I'm not a bad cook... Really!

[VelvetRed]

RevereWare makes a nice thingie for poached eggs. It sits on top of one of their frying pans and has individual removable metal cups for each egg. You put water in the pan and basically steam the eggs (with the lid on).

Then again, they may not make it anymore. Something to look for at garage sales, maybe.

[Google]

 

[Gala62]

I'm a firm believer that every good cook has more than his/her share of disasters (at least that's my theory to cover some of mine!).

One memorable one was when I was around13 or so. I loved to bake and had quickly graduated from my beloved Easy Bake to the real thing. It was summer and all the neighbor kids were bored and hungry (what else is new?). I decided to bake a cake to feed my friends. Only we didn't have any cake mixes on hand. No problem, I could bake one from scratch, I had done it many times already. Well, except this time, there wasn't enough flour. NO problem! I'll just use pancake mix to make up the difference!

Well its taking longer to bake than it should but eventually it come out looking ok. But wait! as it cools, the dense cake collapses in the center forming something resembling a crater. Well it's still cake after all, just needs to be iced.

Confectioner's sugar, but juuust enough. OOPS! dang! too much milk in the frosting, a little bit runny. Hmmm....I thought we had more food coloring that this old blue. oh well.

I can just pour it over the cake (which now weighs 10 lbs and resembles a manhole cover) and we'll call it a "glaze".
Oh...it's all pooling in the center and looks rather bilious.

Do my friends care? Heck no! they laugh, I take a picture, and it is devoured in minutes!

And I go on to be a baker and cake decorator for several years -

[Rattus]

Okay, I am a bad cook but I still have two tales that stand out.

One evening shortly after I had moved out on my own, I was broiling some fish and boiling some vegetables (I can't believe I ever boiled vegetables) for dinner, when the landlord entered my apartment along with a neighbour. It seems that they thought someone had died and was, well, rotting in my home. I still ate the fish and veg.

Many years later, we had people over for dinner, which was to be an Indian feast. I decided to deep fry some samosas, and as I had never deep fried anything in my life (and have not done so since), it seems that I had no idea what to turn the burner up to. So the pot of oil caught on fire and I, of course, freaked and grabbed the pot off the stove, which led to further freaking and my putting the pot on the linoleum floor to consider what I actually should have been doing. Needless to say, burning oil will melt through lino and cause a cloud of toxic gas to form. Apparently we were all young, stupid, drunk or all three, because we commenced chowing down on the feast all the while inhaling the poisonous fumes.

[doxie]

Originally Posted by Rattus

Okay, I am a bad cook but I still have two tales that stand out.

One evening shortly after I had moved out on my own, I was broiling some fish and boiling some vegetables (I can't believe I ever boiled vegetables) for dinner, when the landlord entered my apartment along with a neighbour. It seems that they thought someone had died and was, well, rotting in my home. I still ate the fish and veg.

Many years later, we had people over for dinner, which was to be an Indian feast. I decided to deep fry some samosas, and as I had never deep fried anything in my life (and have not done so since), it seems that I had no idea what to turn the burner up to. So the pot of oil caught on fire and I, of course, freaked and grabbed the pot off the stove, which led to further freaking and my putting the pot on the linoleum floor to consider what I actually should have been doing. Needless to say, burning oil will melt through lino and cause a cloud of toxic gas to form. Apparently we were all young, stupid, drunk or all three, because we commenced chowing down on the feast all the while inhaling the poisonous fumes.

That is hilarious! I did almost the same thing shortly after I graduated from college and moved into my first apartment. I'd grown up watching my grandmothers/great-aunts and mom fry stuff in their cast iron skillets. I decided to make Fried Green Tomatos in a cheapo-non-castiron skillet. To this day, I am not sure went wrong, but there was a LOT of smoke and I ended up racing outside to the dumpster and tossing the flaming.smoking pan in there while my neighbors all laughed. NOW I have mastered fried foods - lol - but that was my first attmept.

[misskitty]

I burned a salad. Really.

