Conference turris::cooks

        Not cooking, but food-related:
        
        There was an Italian restaurant (actually a tavern) where we
        occasionally bought take-out food to bring home. They packed the
        food in covered cylindrical cardboard containers, like ice cream
        packages, you know?
        
        Anyway, in the case of spaghetti, they'd put the spaghetti in the
        container, ladle the sauce on top, and plop the meatballs on the
        ultimate top. When you got home you'd pop the cover off and
        up-end the container into your plate. With the meatballs on the
        bottom, then the sauce, then the naked spaghetti on top. This
        troubled me. 
        
        So, one night, faced with this perceived problem, I placed a
        second plate on top of the spaghetti-sauce-meatballs sequence,
        sort of like spaghetti'n'sauce-in-the-shell. I picked up both
        plates and flipped them over; the dish would be upright!
        
        No, the plates slipped apart during the process, the contents
        slithered out, and the whole mess ended up precisely in my lap.
        My mother and sister, audience to this debacle, were
        tear-drenched; beside themselves;  rather unsympathetic, to say
        the least.
        
        Naked spaghetti isn't all that bad now.

    Here are some "cooking" disasters that came readily to my mind.
     The worst ones are probably still blocked from my memory:
    
    l.  I had a beautiful buffet table all set up with the food arranged
    just so.  At the last minute, my cat jumped up on the table and
    landed with front paws into the gelatin dessert.  Only my mother
    and I were there at the time.  She grabbed some whipped cream and
    covered the tracks.  Needless to say, neither one of us ate any!
    
    2.  When I was first married and new to cooking, there was a time
    when my husband was rushing around to get to night school.  In my
    haste, I didn't drain the spaghetti very well and as I hurriedly
    handed him the plate, the spaghetti very nicely slid off the plate
    onto the floor.  Fortunately we laughed over this one.
    
    3.  Same husband.  As newlyweds, we had his parents and my parents
    over.  Seems I had forgotten the cream for the coffee.  He was so
    angry, that he kicked me in the leg (I was a couple of months
    pregnant).  I started screaming and both sets of parents came in
    and tried talking to he and I separately.  When things quieted down,
    I went to serve a chocolate cream pie.  It fell onto the floor and
    my husband scooped it up in the dustpan.  Everyone felt so sorry
    for me, that they cleaned off the top and ate it anyway!
    
    4.  I once had some good friends over and tried out a new recipe
    for peanut butter pie.  Obviously, I didn't do something right,
    cause it never solidified.  My friends, like the parents in the
    above example, felt sorry for me, so we all grabbed spoons and ate
    from the pie plate.
                                       
    
    They're all funny now, but at the time, aaarrrrrggggghhhhh!!!

    One year at Christmas, my sister (who never cooks) fixed a pecan
    pie.  This pie looked WONDERFUL and she had a hard time convincing
    us that she had actually made it herself.  Everyone could hardly
    wait to dig into the pie after dinner, so my mother got the pie
    and the dessert plates out and preceeded to cut the pie.  This was
    when we were convinced that my sister had REALLY baked this pie.
    Evidently she had used the ready-made pie crust (the ones that are
    seperated by wax paper) and had forgotten to take the paper out
    of the shell!!  There was a layer of the gooey pecan filling, a
    layer of paper and the pie shell.  That was very hilarous to the
    rest of us.........

    
    I have never had any real disasters, but here is one that my mom
    had as a newly wed.
    
    She decided to cook lobsters as a surprise for there 1 month
    anniversary, but had never cooked them before and didn't know that
    they had to be plunged into boiling water.  She put them into a
    pot of cold water and set it on the stove to cook, the lobsters,
    upon feeling the water heating up quickly abandoned the pot. Back
    then, 60+ years ago, the claws weren't pegged, so now she had these
    very alert lobsters running aroung the kitchen floor snapping at
    anything in sight. My mom was standing on a chair screaming for
    her life when my dad came home. 
                                                               
    

    
    I had spent all Saturday preparing chicken stock for a soup I was
    making to bring to my friend who was sick.  I was all set to strain
    the stock and put it in the fridge overnight, and I would make the
    soup the next day.  It was about 11:30 at night and I was tired
    but proud.  I took the huge pot off the stove and carried it to
    the sink and poured the contents into the collander.  I walked away
    for about 15 minutes to allow the stock flavorings to drain.  When I came
    back into the kitchen, to my dismay I realized that I had not put
    a bowl under the collander.  All of the stock was gone down the
    drain!  I have never been so frustrated!

    
    I was preparing the typical chinese meal at our house and was heating
    up the oil in the wok while slicing and dicing the ingredients.  After
    a while my nostrils started stinging from the smell of something I
    couldn't quite figure out.  I searched around the kitchen for the smell
    and then my memory kicked in and I realized I must have cooked all the
    oil out of the wok.  Rather than turning off the heat and letting it
    cool down, I took the direct approach and took the cover off the wok.
    The necessary chemical reaction took place and the wok burst into
    flames, across the front of the cabinets and to the ceiling.  Being
    even more brilliant, I proceeded to scream and throw the wok cover on
    the floor.  Luckily my SO was there to put the fire out. 
    
    Amazingly enough only the plastic trim on the range melted, I was able
    to wash away the black stain up the wall, under the range, along the
    cabinets...  We now have one very darkly seasoned wok!
     
    

    This isn't a disaster, but it was pretty funny at the time.
    
    My mom, (who I refer to as 'airhead') was slaving away in the kitchen
    making pies for company.  So she's all set to cook them, turns the
    oven on and sets the timer and away she goes to clean the house
    or whatever.  Ding! the timer goes off and mom checks the oven for
    the pie.  No pie. Looks up, there it is sitting on the counter waiting
    to be popped in the oven. Cracked me up.
    
    This is the same woman that used to take Dad's coffee cup insisting
    it was hers.  When in actuality, hers was still in the microwave
    after having been heated up.  (Now, whenever she can't find her
    cup, we look in the microwave, believe, me, more than once, it's
    been there!)

My disasters are always at Thanksgiving so now I go to my mother-in-law's
    house.
    
    I once had a terrible toothache the day before turkey day.  And
    I had to make an old fashioned English style plum pudding with suet
    spices, currents etc.  So I put it on to steam and went to the dentist
    in agonies.  Came home and after six hours on the stove, I opened
    it up and discovered steamed layers of suet, flour, currents etc,
    etc.  It helps to stir things before you cook them.  So I stirred
    them and cooked them another six hours.
    
    Another time I had no pie pan and did have company coming for
    Thanksgiving.   So I made a double pie crust and put it in a big
    castiron skillet and used up six pounds of pumpkin to fill it. 
    Part way through cooking I pulled the rack out from the oven to
    test the pie and found out that there were no stops on the rack
    to prevent tipping.  So of course the rack tipped, the ten pounds
    of hot iron skillet, crust and pumpkin slid down, off onto the oven
    door, dropped to the floor and bounced upside down while I was dodging
    as fast as I could in my bare feet.  It looked like a cow had been
    visiting my kitchen.  I laughed so hard that I could hardly clean
    it up.

