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Chefs-de-Disgrace! Cooking & Other Disasters-Join The Laughter With Us!

Paniolo_GalPaniolo_Gal Member
edited February 2016 in Community & Creativity
This discussion was created as a hilarious discussion slewpy and I had while sharing our lack of skill & talent in the kitchen. Come join us in laughter regarding these mishap adventures by sharing your own misadventure! No pictures necessary, just a subject title if you can use a "deconstructed" racehorse name GREAT! (but not necessary) and your willingness to share funny personal foibles! Topics are not limited only to cooking disasters...just your bravery to share! Let's All "Havre Disgrace!" :oD
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  • Paniolo_GalPaniolo_Gal Member
    edited February 2016
    BACKGROUND INTRODUCTION:
    Back in my school days, I really, really wanted to take mechanical drawing but was discouraged as back then (I'm revealing my age) only males took this class...rather...I was forced by my advisor that cooking was a basic essential for all females. Yeah right! I almost flunked Home Economics...It was my lowest grade during my entire 3 years in High School! Till today, I can't cook to save my life! I can still burn water! Here is one of several mishaps in my thick novel of cooking disasters!

    COOKING "One O One":
    For a finale in my high school Home Economics class...on the last day of class, we were suppose to have a lunch party. So the night before while at home, I was suppose to make peanut butter cookies for the party. Well after waiting 2 hours for my cookies to bake...it never did look right nor harden when I brought it out of the oven to cool. I kept putting the batch back in the oven and it began to burn! I messed up my first batch (48 cookies) and had to trash it! Starting all over again, I found that I didn't add baking soda! Yikes! My lowest grade throughout my 3 years in High School was this darn Home Economics class!...a C—

    I guess the Home Economics teacher felt sorry for me and didn't want to see me suffer again in class. :o(
  • Paniolo_GalPaniolo_Gal Member
    edited February 2016
    COOKING DISASTER 2.1: "Rock Hard Hen"

    My ex-coworker gave me an easy "fool-proof" recipe for Chinese Shoyu Chicken that her 9-year old could make without any problems. Well...I also screwed that one up as well. Reading the recipe verbiage very carefully...I thought it said to boil chicken in the sauce for 30 minutes. Well after 30 minutes...all the soy/ginger sauce had completely evaporated to a thick black crusty film and my chicken turned out charcoal black as well and hard like "Rock-Hard Jerky" and the whole chicken was literally petrified and stuck to the bottom of my pot, even when turning it up-side-down! I ended up throwing the pot away! I didn't realize as it wasn't "clearly" written in the recipe, that I had to bring the chicken in the sauce up to a boil then simmer for 30 minutes. :oP I guess the recipe wasn't "Fool Proof". LOL!

