Oops!

Posted On April 19, 2011

Being a foodie and an accomplished cook does not come without a learning curve and its share of kitchen disasters.  I thought I’d recount today some of my favorite kitchen mishaps.

Going back to when I was a kid, I always found the kitchen a comforting place.  That was where the family gathered for morning breakfast, albeit piecemeal, as all six of us had a varied schedule, and more likely couldn’t sit all together until dinner. Before my mom went back to work, this was where she hung out when she wasn’t doing household chores or sneaking in a nap on the sofa.  I loved it because it was the sunniest room in the house in the morning.  I couldn’t wait to pull up the shades every day to let the sunshine flood the room. I was the pest on my mother’s apron strings while she was cooking and baking and getting dinner on the table for her family.

My mom went back to work when I was in second grade, and my dad was a mailman.  This worked out pretty well because my dad was able to be home roughly the same time the kids got out of school. So, dad was responsible for making sure that there was order in the house until mom got home.  Dinner was probably the most obvious thing that needed to be taken care of.  My mom lovingly wrote notes for us each day telling us what she had planned for dinner, including a recipe if necessary, until we got used to the routine and had a decent pile of food stained notes to help us get the family meal together. My self proclaimed job was to let whomever was starting supper know, “you know, that’s not how mommy does it”.  I’m sure at the time my dad or one of my sisters would probably want to slap me upside the head at that moment in time, but I always did tell them what they were doing “wrong” because I watched mom like a hawk and could actually recount exactly what she did.  Guess this is how my love of cooking developed.

Mom working probably contributed to me being an independent kid, and led me to do my own thing in the kitchen.  I’m sure there were many more disasters, but I can remember one doozy where I was trying to make a pound cake with one of my dear friends.  We were using a type of pan that is in two pieces–you insert the center piece within the walls of the pan.  This made it easier to remove the cake from the pan after it was cooked.  Making the cake itself was quite an accomplishment–I think it had something like 8 eggs and a pound of butter.  I was still in elementary school and that was a pretty big project–breaking all those eggs and working together with my friend to make such a masterpiece.  We had put the cake in the oven, and were busily trying to clean up the kitchen which was a certifiable disaster.  Mmm.  The house smelled so good while it was cooking.
Sneaking peeks through the glass door as it was nearing time to take out of the oven, we were noticing that it didn’t really look all that tall.  Hmmph.  Well, we’ll wait and see. Buzzz.  The moment of truth–it’s ready!! As we pulled it out of the oven, we could now see why the cake wasn’t so tall, the insert was crooked and at least half of the batter had seeped out and had made a mess on the oven floor.  Boy, I bet my mom was pissed about that–our oven was not self cleaning and no doubt took a lot of scrubbing, scraping and squirting with that god awful oven cleaner spray to bring it back to life again. I guess if nothing else, it may have taught me to be more careful, as I can’t easily recall any more major mishaps until I moved away from home.

My major was Hotel Management, and one of the classes required you to work in the kitchen to prepare and run a dinner meal for a room full of patrons.  On one particular day, I was one of the worker bees taking care of some cooking prep duties when my professor started screaming, “BARB-A-RAAAAAAA!!”…hmm, what on earth had I done? Apparently I had nearly set the kitchen on fire as I had not completely lowered the elements into the cooking oil, and the residual oil on the elements that were exposed, started to smoke and engulfed the whole kitchen in a choking grey fog.  Took me a while to live that one down…

Wanting to break in my new apartment and hone my entertaining skills, I had invited some friends for dinner.  Chicken on the grill was on the menu for the evening.  Although at this point I had decent cooking skills, I had only recently purchased a grill to put on my patio, and was still learning the nuances of this new tool.  I had just sat down to have a drink and relax while the chicken was cooking, when one of my friends noticed some flames lapping out of the sides of my grill.  Guess that’s not how you cook chicken on the grill. Yikes!  Who knew just how easy it could be to set your food on fire?  Luckily, one of my friends was a seasoned grill chef, and doused the flames without too much collateral damage.

Kitchen disasters don’t always technically involve cooking.  I was living in Hilton Head at the time, and one of my aunts had a condo near my apartment.  This was great as I often saw family and this gave me a slice of home even though I was so far away.  I had invited my aunt and some cousins over for dinner.  We were having simple fair–burgers I believe.  I had just finished cooking the burgers and was getting ready to put the buns out for all, when my aunt noticed that my cats had decided that they wanted the buns for dinner too.  They had eaten into the packages and resulted in us having our burgers on slices of bread instead.  How embarrassing.

Even as I got married and was cooking for my own family, I still managed to pull a few zingers as well.  I clearly remember that as I was proudly eating a slice of my son’s first birthday cake with some friends,and as I bit into the cake it was clearly apparent that I had done something not quite right.  Then it dawned on me that I had only put in half the sugar required for the recipe.  Aha!! That’s why it was so flat.  Thank god my boy will not likely remember this disaster–and thankfully, vanilla ice cream can cover up a whole lot of missing sugar!

Timmy was not a child that went down easily, and I was still in that exhausted mommy phase from waking up in the middle of the night to feed him.  It had taken what seemed like forever to put Timmy to sleep, and I had just put a pot of water on for tea–without the whistle shut as there’s no way I wanted him to be awakened by the shrill noise of the tea kettle.  I was just thinking to myself, man that stupid pot is taking forever to boil–when I was startled out of my sleep by my husband running by me.  I look over to see this orange glow emanating from the kitchen.  I rushed in to investigate and the whole range was awash in flames.  Tom and I both spoke calmly in some kind of emergency code:  electrical, no water!  Baking soda–too big!  Fire extinguisher–garage!  All that took place in a matter of seconds, and Tom was able to quickly put out the fire before it spread. Apparently, the water was boiling so long that it melted the plastic whistle, which dripped underneath the elements, which had also melted the candle that was one stove- poof! the hot plastic had ignited the melted wax. Thank god we had one of those old fashioned one piece units with the microwave and the oven in one piece with an enamel backsplash, or it could have been much worse. At least I got a new stove and microwave out of the deal.

So, even the best of us can certainly recount a little snafu every now and then.  I’d love to hear what memorable mishaps you’ve had so that I don’t feel quite so bad….