One of my favorite foods in the world is Moravian Sugar Cake.  For those of
you who have never tasted it, it's a dense bread into which holes are poked
with the fingers before baking, and those holes are filled with very large
amounts of butter and brown sugar.  It's absolutely delectable!  Many years
ago I decided to try and make it myself.  I found a recipe that was very
clear on all instructions except one thing:  what size pan to cook it in.
Well, I made it up (lots of trouble to make) and guessed at the pan size. I
let it rise just a little bit before putting it into the oven, like the
directions said, then baked it.  After about 30 minutes I went to check on
it.  The stuff had risen way above the edge of the pan, and all that butter
had melted and run out of the pan along with large drips of dough, all of
which was sitting there burning away.  I had an inch of butter/dough goop
pooled in the bottom of my oven!  It was far and away the biggest mess I've
ever encountered in my adult life, and three years later when we sold that
house the oven still had crusty black burned butter in the bottom! 

							Pat

    I have had numerous disasters (fortunately they were years ago).
    
    1.  I make homemade waffles.  Once I forgot to take a waffle out
    of the waffle iron and it became brown and super-crisp.  I threw
    it away.  Little did I know that my husband took it out of the trash,
    shellaced it and kept it.  At his family's yearly reunion he brought
    it with to play "Frisbee".  Needless to say everyone cracked up.
    
    2.  My first attempt at making a turkey.  After the thing was in
    the oven approx. 30 minutes I wanted to baste it and pulled the
    oven rack out (it was an old oven).  I turned away to get the baster
    when all of a sudden the pan slid out, tipped over and the turkey
    flew out of the pan and proceeded to skid 10 feet across the kitchen
    floor and got wedged under my table and chairs.  My husband and
    I laughed so hard we couldn't stop.  I washed it off and put it
    back to finish cooking.  You can imagine how hard it was to contain
    our laughter when my mother-in-law said it was the BEST turkey she
    ever had.....
    
    3.  My first mashed potatoes were so stiff and when I went to put
    a spoonful on my plate they wouldn't come off the spoon.  I made
    2 attempts-no luck.  The 3rd time I was mad so I really shook the
    spoon.  They proceeded to fly off the spoon and land on the front
    of my kitchen cabinets.  We had company that day (over 17 years
    ago) and to this day I still hear about my "famous" potatoes.
    
    Oh, the joys of learning how to cook......

  This isn't terribly amusing, but ...

  I make a lot of roast chicken. The recipe is simple: sprinkle with
  salt, garlic powder and paprika, and stick in the oven for 50 minutes
  at 350. Hard to mess up, you say? Well, it's such a tasty recipe for
  being so easy that, when I make it for a friend who's coming for
  dinner and has never had it, I'm usually very proud about how good it
  is, and make a big fuss beforehand to that effect. 

  Once, by some wierd accident, when I was making it for a very proper
  English lady, I managed to buy a capon instead of a hen. I don't know
  how that happened - maybe the packages were mis-marked, or something -
  you don't even see capons very often. I did notice that the breastbone
  was shaped differently from the average chicken, but didn't think much
  of it, and confidently stuck it in the oven. Later, when we started to
  eat it, it was the toughest bird of any kind any of us had ever eaten.
  Capons are (I think) "fixed" male chickens, and are supposed to be
  stewed. We couldn't come close to finishing the main course. The
  proper English lady was appropriately polite about it, and only said
  something to the effect of "well, I can imagine how this would be a
  delicious dish". I was mortified. I've never bought a capon by mistake
  (or even on purpose) since.

    This isn't a cooking disaster, but it reminded me of .10's
    potato flinging.
    
    I had bought a carton of ice cream, and it was frozen solid.
    I took a big spoon and tried to scoop up some ice cream.  Since
    it was frozen so hard, it was difficult to get out of the carton.
    I spooned it with some force, only to have a big scoop of ice
    cream go flinging across the kitchen.  
    
    The only problem was, I couldn't find it!  Laughing hysterically,
    I called my husband in to help me search the kitchen for the 
    elusive ice cream chunk - we found it about ten minutes later,
    crouching (or rather, melting) behind the wastebasket. 
    
   

        My wife had just started making her own wine, the first batch
        had been very good, and she was on to the second.  However
        neither of us had seen this one ferment and we were convinced
        that it had 'gone wrong'. 
        
        I (science background) said that we could easily tell if it had
        worked by measuring the specific gravity, my wife (arts
        background) gave me a nonplussed look but agreed.  We bought a
        small device for measuring *specific* gravity and I favoured my
        wife with a knowledgeable narrative on its mechanics, the
        mathematics of weight per unit volume, the theory of atomic mass
        and life the universe and everything; and was feeling pretty
        damn clever I must admit. 
        
        Then came the moment of truth.  I lowered the device into the
        wine and announced sagely that the *specific* gravity was only
        just over 1000 and as that was almost the same as water no
        fermentation had taken place.  With heavy heart I began to pour
        the wine down the sink.  My wife sighed and looked at the
        instructions one last time and asked "What is *original*
        gravity"? 
        
        With horror the realisation of what I was doing dawned.  When
        you brew wine or beer the specific gravity at the beginning (the
        origin) is high 1030-1040 and as the heavy sugar is turned to
        light alcohol the specific gravity reduces to, you guessed,
        around 1000-1010. 
        
        I stood there transfixed as top quality home brew wine gluged
        down the unappreciative throat of our drain pipe.  I had to
        decide, should I wait till my wife worked out what had happened
        and let her kill me then, or should I tell her now and throw
        myself on her mercy, pleading that at least I had owned up. 
        
        As the last drops dripped I told her.  There followed one of
        those amazing silences that you can almost touch, followed by
        painful gales laughter, at my expense.
        
        We are still married, and the wine? better than ever!

    
    
    	When I started this note I couldn't really think of a good
    	disaster, but I finally remembered one.
    
    	I love schezuan stir-fried chicken made in a wok.  The recipe
    	I have calls for sauteing the chicken in sesame oil, then 
    	adding some chili oil once the chicken is cooked for seasoning.
    
    	Well, I decided, wouldn't the chicken taste much better if I
    	stir fried it in the chili oil!  So, I started to do this!
    	Within minutes, I was sneezing and coughing.  There was no
    	smoke so I was a bit confused but realized I had goofed.  THEN
    	my roommate came home.  Soon, she too was sneezing, but hadn't
    	connected the problem to me yet since she hadn't been in the
    	kitchen.  Needless to say, we got a good laugh out of that one
    	and I will NEVER fry ANYTHING in chili oil again!
    
    	Karen

    After reading 1556.6, I was glad that I'm not thee only one 
    who heats up the kitchen with the wok!
    
    Friday, 12/16 I decided to make Hot and Spicy Chicken for Dinner,
    while the wok with oil was heating up I too did other things, (fed
    the cats, cut veggies, etc.), upon smelling something I looked at
    the wok, and it was smoking, to release the smoke off went the lid,
    yes I dropped it on the floor, then proceeded to move the wok from
    the burner, the flames almost caught the hanging hot pads on fire
    (they were really hot).  
    
