topic Re: THAT Kitchen Disaster That Stands Out In Your Mind? in Kitchen

THAT Kitchen Disaster That Stands Out In Your Mind?

ECBG — Fri, 22 May 2020 01:57:03 GMT

Is there a time you made something or did something that you look back on and think "HOW did I do THAT?"?????

When we were barely married, I made Baked Alaska for my dad and step mother who were visiting from 3 hours away.

I knew the end product I wanted. I don't know where I found out about that dessert.

I got all the ingredients, and had just put everything together, but didn't think to bake the pie shell first since I hadn't actually had Baked Alaska until the merengue on the ice cream pie came out of the oven!!!!

So, we had ice cream, merengue, chocolate sauce, a cherry, and raw pastry!!!!

Re: THAT Kitchen Disaster That Stands Out In Your Mind?

NVmimi — Fri, 22 May 2020 02:05:06 GMT

Newlywed, first time making gravy was so lumpy that I used my hand mixer to make it smooth...it worked, ha!!

Re: THAT Kitchen Disaster That Stands Out In Your Mind?

cindyNC — Fri, 22 May 2020 02:09:27 GMT

I decided to try a meatless meatloaf w/ground vegetables. It was awful. LOL

Re: THAT Kitchen Disaster That Stands Out In Your Mind?

on the bay — Fri, 22 May 2020 02:32:54 GMT

@ECBG -

The worst I ever made was a gluten free tuna noodle casserole I was making for my sister.

How perfectly awful it was, really inedible!

It was the thought that counts lol?!

Re: THAT Kitchen Disaster That Stands Out In Your Mind?

GenXmuse — Fri, 22 May 2020 02:23:14 GMT

I had prepared lasagna for my boyfriend and when I pulled it out I dropped it onto the oven door, destroying both the meal and the door in the process. Needless to say, it wasn't meant to be

Re: THAT Kitchen Disaster That Stands Out In Your Mind?

jeanlake — Fri, 22 May 2020 02:27:14 GMT

The first five years of marriage, I made an ample supply of pumpkin rolls from scratch during holidays and freezed them. I did it because hubs loved his mom's pumpkin rolls and liked taking the rolls to holiday work events.

Have you ever made pumpkin rolls? What a mess! Especially in a small kitchen. The clean up took forever and the rolls took up too much room in the fridge freezer.

The last year I made the rolls I was so tired during the clean up. I had to get up early for work the next morning. I was crying and hubs was in bed. Then it hit me -- MIL was a stay-at-home mom and had a big kitchen and all the time in the world. Plus, hubs wanted those *&^%# rolls but didn't know his way around a kitchen or kitchen sink. I declared the next morning that was the last year I made pumpkin rolls. He shrugged and said ... okay.

Lesson learned.

Re: THAT Kitchen Disaster That Stands Out In Your Mind?

denisemb — Fri, 22 May 2020 02:31:13 GMT

Carmelizing sugar for flan.

DH's mother came from Spain. Thought I could handle this as I baked from scratch (including pie crusts).

Used ever pot, pan, skillet owned...even threw some out as they couldn't be cleaned. DH came home from work and got it right the 1st time.

Re: THAT Kitchen Disaster That Stands Out In Your Mind?

aubnwa01 — Fri, 22 May 2020 02:41:38 GMT

I was making a big pot of split pea & ham soup in the largest saucepan in a set of old Lo-Heet cookeware that my mom had for many, many years that still had a handle on it. As I was lifting the full pot of soup off of the stove, the handle broke & spilled pea soup all over the top of our gas range & it leaked down thru the burners & into the oven. It took hours to clean the top of the stove, the burner assemblies & the oven & had to find something else to have for dinner. A few years later, I had the kitchen remodelled & there was still soup on the sides of the stove between the cabinets when they pulled the big old double oven type range out to do the remodel.

The very next day after the great soup disaster, I went out to the Bon Marche & bought a new set of Belgique stainless steel cookware with riveted handles!

Re: THAT Kitchen Disaster That Stands Out In Your Mind?

ECBG — Fri, 22 May 2020 03:35:59 GMT

@aubnwa01 wrote:
I was making a big pot of split pea & ham soup in the largest saucepan in a set of old Lo-Heet cookeware that my mom had for many, many years that still had a handle on it. As I was lifting the full pot of soup off of the stove, the handle broke & spilled pea soup all over the top of our gas range & it leaked down thru the burners & into the oven. It took hours to clean the top of the stove, the burner assemblies & the oven & had to find something else to have for dinner. A few years later, I had the kitchen remodelled & there was still soup on the sides of the stove between the cabinets when they pulled the big old double oven type range out to do the remodel.

The very next day after the great soup disaster, I went out to the Bon Marche & bought a new set of Belgique stainless steel cookware with riveted handles!

@aubnwa01 You gave me chills!!! It is a miracle that you weren't terribly scalded! Your angel was there with you that day!

Re: THAT Kitchen Disaster That Stands Out In Your Mind?

Carmie — Fri, 22 May 2020 04:00:15 GMT

I have quite a few that stick out in my mind.

