Kitchen Catastrophies

The fact is that I feel comfortable in the kitchen and friends generally think that nothing goes wrong in my kitchen. The fact is, also,that sometimes friends are wrong and bad things happen to all cooks! When I got married at 18 years old, by biggest worry about marriage was, "What will I cook for the rest of my life?" I was overwhelmed with the thought of making one meal, let alone . . . I don't even want to do the math! Nothing like taking on the world all at once. Well, the meals only needed to be cooked one at a time and I would say that a big reason I started liking it is because my H always gave me positive comments.


The other day, I started thinking about some of disasters I've had in my kitchen and I thought it might be fun to laugh at them now and see what else comes out of the woodwork (or other people's kitchens...) Now, this is not about the milk that boiled over or the carton of milk that got dropped, and you know where that all goes . . . who would have thought you have to wash your whole kitchen? Here are seven things that come to mind:

1) Cooking for a group of about 25 people in a tiny kitchen in Lithuania - I decided to add the left-over porridge from breakfast to the bun dough . . . which I was mixing up and planning to have ready for lunch. Sounds good? Well, for some reason the dough became so sticky that I could not handle it. It was impossible to form buns because it stuck like glue to my hands . . . and I didn't have time to play! Finally, with lots of flour on my hands and washing them continuously and using more flour, I got some forms onto the pans. They got baked and devoured, in fact they were some of the best buns ever!!

2) My first batch of cinnamon buns turned out to be hard little nibbles that no one wanted to eat. The first batch of bread dough I made got chucked onto the counter - and luckily not at my mom who was in the kitchen and probably finished the work. Yeast doughs have become my favorite only because of persistence.

3) Once when I was canning peaches, the bottom of a jar fell out as I lifted it. Now, years later, I still feel like the contents are going to fall out and I have to hold something under the jar, just in case.

4) While visiting our kids in Indonesia, I was cooking some custard for waffles. As I was stirring the pudding, little black dots started appearing and multiplying. I was curious and lifted one onto a spoon and had a good close look . . . it was moving!! Somehow the heat was causing the eggs to hatch or whatever they do and the pudding was . . . well you might say 'full of extra protein'. We tried to determine if it came from the eggs that, when they purchase them, are not even refrigerated. Then we inspected the flour and noticed that it was full of life! The scary thing is that we never would have noticed if we'd used it for baking.

5) Whenever I see a recipe that tells you to first cook the vegetables and then blend them to make a cream soup, I don't follow those recipe instructions because, once when I did that, the blender lid popped off and I had tomato soup all over the place. Nothing I hate more!
I'll find ways to get around those instructions, like blending some of the vegetables before cooking them and chopping the rest.

6) One day I was in the kitchen just minding my own business (not even near the sink) when suddenly the water line under the sink burst and water came gushing out. I couldn't even get to the turn off under the sink because the water was hot. I made a panicky phone call and found out that I needed to turn off the shut off on the hot water tank. In the short time that this took, the water was already pouring down the wall downstairs! I can't even imagine if I hadn't been home.

7) We left on holidays part way through our kitchen reno, leaving a key with the painters. Our son came home and checked up on them and one day the stench in the house could not be covered with paint smell any longer. He had to find out ... started checking and found that the fridge had been left unplugged. Someone had needed to get behind it and left it unplugged for days. . . maybe a week. It stank so bad he couldn't even clean it out himself and if he did, no containers would have been salvaged. My dear mom came and cleaned it all up before we came home.