    Since I was doing some baking for the holidays, flour sugar and
    soda were on the cabinet, I couldn't remember which to use to put
    out the oil fire, so I threw a dishtowel on the flame, and luckily
    for me it smothered the fire instead of catching fire.  While I
    was trying to determine what to put it out with, the funniest things
    ran through my mind -- how embarrassing to my husband who is President
    of our Condo association that his wife burned down the building!
    
    I sat down to collect my thoughts when my husband (of 13 years)
    called to let me know he was on his way home from work, and he knew
    immediately that something was wrong.  He calmed me down by making
    me laugh -- he said he'd rather take me to dinner than to eat stir
    fried dishcloth!!
    
    Yes it's funny now, and nothing was hurt or harmed, and my wok is
    wonderfully seasoned!
    
    Deb
    

    Last week, I was making "THE homecoming recipe" (Note 806) at the
    same time I was making meat loaf and discussing Christmas with my
    husband.  I took the meatloaf out of the oven intending to drain
    the grease into an empty can I had at the side of the stove, and
    I guess I just lost my mind or something and dumped the grease into
    the Recipe!  Luckily it was just a tablespoon or so and I was able
    to suck it off the top with a turkey baster!  When they asked what
    that elusive taste was, I just told 'em must be the ginger!
    
    TW

    A grad school apartment-mate had never cooked before, but his mother
    had provided him with lots of equipment and advice.
    
    On  one of our first nights in the apartment, John suggested we
    make a steak.  So we went to the market and bought a steak.  John
    said that he would cook.  Not knowing any better at that point,
    I agreed to let him cook.  He kicked me out of the kitchen and started
    his preparations.  A few minutes later, he called me back into the
    kitchen to ask how to turn the oven on to broil.  I was a bit
    suspicious at that point, and asked if he wanted me to take over.
    He said "no" and kicked me out of the kitchen again.  Several minutes
    later, I peeked over the counter into the kitchen to see how he
    was doing and saw him putting the EMPTY broiling pan into the oven.
    I asked what he was doing and he said that he was cooking the steak.
    I asked where the steak was ... it was in the bottom of the pan
    with the grill on top.
    
    John tried very hard all year to learn how to cook.  Perhaps his
    greatest disaster was the time he tried to make an angel food cake
    - from scratch.  He followed the directions in the cookbook exactly.
    He only made one mistake... his mother had taught him to always
    spray his pans with PAM first to make clean-up easier.  In an angel
    food cake, the cake rises as the egg whites cling to the sides of
    the pan and pull themselves up.  In this cake, he had a dozen of
    the most frustrated egg whites the world has ever seen - they tried
    in vain for an hour to climb a greased wall.  What he ended up with
    was a one-inch rubber doughnut.

    I don't know if this classifies as a disaster or not, but I had
    a friend over for dinner earlier this week and decided to make a
    scaled-down Italian dinner.  Everything from scratch and all that.
    
    The first course was homemade chicken soup, starting with water, a
    few lbs of chicken etc.  Being on who hates recipes, I figured I
    could just wing ;^) it.  It was originally going to be around 2 quarts
    or soup or so.  After putting in about 3 lbs of chicken wings, I
    realized that 2 quarts of water wasn't enough.  So I got out a larger
    pot and added another 2 quarts of water.  Ok.  Just barely enough.
    
    Except I also had 4-5 lbs of chicken parts that I really wanted to use
    up.  So I started to add those and realized that the pot wasn't big
    enough.  So I got down my huge 8 quart stock pot.  Let that simmer
    for a few hours.
    
    Now for the coup de grace.  I had a box of these little round macaronis
    that needed to be added.  Figured one box should suffice. 
    Unfortunately they expanded a lot more than expected and I had to keep
    adding water to prevent this soup from totally congealing.  Chunky
    soup was never so thick.
    
    Net result?  Around 10 quarts of soup.  The two of us had some.  I had
    five friends over last night to help finish it.  And because each time
    its reheated I have to add at least another quart of water it isn't
    disappearing very quickly.

    Gosh, this must be the week for chicken soup.  I was making some
    Sunday night.  I already had the stock, which had been sitting in
    my freezer, so I just cut up ome boneless breast, potatoes, carros
    and onion, and threw it all in the pot with the stock.  Soup was
    just about ready when my SO decided that it would be great to throw
    in some noodles.  Well, the noodles soaked up all the liquid.  And,
    I didn't have any more stock to add.
    
    We ended up eating the stuff anyway.  Just didn't use the oyster
    crackers.

    Here's two "kids in the kitchen" funnies performed by my son Mike
    (from the age of 10-12) and my husband (who was about 10 at the
    time).
    
    We have a long commute to work and usually leave the house around
    7:00 am.  Michael catches his school bus around 7:30, therefore
    for 1/2 hour he is left in the house alone.  Well I started noticing
    that there were never any hot dogs in the freezer, I kept buying
    them and the kept disappearing!  Finally one day I was cleaning
    out the freezer and stuffed way in the back were 3 empty hot dog
    packages.  I confronted Michael and asked him if he was the one
    eating the hot dogs.  He admitted it.  I then gave him the lecture
    on the health hazards of eating raw hot dogs.  He told me he cooked
    them first.  Well knowing that I had never seen any pans in the
    sink when I got home at night and also knowing that Mike 
    would NEVER clean up after himself, I asked him HOW he cooked the
    hot dogs.  It was really easy and I should have guessed....he just
    turned up the heat and put them on the radiator!
    
    My husband told me of a funny one that happened when he was a kid.
    His parents had gone to church and told him he could make himself
    a couple of hard boiled eggs while they were gone.  He cooked the
    eggs and then put the pan in the sink and let cold water run on
    the eggs to cool them off.  He then went into the living room for
    a "second" to check out the ball game.  Well as you can guess, the
    "seconds" turned into minutes and the pan somehow floated over 
    the drain hole in the sink and when the light dawned on marble head 
    the kitchen floor was covered with water.
    
    He and his cousin were just cleaning up the last of it when his
    parents came home.  Bob told them "just a little accident Ma".
    Well Ma went into the cellar I guess and found water dripping 
    from the heat vents in the ceiling!!!
    
    Lorraine
    
    (Bob...is this why you always tell me you "can't cook")
      

                             This is a rice disaster!
    
    
    My husband's grandmother, as a newlywed, tried to make her first
    rice dish.  Well, as everyone should know that a little rice goes
    a long way.  But, for her, she took a look at 1/4 cup of rice and
    said that this would not be enough.  She then decided to increase
    the rice to one cup.  When it was all cooked she had enough rice
    to fill every container that she had in the house and then had to borrow
    some from the next door neighbor.  She then decided to believe the
    instruction that can with the rice the next time she prepared some.
    
    Colleen

    The first time I ever tried to make something myself, I decided
    upon spaghetti sauce.   The recipe called for one clove of garlic.
    Not knowing a clove from a head, I used a whole head.  Ugh.
    