And I recently burned pancakes that I was making for my sweetie. But it was HIS fault. It was my birthday and he was supposed to make the pancakes, but he was so comfortable reading the newspaper with the kitties that I went ahead. The heat was too high and I wasn't paying attention. So much for the nicely cooked apple, brown sugar and whipped cream on top. Couldn't save those pancakes....

Oh, and I tried cooking some frozen potstickers in a bit of oil in my frying pan one day. The whole darn thing went up into flames and I just freaked! I took it off the burner, but just stood there, watching it burn and smoke. I was afraid to put the pan in the sink and knew if I put the water on it it would flare up. I couldn't reach a lid to put on top to keep the smoke from setting off the smoke detector which went off sending the kitties scrambling for safety. I thought of running out the back door and dumping it onto the lawn or something but thought it would catch on a curtain or scarf of something and the entire house would go up in flames! So I just stood there, frozen, holding this burning pan of potstickers until it stopped. I've never tried to make them since.

Oh, and I have on at least two occasions lit a fire in the fireplace not knowing the flu was closed causing my entire house to fill with smoke, alarms blaring and me picking up the firelog with oven mitts and throwing it out the front door into the middle of the snow covered lawn. Verrrrrry embarrasing! Especially when my date would show up just then as I'm choking and waving a tea towel around to get the smoke out of the house.

I have recently bought a small fire extinguisher for the kitchen. And I never close the fireplace flu.

[myrosiedog]

Baking soda thrown on a grease fire will put it out.

And I've done the fireplace thing several times. Always a joy.

[livin4reality]

misskitty- I was frying some wontons one day and the oil caught on fire. Being a young cook (21 or so) I immediatly grabbed the fire extinguisher. Of course oil and foam went EVERYWHERE. I got burned (not seriously) and had a very large mess in the kitchen.

And I too have left the flue closed on the fireplace and lit a fire. Noting like that feeling of house filling with smoke, running out of oxygen, and trying to get the flue open.

[brierpatch]

My husband tells a story of the time he tried to make a pumpkin pie starting with a pumpkin. He spent a lot of time preparing the pumpkin mash, and then the pie. He was very proud of his pie when he brought it to his grandmothers house for Thanksgiving. When dessert time came around, she took one bite and spit it out, and asked what kind of pumpkin he used. Of course, he had no idea that not all pumpkins are the same...which might explain why he tells me how stringy the mash was. At any rate, his grandmother told him that he must have used a cow pumpkin instead of a pie pumpkin, and that the result was that he made cow pie.

[Keymaster]

LOL @ cow pie!

One time I was making gravy to go with our turkey (it wasn't Thanksgiving), and near the end, I was adding corn starch mixed with water to thicken it, but it just would NOT thicken. I added about 1/2 a cup cornstarch at first, then another 1/2 cup, and another, and the consistency barely changed. I finally gave up, served my runny gravy, and after the first bite realized my mistake. The corn starch was powdered sugar.

[queenb]

Did you know that a cake will come out only about alf as tall as it should be if you find the eggs still on the counter five minues after you start baking, andpull it out of the oven, dump it back in the mixing bowl, add the eggs and begin baking all over again? Or that a whole chicken left in a 350 degree oven all night long while you are at work will turn into a Cornish Hen made out of charcoal?
My very worst thing happened when I was about 22, and wasn't really a cooking disaster but a drinking accident that happened in the kitcen. I had gone to the grocery store, and failed to put up my groceries as I was in a hurry to drink MORE beer with my friends. I left the grocery bags on the kitchen counter and made myself an agg sandwich for lunch, but forgot to turn off the stove eye. Appaently, one of the bags caught fire, and the groceries fell out onto the eye and burnt so long and so hot that a large can of peaches in heavy syrup cooked in the can, exploded, and plastered mostly the ceiling but also the stove and floor with a cooked peach mess that hardened like a rock, once it cooled off.
Don't worry, I no longer ever sit around drinking all day long, or even to the point that I see more than one of things.