    Now that's only 2 of a bookful of my cooking disasters! My husband saw a few disasters in person so he never, never asks me to cook anything. We were afraid I would burn down the kitchen one day! But it's very odd...in science class, I did very well in chemistry. I just have no talent/interest in making edible foods! :o(
  • VA_in_CAVA_in_CA Member
    edited February 2016
    When I was about 14, I think, my parents went away for the weekend and left me in charge. I had been babysitting for my brother and sister since I was 11, but this was my very first time to babysit overnight. So I felt very "grown up" for that weekend. For our dinner on Saturday night, I decided to make beef and gravy (this came in a can, already made, and needed only to be heated up). To go with it, I thought mashed potatoes would be nice. So I peeled and cut up some potatoes and boiled them until they were done, and then I mashed them with a mashing tool as I had seen my father do. (They didn't yet have those dried potato flakes that you reconstitute with water to make instant mashed potatoes, so I had no choice but to do it the legitimate way.) So I put the hot beef and gravy on plates, and then added the mashed potatoes. The result was pretty awful because I didn't know you had to drain the water off before you mashed the potatoes. What a watery mess. PS. I made my brother and sister eat it. We all choked it down, somehow.
  • Paniolo_GalPaniolo_Gal Member
    edited February 2016
    LOL! The imagery of trying to eat the watery mashed potatoes with a fork left me with a sore stomach from laughing VA_in_CA! You could have fooled your younger siblings into believing it was a "potato soup"!
  • VA_in_CAVA_in_CA Member
    Yuck. Even as soup it would have been disgusting. Besides, it was already on plates. I was lucky, though. I got to make all my cooking mistakes trying them out on my poor siblings or myself. In 1964 I bought a house and moved out of the women officers' quarters. (I was a pioneer in those days because young single women did not buy houses. I was 25.) It was such fun having my own house and land. I puttered around in the garden and played around with recipes in the kitchen. I enjoyed cooking in those days. Not so much any more. It's very boring to cook for one now. But I was actually pretty good at it when I was married with a family. I would invent my own recipes, even. Another time, I'll tell you of a non-cooking, garden-related disaster that was also caused by my ignorance. But now it's almost 3 AM, so I"m going to bed.
  • marepowermarepower Member
    I have actually become a very decent cook. However, there was the time when my son and I first moved out of my parent's house. My first attempt at meatloaf. I gathered all my ingrediants, including a touch of white vinegar which my family has used for years. I made the meatloaf and was very proud of myself. Let me tell you, my son was the pickest eater on the face of the earth. I always eat my vege- tables first. He just sat there. I repeatedly told him to eat his meatloaf (he did not eat vegetables). He had taken several bites before I got to mine, and let me just say this. I said "Dakota, take the meatloaf outside and give it to the dogs". The next morning he came running in my bedroom and said "mom, mom, the dogs didn't even eat it!!" It took me many years before I attempted it again. :(
  • VA_in_CAVA_in_CA Member
    That's pretty funny. Wonder what you did wrong. One time we went camping at the beach for Thanksgiving Weekend. I brought a nice baking chicken about 2 to 3 pounds, and the big heavy kind of aluminum foil. I wrapped the chicken in the foil and put it right into the embers of the campfire and let it cook for a couple of hours. Unfortunately not enough meat cooked, so we just had veggies and stove top stuffing. The chicken was crispy on the outside, cooked for the outer half inch, and the entire rest of the chicken was completely raw. It was embarrassing. And worse, we were all starving from all that fresh salt air.
  • Paniolo_GalPaniolo_Gal Member
    edited February 2016
    ROFLMAO! @marepower...That's on par with my kind of cooking attempts come join our "Chefs-de-Disgrace Club"! The funniest part of your story was that even the dogs wouldn't eat your meatloaf! I've had that happen to me too. AUWE! Maybe it was the white vinegar? :oD
  • marepowermarepower Member
    To this day my son won't even try my meatloaf. Even though its quite good now. Yes it was the vinegar. There's a reason you measure that crap! Chicken seems to be difficult at times for me too. :(
  • Paniolo_GalPaniolo_Gal Member
    edited February 2016
    COOKING DISASTER 2.2: A "Blackened" "Thanksgiving" "Disaster"!

    LOL! @VA_in_CA that beach-side cookout with the half raw chicken reminded me of the time my girlfriends and I (sophomore year in highschool) tried to prepare a roast turkey for our social club's Thanksgiving dinner. We had a nice sized Butterball turkey but bought it frozen the morning of the party. (poor planning)... We tried to thaw it out all morning and afternoon. However, as time was running out before our party started...we had the
    "brilliant"     idea to raise the temperature of the oven thinking that the turkey would roast faster and get done in time...bad decision!

    Our turkey was blackened and crusty on the outside...we had to remove all the skin as it looked disgusting and carefully sliced the areas that were cooked so that we had something on the dinner table and threw the rest of the turkey back in the oven in hopes that the deeper part of the turkey would get cooked as the party progressed. Yuck...the breast meat was DRY...DRY...DRY! It was more like Turkey Jerky! :oP

  • KMMKMM Member
    OK; I can gross you guys out. Last week of exams at UMD when I was trying vegetarian fare. Way back when. No bucks soybeans...raw; which I had to freeze. Only thing in cupboard was cans of tuna... So soybean tuna soup. Bad, bad, bad. These days I am a good cook and foodie, but that was the most inedible dish I ever made. No longer a vegetarian, although make great veggie dishes, just no soybeans...no tofu.:)
  • KMMKMM Member
    Last roommate left during exams. Nothing in frig. No money... At 17 what do you do. Tried to eat it. No go. Gross! :)
  • Paniolo_GalPaniolo_Gal Member
    Ahh! I love Edamame! But Raw??? UGH! >:oP I guess you didn't have a microwave back then... Did you have a hotplate and a pot for boiling? Any salt or garlic salt? Raw...cringe!
  • KMMKMM Member
    We are talking early 70s. We did not have a microwave, it was all stovetop. And yes, only had oregano. Bad, bad, bad. Not even cheap wine or beer to wash it down. Cured me of any soybean dishes. Cannot touch Tofu.:)
  • KMMKMM Member
    The soybeans were cooked down. Followed the basic recipe for cooking soybeans. No garlic, no salt, poor me. Lost a couple of lbs.:)
  • Paniolo_GalPaniolo_Gal Member
    edited February 2016
    LOL! I can imagine...what a diet! In our Islands...tofu is used in all sorts of local dishes...not that I can cook any of these dishes. But today, they have instant miso soup with dehydrated tofu cubes, sliced seaweed & chopped green onions...all you do is add hot water and let it set. That is my speed. :oP
  • Paniolo_GalPaniolo_Gal Member
    edited February 2016
    A NEW TWIST ON "TWIRLING CANDY"!