    ScottR

    One cold winter evening, in a lanterned and dimly lit kitchen with a roaring
    fireplace as the cooking hearth, my father-in-law decided to have
    his turn at making crepes.  Now he had had a little white wine,
    and being in the company of a lively crowd, he was in a jovial mood,
    singing bawdy French songs and entertaining the group to their great
    joy.  Being a proper Frenchman, no spatula for him!  He pulled the
    hot pan from the fireplace and prceeded to flip the crepe to brown its
    opposite side.  Into the dark gloom above the crepe promplty
    dissapeared.  Still singing and looking about, he could not find
    his crepe.  The onlookers were amazed, as was he.  He walked to
    the middle of the room, took off his cap, scratched his head, extended
    his arms to express his lack of comprehension, and again raised
    his voice in song.  It was then that the crepe dropped down, landing
    smack on his head then sliding to his shoulders.
    
    I can still hear the tumultuous laghter after these many years. 
    And you know, Aristide was laughing the loudest.

The word "newlywed" triggered this recollection.

My friend married the last of nine daughters; she was the "baby", and so
she never had to help out in the kitchen at home. Consequently, she knew,
like, nothing about cooking. 

Her first attempt at cooking a meal was meatloaf. Mixed all the
ingredients, spread the mixture about 1" thick in the bottom of a Pyrex
dish, popped it into the oven, and waited for it to rise to fill the pan;
you know, like Momma's cakes rise? He said it was the best square
hamburger he ever had.

    I have a couple:
    
    One summer I worked at a small place which had a small grocery store,
    served soft-serve ice cream, and pizza.  I was on pizza duty one
    day and was being harrassed by a particularly nasty customer who
    criticized everything I did while making his pizza.  As if I wasn't
    nervous enough, my boss came in and joined the nasty customer (good
    business, I suppose).  By the time the pizza was done I was so upset
    that I reached into the top oven with the peel, swung around to
    put the pie on the plate, and it slid off the peel and landed upside
    down on my boss' shoes!  Laugh or cry?
    
    My husband has credit for this one :
    
    Last Friday night we had both had a hard day, and neither was in
    any mood to cook.  He suggested just a can of clam chowder, which
    I agreed to.  When he served it, it looked a little pink, so I asked
    him what he had added to it.  His reply was "I spiced it up a bit"...
    one spoonful and my mouth was on fire !  He spiced it up with tabasco
    AND cayenne pepper!  Not a recipe worth repeating!
    
    Sarah                                     

    A couple of years ago, my husband and I went over my parent's house.
    It was late in the evening and I decided I would make us a cup of
    instant coffee.  Well, my mother never uses sugar for anything except
    baking, so there is no sugar bowl.  When I make coffee over her
    house, I just spoon it out of the bag.
    
    I grabbed the bag of pickling salt instead of the sugar.  Took a
    nice big sip of the coffee ............ UGH!
    
    Needless to say, this still comes back to haunt me.
    
    Susan                                 

  here's a couple that my family STILL talks about:

	When my sisters and I were younger, we used to have "Family Night"
	On Fridays, because our schedules never coincided with each other.
	One Friday, my older sister was given the responsibility of making
	dessert (she had been pleading with my mother to let her do so for
	weeks). My mother agreed, and allowed her to pick the dessert she 
	wanted to make. My sister was a big fan of Jell-O instant pudding,
	so she decided that this would be her choice.

	Well, at the end of dinner, out she came with the dessert, spooned
	nicely into dessert glasses. One taste, and we knew something was 
	amiss (it didn't quite taste like Jell-O pudding, but it wasn't 
	too bad either).

	My mother asked her how she made the dessert, and she began to explain.
	She had read the directions wrong -- instead of seeing it as "Beat the
	pudding with an egg beater," she read "beat an egg into the pudding."

	Needless to say, it was after that the my mother supervised, and we 
   	all had a good laugh over it (and we still do). 

   Also --

	One Sunday morning, my father decided to make breakfast. He had been a
	cook in the Navy during WWII, so we all had trust in him. Unfortunately,
	he was used to cooking for hundreds of men, and not 5 people...not being
        the best judge in cutting down the measurements from what he remembered,
	the scrambled eggs he served came (literally) floating in water. To this
	day we don't allow him NEAR the stove!

Oh, what the heck, since everyone else has their disaster(s) in here, I might as
well add mine:

disaster #1:
    I love to cook Chinese (I was given Chinese cooking lessons as an
engagement present by my ex -- smart lady). One day, we had a friend over for
dinner. I decided that one of the dishes we'd make was szechuan spicy chicken
(although he's not really fond of hot stuff). My wife was helping me by making
the sauce for the chicken. Since there was only one copy of the recipe, she was
forced to come, read an ingredient over my shoulder, and then go back to her
section of the kitchen and do her stuff (ah, you see it coming -- I can tell).
at any rate, the recipe had the following on it (yes, the spacing really was
this terrible)

	3 Tbsp				cornstarch (for thickening)
	1 tsp				hot oil (optional)

With the way I had things formatted, of course 3 Tbsp of hot oil (9 times the
proper amount!) got added. We served the recipe, I took a taste, and said "Gee,
this tastes a little different from usual, now what is it that makes it taste
different?". At this point, Peter (the guest), bellows "Water, help!!"

disaster #2
    I was helping my friend Kate make her annual April Fool's Day dinner (a
signal honor, as Kate, one of the best cooks in the world, rarely allows anyone
else in her kitchen). My assigned dish was to make 24 Yalanchi stuffed tomatoes,
putting the tops back on so perfectly that one couldn't tell the tomatoes were
stuffed (the april fool's part), and I saved all the innards from the tomatoes
in a bowl and stuffed it in the fridge, so that she could use it later.

    Some time later, Kate goes to put a dish in the fridge, and tells me "the
fridge is full -- toss the tomatoes, we won't need them". I say "excuse me".
She says "toss the tomatoes -- we won't need them". I say "perhaps we could
freeze them". She repeats "TOSS...THE...TOMATOES". I spend the next 15 minutes,
taking the tomatoes, one at a time, putting them in the disposal, grinding, and
then going to the next tomato, without talking, and thinking hateful thoughts.
Just after I finish this exercise, Kate completes the dish she's preparing, and
puts it in the fridge...then she says "where are the stuffed tomatoes?"

    Eventually we found it amusing, and we did toss the tomatoes (that is the
tomato INNARDS!!). But we decided that I'd sit out the rest of the preparation.

Well, my memory usually does not fail me but after these two incidents I don't 
cook from memory alone!  I forgot tuna in a tuna-noodle casserole and flour
in oatmeal cookies.  My husband still kids me about it even tho it has been
15 years ago! :-)

Judy

    I've been reading these disasters and have been cracking up!  Well,
    here's a couple of my own:
    
    Like .25 as a newlywed I had no idea what a clove of garlic was
    (my mother never used fresh garlic).  So, when making my very first
    garlic bread I used a whole bulb (Whew! what a kick!)
    