When I was a teenager, I decided to make a sausage sandwich. The grease from the pan caught on fire. The flame got really high and I panicked and threw a glass of water on it. The grease exploded all over our newly remodeled kitchen with custom made cabinets. It ruined the walls too. I thought my mother would ground me forever. To add insult to injury, it was on Good Friday when as a Catholic, it is forbidden to eat meat. I forgot.

The next time was in the 1980's when I stored paper bags in the oven in the broiler pan. Needless to say, the bags caught on fire and my small kitchen filled up with black smoke. My eyes were burning and I couldn't see and got disoriented and could find my way out of the kitchen. I had the pan with flames in my hands and finally found the kitchen sink and turned the water on and extinguished the flames before I burned down my house. I honestly thought I was going to die from smoke inhalation that time. It was scary.

Another time, also in the 80's, I placed a small pan of water with a few eggs in it to boil and forgot about it. The water cooked out of the pan. When I noticed, I picked up the pan and attempted to take it to the sink. The eggs exploded into my face when I moved the pan. My eyelids and my cheeks were burnt from the hot yolks.

When my now 15 year old granddaughter was around two or three, She wrapped herself in a blanket and was laying on my kitchen floor. I never saw her and was carrying a large platter of fried chicken to the table and ran into her. She caused me to fall. I didn't want to land on her or burn her with the hot chicken, so somehow I threw the platter away from us. I had splintered glass and greasy chicken all over the kitchen. Luckily, neither one of us got hurt.

There's more too. I think I have spent more than half of my life in the kitchen.

Re: THAT Kitchen Disaster That Stands Out In Your Mind?

denisemb — Fri, 22 May 2020 05:18:05 GMT

@Carmie

I think you win.

Glad you're still around to talk about it.

Re: THAT Kitchen Disaster That Stands Out In Your Mind?

aubnwa01 — Fri, 22 May 2020 06:13:41 GMT

@ECBG wrote:
@aubnwa01 wrote:
I was making a big pot of split pea & ham soup in the largest saucepan in a set of old Lo-Heet cookeware that my mom had for many, many years that still had a handle on it. As I was lifting the full pot of soup off of the stove, the handle broke & spilled pea soup all over the top of our gas range & it leaked down thru the burners & into the oven. It took hours to clean the top of the stove, the burner assemblies & the oven & had to find something else to have for dinner. A few years later, I had the kitchen remodelled & there was still soup on the sides of the stove between the cabinets when they pulled the big old double oven type range out to do the remodel.

The very next day after the great soup disaster, I went out to the Bon Marche & bought a new set of Belgique stainless steel cookware with riveted handles!

@aubnwa01 You gave me chills!!! It is a miracle that you weren't terribly scalded! Your angel was there with you that day!

@ECBG When the handle on the big saucepan snapped, it tipped the hot pan of soup towards the back on the range instead of towards me, plus this was in the 1980's & I was a lot younger & faster than I am now! I was mostly mad because I'd tasted the soup with a spoon just before I took it off of the burner & it was really good &I was looking forward to a big bowl with some hot crusty sourdough bread with butter on it to go with that soup!

Re: THAT Kitchen Disaster That Stands Out In Your Mind?

beach-mom — Fri, 22 May 2020 06:25:43 GMT

DH and I were newly married, had just relocated, and I was having "the wives" of his veterinary group over for brunch. I was teaching full time and I had met only one of them.

We don't drink coffee so I borrowed my mom's percolator. I used a magazine insert in the Sunday paper to make "the perfect brunch." I was serving punch, a casserole, a fruit bowl, and homemade strawberry bread with strawberry butter.

The first guest arrived and I went to pour her coffee. I don't know what I did, but water with a few brown spots came out. She remade it and everything was fine. . . for a while. They liked the punch. I had more in a Tupperware container in the refrigerator. I went to refill the punch bowl. The top came off and landed in the bowl, and punch and ice splattered everywhere, including on some of the women's clothes. Then a well-meaning guest told me she would help me with the casserole. She took it from the oven in my small kitchen, dropped it, and the lid went sliding across the floor landing at the feet of the senior veterinarian's wife. I had another one made, so I put that in the oven to reheat and cleaned up.

Everyone was so nice and helped me. They all laughed about it. I was mortified. After everyone left I sat and cried.

They all forgave me. . . I think!

Re: THAT Kitchen Disaster That Stands Out In Your Mind?

godi — Fri, 22 May 2020 10:23:34 GMT

My first Thanksgiving for family, I made my first pumpkin pies and put a sheet pan in oven to catch spills, I set the two pies on the pan and closed oven door. About 20 minutes later I heard a boooiing and I looked in oven that sheet pan buckled and my pie filling was all over the bottom of the oven! Oh this don't end here..... so I clean that mess up. Put turkey in oven. I always make stuffing on side. I get everything else together. My sister brought dessert. All she could get was frozen apple pies she baked at her house before she came over. We all sit to eat and everyone is laughing over pie debacle and my Dad says pass the stuffing.
It's still in the fridge uncooked. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Needless to say I'm am a lot better at this holiday game now.
I love all these stories. It's how we learn and great memories. ❤️

Re: THAT Kitchen Disaster That Stands Out In Your Mind?

customerqvc2 — Sun, 24 May 2020 10:34:39 GMT

I bought an upscale gas stove for my new kitchen in my new house. When I had had it a little while, I used the self clean feature on the upper oven. A few days later, I went to take something out of that upper oven and the door seemed a bit hard to close. I didn't think too much about it. Days later, I discovered that the latch that keeps the door closed during the self clean cycle was not lined up anymore and had made a dime sized hole in the porcelain on the door when it closed that first time That's why it was hard to close! I had the door replaced, but I have been unsure about using the self clean cycle ever since.