    ROTFLMAO! For those of us who have problems preparing "attractive" edible food...We have the Foodini! A 3-D Food Printer! Shortcoming...we have to still cook or bake the food! :oP
    Note: Knowledge about the Foodini was found by slewpy! :oD

    A video of a few creative 3D edible food printers like
    Foodini, ChefJet Pro by 3D Systems, Candy, Bocusini, and Barilla!
    From Tech HD via YouTube

    Delicious, Making Food From 3D Printer:
    from Payu-Spot via YouTube

    MORE FOR THE BUSY OR LAZY PROFESSIONAL PASTRY CHEF,
    CHOCOLATIER OR CONFECTIONER...
    World's First Chocolate 3D Printer!
    From EPSRvideo via YouTube

    3-D Food Printer Makes Dessert!
    From CNNMoney via YouTube

    MOVE OVER MICROWAVE!
  • DelamontDelamont Member
    My family nickname is 'The Chef,' so I'm no kitchen neophyte. But once, after having made my best pie crust ever, and filling it with green tomatoes (’cause we had a ton of them), I ended up with something that tasted like...ketchup pie.

    Then there was the grape jelly that never set. Because I had used salt instead of sugar. Cured me of storing stuff in mason jars unlabeled.
  • KMMKMM Member
    edited February 2016
    Oh. There was the wholewheat, homemade yeast bread I made in college at home. I set it on the front porch to raise...in the sun...and then there was the growing, growing, growing alien brown glob... Haha
  • bigherbiebigherbie Member
    Married 2 months (living in a small townhouse) , in-laws and brother-in-law coming for Sunday dinner. Bought a large beef prime rib roast. Did all the prep work (according to the cookbook), put it in the oven, didn't fit, so put it down on the lowest rack, after a bit started burning on the bottom, poured water in the pan, better, but then that evaporated, so took it out, cut it in half and stuck it back in. We ended up having baked potatoes, broccoli, lots of bread and butter and wine. Everyone was a very good sport, and, thankfully, I have gotten better in the kitchen... :-)
  • WezzieWezzie Member
    One of my first years married, I had prepared a ham for Easter. Plugged in whole cloves by hand throughout the rind. It was very good. Problem came when my new husband wanted Split Pea and Ham soup. I got the recipe from his mom and followed it exactly. Problem was....she didn't know I had the whole cloves in the rind and I didn't know I was supposed to remove them! Consistency was good and very aromatic! But completely inedible!
  • marepowermarepower Member
    I have a confession. While cooking dinner tonight, decided to check out facebook and this site. Thought my organic carrots/vegetable smelled kind of funny. Went to check, nope still raw. Must be the different kind of oil I used so I decided to flip them over. The other side was black. We had green beans instead!
  • KMMKMM Member
    Do we want to reccomend cooking sites here too? I can, but don't want to change objectives of thread.
  • Paniolo_GalPaniolo_Gal Member
    edited March 2016
    Do we want to reccomend cooking sites here too? I can, but don't want to change objectives of thread.
    The creation of this "Chefs-de-Disgrace" thread was to provide a "venue" where we forum members can participate in creating a collection of fun personal "annecdotes" to share with others. Funny disasters in the kitchen are not the only stories others can share, it can also be other aspects in life as well...such as funny stories at work, play, commuting, sleeping, etc. :oD

    Trivia: The French word "Chef" has nothing to do with cooking, it actually means "Chief", "Leader" or "Head"...a term of the utmost respect. LOL...but in this discussion, I would say it means the Ace of Disgrace! :oD

    Don't forget to provide a "title" for your annecdote so we can easily back track to find your "disgrace" story! If you can use a "racehorse name" or a fractured variation in the title...even better! But no pressure. :oD Example: Rock Hard Hen

    KMM...Perhaps, if you want to share recipes or cooking sites, a different thread can be created. Just a suggestion. :oD
  • jen_bloomjen_bloom Member
    Popcorn Deefrights
    I'm a competent but unambitious cook, so I don't have too many good stories. My most memorable is the first time I made popcorn, when I was about 12 and babysitting, and the kids asked for popcorn. I knew how to make it in a pan on the stove; I just didn't know how to measure it or how much the kernels would grow. So, it just kept coming and coming and coming....

    Then there was the time I tried to make moussaka for Christmas dinner. I put sliced eggplant on a baking sheet and put it in the oven to roast, but the eggplant reacted to the aluminum in the baking sheet and turned a deep black. Not burned, but discolored. I didn't know whether it would poison us. It may seem silly, but at the time it was right up there with the neighbors' dogs stealing the turkey in A Christmas Story--a disaster of epic proportions. I never try a new recipe for a special occasion anymore. (I can't think of a good title for that one, but if I do I'll add it.)
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