    I had a craving for banana nut bread - and I even had all the 
    ingredients in the house!  I could hardly wait for it to come out
    of the oven and stood there with a knife waiting for the timer to
    go off.  Finally, it was done.  I lopped off a great chunk, popped
    it in my mouth and yuk... what on earth did I leave out of the recipe?
    - Sugar!  Well, the squirrels had a nice treat anyway.
    
    My sister as a kid wanted to help cook dinner.  My mom always used
    frozen vegetables that come in boiling bags.  Well, she opened the
    box of frozen vegetables, saw that there was no boiling bag and
    dropped the vegetables, box and all, into the boiling water.  We
    

    Here's a quick one.  When I was 6 and my mother was taking a nap,
    I decided to surprise her and make potato salad.  I was very proud
    of myself because I carefully pealed and cut several potatoes. 
    I then mixed them with mayo, and put it in the fridge.
    
    Later when I presented it to her, she had to explain to me that
    you have to cook the potato first.  Oh well, it's the thought that
    counts!
    

I'm still traumatized by the "pressure cooker explosion" that occurred
when I was about 12 years old.  My mother and father were having a
"discussion" and mom was cooking chicken and dumplings...when mom was
preparing to remove the chicken and dumplings from the pot, she did
everything right, BUT, she failed to cool the lid - the chicken and
dumplings came from the pot in a loud "swoosh" and propelled themselves
at great speed to the ceiling - where they then slowly dripped down to
the floor as gravity overtook them.  My mother was unhurt, luckily, and
the sight of the kitchen ceiling was so funny my parents both ended
up laughing, fight forgotten.

Then there was the time my father decided to use a "cooking bag" to
bake some swiss steak in the microwave oven and neglected to poke
any holes in the bag.  The oven had a grill over the front and it
was quite startling to see "fingers" of plastic slowly creep out
of the microwave as the bag filled the oven and expanded beyond.
The explosion was quite impressive when that bag finally gave.
They are sturdy - I don't recommend using them in your microwave
oven.

I've been reading these entries with great envy -- wishing that I too 
could have a colorful story of a trashed kitchen -- when I suddenly 
remembered...

I was in high school, maybe 16 years old, and had come home and 
proceeded to ransack the kitchen for something to eat as 16 year-olds 
will do.  My mother worked, so I was alone in the house.  When I saw the 
eggs, I remembered I had read that you could hard-boil eggs in the 
microwave if you put them in a glass of water and punched a hole in both 
ends of the shell with a needle before putting them in to cook.  So I 
figured I'd do a couple of eggs.

I punched both ends of each shell and dropped them into a glass of 
water, put the glass in the microwave and set the timer for three 
minutes.  I was watching the whole thing happen, saw the water start to 
boil and so forth when the doorbell rang.  I went to the door and just 
as I opened it there was a horrendous explosion and the door to the 
microwave blew open and a slurry of eggs and glass plastered opposite 
wall.

I looked in the oven, and the plastic cover that hid the magnetron tube 
was deformed and there was a really nasty mess inside the oven.  I was 
trying to figure out how I'd ever clean it up, when I had my second 
brainstorm -- let the oven fix it!  I set the timer to five minutes, 
closed the door and walked away.  Miraculously, the magnetron tube was 
undamaged, and after five minutes I just had to wipe out the egg powder.

To this day, I don't know if it's possible to hard-cook an egg in the 
microwave.  I've never had the nerve to try it again.  And it didn't 
escape me that I was very lucky that I wasn't still staring into the 
oven when it exploded, not to mention that the oven still worked 
afterward.  About ten years later, I finally told my mother that it 
*wasn't* heat that deformed the plastic in the top of the oven...

						>>>==>PStJTT

    One Christmas when I was about 9 or 10 I asked my Mother if I could
    help make some of the goodies.  She handed me the recipe for what
    my family referred to as "booze balls" which is a combination of
    confectionary sugar, chocolate, walnuts, your choice of liquor,
    and whatever else.  When I read the recipe, all I saw was "sugar",
    so that's what I put in.  They tasted good except the consistency
    was like Hampton Beach sand had been added to the ingredients.
    
    When I was about 19 I was having "Mr. Special" over for dinner and
    I was making Shrimp de Jonghe which is individual casseroles of
    jumbo shrimp, butter, bread crumbs and garlic for the seasoning.
    I forgot to buy the garlic when I went shopping so I figured I could
    use garlic salt, probably 2 tablespoons would do.  He really was
    Mr. Special because he ate every bit of it even if took mass quantities
    of water to wash it down.  It tasted awful!
                                               
    Terry
    

    A few years ago I was going to impress my new girlfriend and cook
    some marinated chicken wings, baked potato, and corn at the beach.
    It was going to be a great romantic afternoon/evening complete
    with champagne (Andre's, then).  Well, it was, but we didn't eat
    anything !  I had marinated the wings in Zinfandel that had
    turned sour, and when we tried to cook them, they became covered
    with purple blotches.  The FOWLEST wings I have ever had.  Also,
    the marinade had spilled in the cooler and 'infected' the veggies.
    
    
    Then there was the time one June afternoon when we went to Mt
    Sunapee State Park to cook supper.  My wife (same person as above)
    brought a pork roast.  Took us 6 hours to cook it over a campfire.
    The park rangers finally left and told us to be quiet!  With the
    smell of the roast and no light other than the fire, we saw lots
    of eyes watching us.  Kinda spooky.
    
    
    Then there was the time we cooked spare ribe at Plum Island and
    snuggled into our sleeping bag.  We put the leftovers on top of
    the cooler and forgot about them.  Guess who didn't !!!  My wife
    (still same one) heard scratching and got a little nervous.  I sat
    up and was face to face with a skunk.  We didn't move until that
    little thief ate four ribs and then headed for the dunes.
    
    Then there was the time we were camping with our 4 little kids (same
    wife) and we had finally got them to sleep.  We had put our cooler
    under the picnic table and were sitting in front of the fire on
    the bench.  My wife thought I was playing footsie with her, but
    was she surprised when she looked down and saw a small raccoon trying
    to get a chicken bone from under her foot.  
    
    Then ..........(I have more if you want, all related (?) to cooking)
    

    My mother had a disaster (btw, that's what happened to the lady
    who backed into the fan) years ago, but it rates a chuckle.  She
    invited a number of ladies to a luncheon and was going to serve
    a lobster mousse.  She had spent a considerable amount of time on
    this thing since she had started early in the morning with fresh
    lobsters.  Anyway, it looked fantastic.  A beautiful pink molded
    mousse in the shape of a large fish.  She surrounded it with claws
    and some pieces of meat.  You get the picture.  She placed it on
    the kitchen table and called the ladies into the dining room.  When
    she returned to the kitchen, there, right in the middle of her
    beautiful mousse was the cat, having a ball!!!  Not to be flustered,
    she calmly threw the cat out the door, took two lobster 'heads'
    and filled the hole in her mousse with them.  The ladies talked
    about that mousse for years.  Said it was the best they ever had.
    I guess when they made their mousses(sp?) they forgot the cat hairs
    for that extra essence !
    
