn't eat it. We rinsed off the chicken and used it for another meal. I also remember my first attempt to make Chinese Fried Rice. I didn't realize you have to scramble the egg separately. I just dumped the egg into the skillet with the rice.

The dog was very happy that night!

My mother's cooking mishaps early in my parents' marriage are legendary. My grandmother was an incredible cook and never let anyone - including her daughter - do any cooking. When my mom married at twenty, she could barely boil water. My father still teases her about the raw fried chicken - it looked perfect on the outside! - and the ill-advised Hamburger Pizza Incident. Luckily, she turned into a great cook in her own right and, yes, she did teach me.

I had a boyfriend whose mother made German Chocolate Cake for everyone's birthday. Probably every third time, she did something wrong. One year, she left the toothpicks in that she used to stabilize the layers. Another year, she forgot to remove the waxed paper before she assembled the cake and frosted it. It made cutting the cake a little difficult!

iguanachocolate · 09-08-2008, 12:58 PM

i was staying with an English friend and whilst she was at work, I thought I'd make dinner. I knew she loved mac and cheese, so I thought, cool, that's easy enough. At that time, I'd only ever had it out of the box or the way my mom made it by layering American cheese and macaroni in a dish and baking it. Well, over there they don't really have american cheese nor could I find boxed mac 'n cheese, so I thought, well it's got to be easy enough, just mix cheese and milk and pour it over the noodles. Ooops. I ended up with some kind of congealed mass that I tried to save by adding more milk - then more cheese - you get the picture. My friend came home and laughed at the lump I had created and I walked up to the corner to get fish and chips.

Oh, and then there was the time that I thought I'd make an apple pie and didn't realize that pie apples over there are most often braeburn apples which are very, vert tart and require a lot more sugar than we traditionally put in our apple pies.... that was a rude ending to Thanksgiving!

PGM35 · 09-08-2008, 07:12 PM

I remember trying to marinade meat for broiling. I soaked some really thin pieces of steak in a marinade of soy sauce and spices. Well, dinner was delayed that night for some reason or other and the meat stayed soaking much longer than planned. I ended up cooking the steaks and they were like jerkey! Mike still reminds me of that incident. It was early in our relationship.

09-06-2008, 02:48 PM	#11
veejer Waiting for Wylie... Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: ...the Walleye to drop in Port Clinton, Ohio Posts: 3,038	Re: I'm not a bad cook... Really! I was baking potatoes once and must have gotten distracted and forgotten to pierce them with a fork. They exploded in the oven and coated the inside of it with itty, bitty, bits of potato. Fortunately no company was involved. My MIL must have been away one time without my FIL, because we had just him over to dinner for beef strogonoff. The strogonoff was fine but I didn't double the water for the rice (something I knew perfectly well how to do!!!!) and it was crunchy!!!! Early on in our marriage we had mr. veejer's grandparents over for dessert. I don't remember what else we had, but I wanted the cookies to be really fresh, so I had a pan all ready to pop in the oven when the doorbell rang. When they were done, I tripped while holding the pan and they all went on the kitchen floor. I was in tears, but mr. veejer simply picked up the unbroken ones and served them anyway to his grandparents in the other room!!! Another time, I was doing turkey for Thankgiving and turned on the oven light to see if it was brown enough to be covered. Instead of turning off the light, I turned off the oven (the switches are right next to each other) and didn't notice it for about 45 minutes. Dinner was a little late and nobody got food poisoning. __________________ Check out the madness at: http://www.walleyemadness.com/

09-06-2008, 03:54 PM	#12
livin4reality smooshy face! Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: jayhawk land Posts: 1,763	Re: I'm not a bad cook... Really! There was the time I sprayed the muffin pan with oven cleaner instead of Pam. We thought the muffins tasted odd and smelled strange, but ate them anyway (and didn't get sick!). Of course the first turkey I ever roasted I left the giblet sack in. Isn't that a rite of passage or something? This past week I cooked rigatoni. I pride myself on being able to tell when pasta is done by how it looks. It was slightly crunchy. __________________ "The food I encountered every time we went to eat at someone else's house instilled a deep and insurmountable neurosis regarding what horror I might encounter at an unfamiliar dinner table. I still tense up just thinking about the assorted lard infused or boiled to mush atrocities doled out by the Shakespearean-quality trio of Cockney belles." __________________

09-06-2008, 05:57 PM	#14
waywyrd dazed and confused Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: South Carolina Posts: 9,964	Re: I'm not a bad cook... Really! I love these stories. Ages ago when I was learning to cook, I roasted a chicken in a glass baking dish. When it was done I put the chicken on a serving platter and set the glass dish on top of the stove burners to make gravy...well apparently the dish didn't like being on the burners and exploded into a million little glass shards all over the kitchen. Never mind the chicken drippings all over the ceiling and walls - no wonder why I never got my security deposit back at that apartment. __________________ If you won't talk to your cat about catnip, who will?