Re: THAT Kitchen Disaster That Stands Out In Your Mind?

CrazyKittyLvr2 — Fri, 22 May 2020 15:24:19 GMT

Many years ago I watched a show where they melted the colored discs and painted it on balloons. When cooled pop the balloon and fill the chocolate shell with Easter grass and candy.

I got a wild hair that I could do it. Easy, right. Yep, until for some reason my freshly painted balloons starting popping.

I had pink and yellow chocolate in my hair, on my glasses, the counters and up the cabinets.

My son came through the kitchen, took one look at my pink and yellow speckled cabinets and said "I would have used paint" and kept on going.

Clean up was not fun.

Re: THAT Kitchen Disaster That Stands Out In Your Mind?

house_cat — Fri, 22 May 2020 15:48:22 GMT

I was married about 7 years when we bought our first house. By that time, I had become a decent cook. Things rolled along smoothly for a while, I even got used to an electric oven, after using gas up until that time.

Suddenly I began having one baking or cooking fail after the other. The disasters were countless and went on for months. My house was the gathering place for extended family, so the fails did not go unnoticed. I was totally turned off and started to hate the thought of cooking.

My kids were small then, about eye level to the oven. One of them was peeking through the glass and said, "Mommy, the light's not on in the oven." I turned on the oven light and he said, "It didn't come on." Well, the oven light was clearly on.. the light he was referring to was the heating element at the top of the oven. It wasn't glowing red, because it wasn't heating up. All those months I was baking with only the bottom heat working, and it took a three year old to figure it out.

Re: THAT Kitchen Disaster That Stands Out In Your Mind?

msgb — Sat, 23 May 2020 03:15:26 GMT

The meal I made that turned out awful was our first Valentine's Day married. I made chicken limone. Lemon chicken. I had made it many times. I grew up in a large family so making dinner not so hard. Well this time I guess I got a bit aggressive in the lemon department. My husband took a bite and said it was fine. Then I took a bite--OMG talk about tart. We now refer to it as Pucker Chicken. We went on to have rice and peas and then some dessert but I have not had the guts to make that meal again. That was 22 yrs ago and we both still remember that.

There have been other things but none so bad as that. Because I had come home from work early and bought all the ingredients. Oh well. We laugh about it now.

Re: THAT Kitchen Disaster That Stands Out In Your Mind?

Toppers3 — Sun, 24 May 2020 18:33:17 GMT

I have two episodes that stand out for me:

I was reheating some leftover potatoes in the microwave.

At the time, I guess that I had forgotten that when you do so, you're supposed to not only do it carefully, but you should also reheat them on reduced power.

The reason for that is so that they don't explode all over when reheating.

Well, for whatever the reason, I had forgotten about reducing the power in the microwave.

I had covered the bowl of potatoes while they were heating up. I went to take the potatoes out of the oven, and had removed the cover on them so that I could get a better grasp on the bowl with some pot holders.

As soon as I did that, no sooner was I hit right in the middle of my forehead with a flying piece of hot potato!! Boy, did that hurt!

It had exploded onto my forehead, with little pieces flying as it hit my head!

I had a red scar there for awhile, before it faded!

I can laugh about it now, but it was quite scary at the time.

As for my next experience, to this day, I still have no idea how this happened...

I decided to make some condensed canned soup for lunch one day.

I was opening up the can in our kitchen, when all of a sudden, the can just seemed to explode when I was opening it!

Soup went spraying all over the kitchen ceiling, all over the kitchen cabinets, the floor--everywhere.

It was a huge mess, and to top it off, it was condensed Chicken and Rice soup, so you can imagine the mess all of those small pieces of rice made!

Edited to add: This happened years ago, when you had to use some kind of a can opener to open the can, and before we had the pop-top lids like we have on so many cans now.

Re: THAT Kitchen Disaster That Stands Out In Your Mind?

candys mine — Sun, 24 May 2020 19:17:34 GMT

That kitchen disister in My mind was a Kitchen Triumph in my SO's. His first atempt at baking. Bought all the ingredients himself to suprise me. I baked all the time so how hard could it be right? WELL, Ya know those sitcoms where the guy makes a shambles of the kitchen whilst cooking? Yeah, THAT. But the expression on his face and the ....."But it Made WHOLE DOZEN!!" chocolate cupcakes WITH frosting And Cinnamon hearts. Never will forget it....Don't want to either.