    
    Then there was the time last week when my John, 3 yr old, wanted
    to help daddy cook.  Sure was a shock to him when he drank his little
    paper cup full of milk.  Seems daddy had also used a little paper
    cup to mix cornstarch and water.
    
    
    
    cornstarch instead of the milk

    
    After finding a recipe for fried rice, which is a favorite of mine
    I decided to buy myself a wok and give it a try. On Saturday my
    wife and I went shopping for one. found what we thought would serve
    the purpose and purchased it. That night I cooked some rice and
    put it in the refrigerator to set for the night. The next 
    afternoon I got all of my ingredients together and happily set
    about making fried rice. Everthing was going fine, and I was
    happily contemplating having a big bowl of fried rice for supper
    when disaster struck. The last thing the recipe called for was
    mixing two lightly beaten eggs with the rice. As I added these
    eggs to my light fluffy beautiful fried rice I watched in horror
    as the whole thing disintegrated into a gooey mish mash of 
    what resembled (I swear) dog barf. If you are the type that can't
    stand to see grown men cry, just thank god you weren't there.

    I have a few funnies...
    
    Once when I was about 15 I was making a cake in one of those tube
    pans (The middle piece comes out), well I finished mixing the cake,
    poured it into the pan and then picked up the pan by the bottom...All
    of a sudden I could feel something oozing down my arm, I had lifted
    the middle part and the caked was pouring out the bottome....what
    A mess.
    
    RE. 21 & 22
    
    I made chicken soup like that once too, It was great tasted good
    and everything until I put the pastilles (sp) in I put the whole
    box in and had chicken oatmeal (yum).
    
    This one my friend did...I was living with her and she kicked me
    out so she could make dinner for her boyfriend (Husband now) she
    bought two beautiful T-bone steaks and proceeded to bake them at
    350 for 45 minutes...they went out for Chinese food that night.

    It happened when I cooked dinner for my cooking group up at school.
    We all took our turns, and one week, my turn fell on a Friday. I
    was feeling somewhat confident after several weeks of successes
    with turkey orloff, ginger chicken and the likes, so I said "What
    the heck! It's Friday after all!" and decided to treat my cooking
    group to a traditional Eastern European, Shabbat dinner.
    Well, I was busy making chicken soup and matzoh balls, pot roast
    and kasha varnishkes. Kasha is buckwheat kernals preparred a special
    way, and the varnishkes are bowtie noodles...all very traditional
    and not too difficult to make.
    So I looked at my kasha recipe, noticed it would make twice the
    ammount I needed and cut the recipe in half. Half the buckwheat,
    half the eggs, half the salt. I cut everything in half except...the...
    PEPPER!
    I think I succeeded in making the world's first batch of Shechwan
    Kasha...needless to say, from now on, I DOUBLE CHECK measurements!
    

    Well, the other day, we discovered how to make WAX.  Not bee's wax,
    but the sugar type you gals may use for waxing your legs etc.
    
    We were trying out an Indian sweet, where you make ricotta cheese
    from curdling milk, roll the resultant cheese into balls, and
    supposidly simmer in sugar syrup until you see perforations on the
    surface of the balls indicating they're cooked.
    
    Well, we simmered, (read boiled), and simmered away... while cooking
    other things.  Needless to say, the water component of the sugar
    syrup boiled away, leaving this SOLID MASS of wax FIRMLY GLUED to
    the saucepan.  Not only that, but the spoon we had left in the pan,
    was glued to the bottom.
    
    Needless to say, I was not a happy person at this point. :-)
    
    Like .45, we didn't read the recipe properly... it said 
    "add water slowly as required while stiring".
    
    Rashid.

    Just did this one the other day...
    
    I had some leftover ham I was going to heat up in the microwave,
    so I put in the the oven to sit while the vegs were cooking.  I
    was going to nuke the ham for 2-3 minutes after the vegs were done.
    I usually use my microwave timer for timing other things, so I hit 
    15 minutes to time the vegs, and instead of hitting the "timer" 
    button, I hit the "high power" button by mistake and then left the room.
    
    While sitting in the livingroom, I heard some noises from the kitchen
    but didn't think anything of it.  When I came back to the kitchen
    after about 13 minutes had gone by, I noticed to my horror the
    microwave was on making rubber out of my ham!!
    
    Well, the cats enjoyed it anyway...

    Re .44  Your bakes steak story reminds me of my little brothers
    experience with cooking steak.  My brother, who is still in high
    school, absolutely loves cooking gadgets.  He's the type of kid
    that we bought him one of those taco racks for his birthday.  Well,
    my parents have this stacking vegetable steamer - it has 3 stacking
    baskets to steam your vegetables in.  Seth thought that it was a
    neat gadget, so decided he would use it to cook dinner for himself
    one night.  Into the bottom basket, he empties a can of corn.  Into
    the middle basket he slices up a potato.  Into the top basket, he
    places a smal steak.  Needless to say, he got a uqick lesson in
    that not all foods are made to be steamed.

    My little, although not so little anymore, brother, loves to cook
    and bake.  When we were younger he used to make these great brownies;
    they were so sweet and fudgy, although a wee bit soft.
    
    Anytime he made these they would never last more than 10 minutes.
    My mother and I tried to reproduce them but they never turned out the
    same.  We copied the recipe he used verbatim.  
    
    Finally, we decided that the next time he made them we were going
    to stand over his shoulder and watch.
    
    Well, it turned out that he was reading the recipe incorrectly.
    He was reading the recipe for the brwonies fudge frosting and making that
    instead, and he never even realized it!  
    
    

    You'd think I would have learned from the disaster stories in here to
    be careful when putting down a plate of spaghetti...
    
    Last night, we made up a batch of spaghetti, heavy on the sauce.  I
    carried the two plates into the dining room...was putting my plate
    down, and must have tipped it a little, because about a quarter of it
    slipped off the plate and onto the (nice) placemat and table. 
    
    Ok, no big deal, right?  But my reflex was to try to get rid of the
    plate in my right hand as quickly as possible, so I could clean up the
    mess.  Well, I proceeded to tip the second plate towards the edge of
    the table, and a third of it slipped onto the placemat, wicker seat of
    the chair, and all over the nice light beige carpet...
    
    Let's just say this was a good test of how my future husband reacts to
    situations like that -- not a harsh word spoken!
    
    --Sharon
    
    P.S.  Somehow, through minor miracles, the carpet seems to be fine,
    	  and the chair even looks pretty good!
    
    

    I really feel sorry for newlyweds.  An old family friend told us
    this story.  On the honeymoon...they were driving and the weather
    was awful. They stopped at a hotel with signs all over saying no
    food in the rooms.  Since it was so awful outside they decided to
    dig into the goodie basket that someone had given them.  They pulled
    out a can of stew.  They put it on the radiator to heat, not realizing
    that you must poke holes into it first.  Well, it exploded and they
    spent the first night of the marriage cleaning up the walls, ceiling,
    and everything else.  BTW...they both ended up being great cooks.