09-06-2008, 06:16 PM	#15
myrosiedog FORT Fogey Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Nat'l Championship bowl bound. Go Gators! Age: 46 Posts: 12,060 Blog Entries: 7	Re: I'm not a bad cook... Really! My mom who was a very good cook, decided to make stuffed shells. She had never made them before and she talked about this recipe for a week. My mom could BBQ anything on a grill. She could make great traditional Southern dishes, but "ethnic" food like Italian, she didn't have much experience with. My husband and daughter and I show up for dinner on the appointed night, she pulls the shells out of the oven and they smell divine. We go to eat them and they are crunchy. I asked my mom if she had boiled the shells first. She says: "boil them???" Later she said that they had been really easy to stuff. I bet they were. hard pasta is probably way more easy to stuff than cooked pasta. We teased her about that meal for years. We ate the stuffing and the sauce. They were really good. The shells? We tried to add water to the sauce in the baking pan and cover with foil to see if we could get them done, but it didn't really work. __________________ Emancipate yourself from mental slavery; none but ourselves can free our minds. - Bob Marley Que me amat, amet et canem meum (Who loves me will love my dog also)

09-07-2008, 04:43 AM	#18
Critical Bitten Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Merlotte's Bar & Grill Age: 40 Posts: 4,885	Re: I'm not a bad cook... Really! I had a particularly bad run in with a recipe for Chicken Diane. It called for slices of lemon to be cooked with the chicken and the recipe said it would add a nice citrus-y taste to the chicken. It was so sour we couldn't eat it. We rinsed off the chicken and used it for another meal. I also remember my first attempt to make Chinese Fried Rice. I didn't realize you have to scramble the egg separately. I just dumped the egg into the skillet with the rice. The dog was very happy that night! My mother's cooking mishaps early in my parents' marriage are legendary. My grandmother was an incredible cook and never let anyone - including her daughter - do any cooking. When my mom married at twenty, she could barely boil water. My father still teases her about the raw fried chicken - it looked perfect on the outside! - and the ill-advised Hamburger Pizza Incident. Luckily, she turned into a great cook in her own right and, yes, she did teach me. I had a boyfriend whose mother made German Chocolate Cake for everyone's birthday. Probably every third time, she did something wrong. One year, she left the toothpicks in that she used to stabilize the layers. Another year, she forgot to remove the waxed paper before she assembled the cake and frosted it. It made cutting the cake a little difficult! __________________ The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain

09-08-2008, 12:58 PM	#19
iguanachocolate Joyeux Noel! Join Date: Jan 2004 Posts: 3,351	Re: I'm not a bad cook... Really! i was staying with an English friend and whilst she was at work, I thought I'd make dinner. I knew she loved mac and cheese, so I thought, cool, that's easy enough. At that time, I'd only ever had it out of the box or the way my mom made it by layering American cheese and macaroni in a dish and baking it. Well, over there they don't really have american cheese nor could I find boxed mac 'n cheese, so I thought, well it's got to be easy enough, just mix cheese and milk and pour it over the noodles. Ooops. I ended up with some kind of congealed mass that I tried to save by adding more milk - then more cheese - you get the picture. My friend came home and laughed at the lump I had created and I walked up to the corner to get fish and chips. Oh, and then there was the time that I thought I'd make an apple pie and didn't realize that pie apples over there are most often braeburn apples which are very, vert tart and require a lot more sugar than we traditionally put in our apple pies.... that was a rude ending to Thanksgiving! __________________ Some people are like Slinkies. Not really good for anything... But they bring a smile to your face when pushed down the stairs.

09-08-2008, 07:12 PM	#20
PGM35 FORT Fogey Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: Round Rock, TX Age: 38 Posts: 1,492 Blog Entries: 7	Re: I'm not a bad cook... Really! I remember trying to marinade meat for broiling. I soaked some really thin pieces of steak in a marinade of soy sauce and spices. Well, dinner was delayed that night for some reason or other and the meat stayed soaking much longer than planned. I ended up cooking the steaks and they were like jerkey! Mike still reminds me of that incident. It was early in our relationship.