    Just after the honeymoon and we were setting up our new house we
    decided that "fried shrimp" would make a good  meal for a change--
    we fried them until they looked "done" tried one--a little bit tough
    sooo we fried them a little longer-- still tough--a little longer
    and the shrimp became rocks---that was 35 years ago!! We are both
    much better cooks now!!    <DICK>

    When my grandmother got married, she could not boil water.
    
    She had grown up with an old black stove that always had a pot of water
    on it, and this was used as boiling water.  When she married and
    started using a gas stove, she thought water was boiling when it 
    started to steam.

Here's a few disasters I've been involved in....

Sichuan food seems to be disaster-prone.  I was making kung pao chicken.  The
recipe calls for heating oil in a wok until smoking and then throwing in a
handful of dried chili peppers, stirring until blackened, and then adding the
chicken mixture.  When I threw in the chili peppers, like a fool I was bending
over the wok.  A nasty black cloud of smoke billowed up, almost blinding me,
and I got a lungful of the stuff.  Almost killed me.  It was a day before I
could breathe properly again.


It took me 5 tries before I finally learned how to make chicken gumbo without
starting a grease fire on the stove either while frying the chicken or making
the roux.  The first time I made it, it was at 1:00 AM in January, with the
temperature below zero outside.  The fried chicken caught fire and all the smoke
set off the smoke alarms.  I got the skillet under control and then opened all
the windows and doors to placate the smoke alarms before I woke the neighbors
(I live in a condo quadplex).  When everything was calmed down again, I suddenly
realized that my indoor cat had taken this opportunity to do some outside
exploring.  Now I had to leave the door open so the cat could get back in, which
she did an hour or two later.  Meanwhile, I was freezing.  I wound up making
dinner wearing a winter coat.


I was part of a two-man team once cooking Chinese at a friend's house for a
fairly large group.  Somehow things got very disorganized.  We managed to dirty
almost every pot, pan, bowl, and measuring device in the place.  The kitchen
sink got plugged with grease.  Worst of all, a grease fire started on the stove
and we had to get a hot wok ring off the stove and fast.  The counters and sink
were all occupied, so without thinking I tossed it on the floor.  It was a
linoleum floor.  The wok ring burned a nice circle into it.  The friend who
rented the house said, "don't worry, I'll just tell the landlord that a very
small flying saucer landed there."  Talk about feeling very small.....

--PSW

   Well, there was the time I went backpacking for a week in the mountains. 
   We decided to pack in something special for the first night, since we'd
   be eating only backpack dinners after that.  We decided to make spaghetti
   and we had prepared a special sauce to be warmed up and poured over the
   noodles.  We were ravenous, so we decided to put the spaghetti into the
   water while it was still warming up.  Result: hi-carb soup!  It wasn't
   fit to eat even with the sauce.  We did eat the sauce and left the pasta
   glue on the ground nearby the wild critters to eat.  Ugh!


   							Terza

   My father bought a microwave oven soon after they first came out.  The
   owner's manual said specifically not to try to hardboil eggs in the
   microwave.  My dad wanted to know why.  So he placed the egg in the oven
   and seconds later, it exploded, as you might expect.  Well, now he had a
   little better understanding of the situation.  He cleaned up the mess and
   decided to contain the explosion.  He then placed another egg between two
   ceramic bowls.  It lasted a few seconds longer, but the egg and both
   bowls exploded all over the microwave.  He learned to poke a hole in the
   egg or just use the stove.


   							Terza

    
    
    When my grandparents came to visit me in my new home 
    I decided to make potato salad to go with lunch.  
    In a hurry, I tossed in the ingredients
    listed in the cookbook.  It said 4 eggs.  I put in 4 eggs.
    After I mixed it all up I thought to myself, "This looks different
    from the last time I made it.  Maybe I put in more mustard this
    time or something." and plopped it in the frig.  
    My husband was the poor soul who sampled it.  That day I 
    modified my cookbook to read 4 "hard-boiled" eggs.
    
    Similar to an earlier reply, I decided to make pork fried
    rice.  Yum!!  I got out the wok started and
    then crack, sizzle, crack, sizzle, in went the eggs.  
    It was gooey.  I thought, "I'll just cook it a while longer".
    My husband, smarter because of the above experience, didn't
    sample.  We opted out for cereal that night.  There is still
    hope for me yet.  We make pork fried rice two nights ago
    and this time I cooked my eggs. 
    
    And a warning, making salsa in the food processor is great
    but...  We like our salsa hot.  The first time I tried this
    I plopped in onions, whole jalepenos and serrano chiles, cilantro.
    On.....Off.  Anxious to see how well the food processor worked
    I took off the top and the fumes ripped out my eyeballs!
    Now I stand way back as I release the lid and if it was safe
    to put a plastic bag over your head...
    
    My mom's friend once made spaghetti and heard that in order to
    tell if it's done or not you're supposed to throw it against
    the wall.  She threw the whole colander of spaghetti against
    the wall not just one noodle!
    
    That incident started a new tradition in our household.  When
    we were first married we tried throwing one noodle against the
    wall but it never stuck.  My husband tried throwing it at the
    ceiling.  The noodles would stick, we'd eat.  You can do some
    really creative art with noodles on ceilings and it's a 
    great conversation starter.  My Mom: "What are those things on your 
    ceiling?" She now participates in this new art form on a regular
    basis in her own home.
    
    I've been attempting to cook since I was 14.  I like desserts but
    have a hard time being successful with anything more difficult than
    ice cream sundaes.  I tried brownies once.  Left something out.
    They came out 1/8 inch high and hard as a rock.  I tried pecan pie
    once too.  It came out so hard you couldn't cut it.  I had to 
    jump on the pie pan to get it to release the pie.
    
    And a really scary thought, I've been collecting recipes to try from
    this notesfile so be really explicit or there may be more entries
    in here from me as time goes on.
    
    
    
    
    
     
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    

    I thought I'd impress my then boyfriend [not even fiance yet] and bake
    a banana bread from scratch.  
    
    To this day, I don't know WHAT I did wrong, but it came out like a
    brick-- a perfect doorstop!  He laughed so hard I wanted to cry!  
    
    Well, he certainly didn't marry me for my cooking... but over 3 years
    later, I still have not/will not bake another banana bread!  Guess I
    never got over the shock of baking a doorstop!
    
    Rgds,
    Mrs. Kip
    

    If you need to know how to clean melted Tupperware out of your oven,
    I can tell you...
    
    I once made a batch of Christmas cookies - you know, the kind you have 
    to roll out and cut with cookie cutters, and then spend hours
    decorating. Then, I put them in a Tupperware container and stored
    them in the oven, because there was not room in the cupboard.
    
    You guessed it -- the next day, I preheated the oven to 400 for
    a pizza, and investigated the funny smell to discover 4 dozen
    cookies and one Tupperware container all melted together and dripping
    down through 2 layers of oven shelves. When I shut the oven off, the
    Tupperware hardened. My oven looked like Carlsbad Caverns.
    
    Being inventive, I called the Tupperware Co. (located in R.I where
    I was living at the time). After about 5 people in the chain of calls
    stopped laughing, I was finally connected to someone who told me to
    heat the oven again to 100 and just peel the plastic off!
    
    One other time, I created imploding potatoes. I baked potatoes the
    normal length of time, then left the oven on warm while I went to
    the bus station to pick up guests. Well, the bus was late, and by the
    time we finally sat down to eat dinner, as soon as we stuck a fork
    into the potatos, a cloud of steam erupted, and the potatoes collapsed
    before our eyes. Funniest pototoe sight I've ever seen!
    

    
    ... and then there was the time when my wife was roasting some chillis
    and overcooked them a little.
    
    It set off the fire alarm, and despite opening the windows and
    switching on the extractor fan we still had to get out.
    
    Then the Hudson (New Hampshire) fire brigade arrived and needed full
    breathing gear to check that everbody was out of the other
    apartments...
    
    /. Ian .\
    

RE: .64

A year or two ago, there was a news story about a shopping mall that was
evacuated due to a suspected tear gas attack.  It turned out to be something
quite different, though.  A chef at the Cajun restaurant in the mall had lost
control over a skillet of chile peppers he was roasting, ran out the back door
of the restaurant, and left the pan against the outer wall of the mall to
cool off and air out.  By bad luck, the ventilator intake for the mall's
air conditioning system happened to be right over where he dropped the pan....

--PSW

	You know the saying that some people can't boil water, well
	yesterday my wife took that to a new height...

	We don't particularly like/trust our citys water, so we've 
	begun boiling our own..

	Well, yesterday, my wife put the pan on the stove, and went
	about her business..  My youngest son, who's almost two, and
	is getting to enjoy trying to use the pot chair, decided that
	he wanted to try now..

	Well, to make a long story short.. My wife was with my son for
	about 1 1/2 hours.

	When she returned to the kitchen, the pot had boiled dry, the
	inside bottom was black, and when removed the pot, the aluminum
	coating on the bottom of the pan was dripping onto the kitchen 
	floor (which nows displays some of the most beautiful burn marks
	I've ever seen).

	Fortunately.. Nothing worse than a lost pot occurred..

	Charlie

    I once invited a friend over, and figured I'd go all out and cook
    a nice roast beef...
    
    Being the helpfull sort, she took the roast out of the oven while I 
    set the table. I heard her say...
    
    "Hey Edd, does the beef cook better or something this way?"
    
                              "What are you talking about?"
    
    "It's still wrapped in plastic..."
    
    Edd

    Okay, that's a good one... 68.  And it reminded me of the time that I
    cooked the bird with all the "stuff" gizard, heart, neck, etc., still
    inside the bird.  How did I know that's where they stuck that stuff,
    and why DO they, anyway?  Yuck!
    
    I cooked the chicken all the way with the package of "innards" still
    wrapped in the paper and still stuffed inside the cavity of the
    chicken!

    Re: .69 My sister-in-law did the same this Christmas with the giblet
    bag. I wasn't there when she put it in the oven and when we took out
    the stuffing....there they were. I don't suppose it hurt anything and
    the giblets were now cooked.
    
    A couple Christmas's ago I had the family over to my house for dinner.
    I decided to cook the pototes for mashing in the microwave. Little did
    I know with the amount of potatoes I had, I should have started on
    Christmas Eve. My mother and friend were "helping" me in the kitchen
    and my mom decided to dump out half the potatoes and cook them in two
    batches. As she turned from the oven to the sink she ran into my friend
    and ALL the potatoes wound up on the floor!
    
    We picked them up, rinsed them off and proceeded to finish cooking
    them. No one was the wiser!
    
    Debbie
    

    Every summer my wife's family goes to Cape Cod for a week.  This
    particular Saturday, there were lots of people and a turkey was in the
    oven.  I'm talking 20+ people because all 9 kids had a
    husband/boyfriend/girlfriend/kids......  Anyway we were at the beach
    and good old Dan (boyfriend) and Barbaba (wife's sister) werre asked by
    my mother-in-law to baste the turkey when they went up to the cottage. 
    Good old Dan grew up in a large family too, so he wasn't a genius
    around the kitchen.  They basted the turkey without any trouble, but
    when we finally came back famished after a day in the surf, the cold
    half-cooked turkey was sitting on the stove.  They never put it back in
    the oven.  We ate about 10:00 that night.  (Dan and Barbara went out to
    dinner !)
    

    My SO tells of the time that her younger sister "helped" by adding some
    rubber bands to the stuffing. Marcia doesn't remember why she added the
    rubber bands, only that she thought they would help.
    
    Anyway, the stuffing with the rubber bands went into the turkey.
    Grandma was the only one to get any rubber bands on her plate and
    chewed for a long time before removing the bands from her mouth...

    I know there hasn't been an entry for a long time, but thought I must
    share the following 2 stories with you:
    
    1 - My husband is from Brazil and always talked about eating roasted
    chestnuts.  He said he loved them!  So being newly married, I wanted to
    surprise him.  I bought 2 lbs of chestnuts and turned the over on to
    400 degrees and put all of the chestnut on a cookie sheet.  Needless to
    say they started POPPING!  I ran to the oven and opened the door 
    to see what was going on in my oven and
    they started popping all over the place!  Seems that I didn't know you
    are supposed to "score" them before baking!
    
    2 - It was at Easter time and my whole family had just finished
    coloring eggs.  I took mine home and asked my hubby if he would like
    one.  He said he only liked them warm.  I knew not to put them in the
    shell in the micro, so I took off the shell, microed them (2) for about
    1-2 minutes and gave them to my husband.  He took a bite out of one and
    it EXPLODED!  All over the kitchen!  I was hysterically laughing, until 
    he went into the bathroom and I called to him asking if he was alright 
    (I was still laughing).  I walked into the bathroom and to my horror, 
    saw that the explosion and the steam from the explosion
    had torn off all the skin on his upper lip and it was just 
    hanging there.  He was trying to cut it off with a scissors.  He
    suffered with his entire lip being raw for about 8 weeks!  Needless to
    say, he no longer eats "warm" Hard-boiled eggs!
    
    Jackie 

    Exploding beans run in my family.  Really!
    
    When my dad was in training in the Army, he put a can of beans inside
    the tank on a very hot surface.  He didn't know you had to open it
    first.  His officer made him clean every bean from the inside of that
    tank.  I guess my Grandmother must've spoiled him.  Anyway, he never
    lived it down.
    
    My friend Gary and I had soy beans in the pressure cooker for a
    Thanksgiving dinner.  (From our vege days)  We were rushing around his
    apartment getting ready.  Gary said, "It doesn't SOUND right."  I
    insisted it was fine.  As he walked outside with a mug of tea, the
    gasket on the cooker erupted!  A fountain of beans hit the ceiling and
    dripped all over the stove.  Once again, a red-faced Rose (my maiden
    name) is cleaning up the beans.
    
    My husband said my daughter is not subject to this fate because she is
    not a Rose, but a Steinhart.  I don't know if my brother's ever had to
    clean up beans.  Probably not - I think he subsists on burgers.  Smart
    kid.
    
    Should we send this to Dave Barry for his exploding theme?
    
    Laura