I will never again . . . (Part 2)

[Viola da gamba]

mix up salt and sugar again

just preparing for a birthday party and making beef and chicken satay.

Have about a pound of both meats and made the marinade

but i mixed up the salt and sugar pots arrghghhh!!!!

luckily the meat has only been marinating for about an hour but i've

just spent the last 2 hour washing and draining the meat under cold water to see if if any of the meat is recoverable

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I did this while baking a flourless chocolate cake at a friend's (the cake uses crushed almonds instead of flour) - didn't ask which container was which, didn't check until I was *just* taste-testing the batter before pouring it into the pan to go in the oven. Blech. Unsalvageable. Had to go out and buy all the ingredients again.

[browniebaker]

I will never again make not enough mashed potatoes.

My brother, visiting from out of town, asked for seconds and I didn't have any.

Mashed potatoes are easy to make in bulk, taste good the next day, can be used to make shepher's pie and fishcakes and other things, so there's just no excuse for not making enough.

[racheld]

I just found this thread, read just the last four pages, and now am sitting in a puddle!!! And it's all your fault!!

All the blender/mixer spews have given me a good laugh over the memory of my own dear Mammaw, who taught me to cook. She got her first and only Sunbeam mixer for Christmas and made a cake the next day, manual unread. She put six eggs into the bowl and let 'er rip. She told us about the disaster later at Sunday dinner, and my Mom asked if the eggs had gone to waste.

I can hear her VERY Southern accent replying, "WASTE 'em? They uz awwwwl up in the top of the Hie-yuss!!!!"

First time she ever mopped the ceiling.

[babka]

My dearly beloved roommate, an accomplished cook in her own right albeit somewhat new to temperature-sensitive meat dishes, was cooking lamp chops last night for the first time. She called out a question about the temperature. "135," I shouted back. "Not even close," she said, pulling the temperature probe out and stuffing them back under the broiler. "But the temperature is still going up on the probe," she said, holding it out in front of the counter.

Five minutes later, she pulled them out to check again. "Should I use the same hole or poke another one?" she asked. "It's an awfully big hole." "Test it in another spot," I said, and she put it in another chop while I came out to check. "Still not there," she said. I looked at the digital read-out, then looked at the probe, which seemed curiously fat. Oh.

"It works a bit better," I said, pulling the plastic out of the chop, "with the cover off."

[peppyre]

I will never again attempt to cook with walking pneumonia. Apparently, I'm a little loopy still. I really want comfort food right now and decided to make my grandma's rice pudding. Well at 3:30pm I put it in the oven at 300. Of course, I can't smell anything right now either. I just pulled a black lump out of my oven. I don't know how I'm ever going to get that dish clean.

I'm going back to bed...

[lesfen]

I will never again ask the man of the house to do the dishes. He's not helpless, but I think he thinks that if he does a crappy enough job, he'll never have to do it again. He's already been banned from loading the dishwasher, but I thought he could be trusted to hand wash the stuff that can't go in there. Picture it... ask him to do the dishes, go upstairs to take a nice hot shower, halfway through said shower remember that your prized 40-year-old cast aluminum skillet is down there unprotected. Nooooooo!!! Wet, soapy, hysterical, towel flapping in the wind, running downstairs screaming, "Don't wash my pan! Don't wash my pan!!!" There he is, god bless him, with my skillet in one hand and the Barkeepers Friend in the other. Luckily, he had only scrubbed at the outside of it. After I got cleaned up, I gave him a lesson in skillet maintenance... he was giving me that look that boys give their mothers at Sears when they have to go shopping for slacks. Eyes rolling all over the place.

[Kevin72]

The setup:

I turned on the wrong burner, which happened to have a glass-top pasta pot lid over it. Come into the kitchen after a few minutes and realize what has happened. Here's my internal dialogue.

I reach for it instinctively and then stop short.

"Hoo, grabbing a lid that's been sitting on a burner for a few minutes? THAT would have been one for the 'I Will Never Again' thread on e-G, eh? Okay, just grab it with tongs and put it somewhere to cool off. Better hurry, it's starting to smell like the sealant's melting. Careful . . . careful . . . got it! Now where to put it? The sink! Good idea! "

>splash<

"Hmm. Maybe I should have let that cold water out first, it may not be good for the glass---"

CCCCCCCccccccccccccccccrakkkk!

Next ten minutes are spent fishing glass out of the bottom of a sink filled with water. Pretty much was a no-win situation from the start, I guess.

[kappaw]

After watching this thread for a long time, I finally have an oops to share. Another burner mistake.

As an owner of a glass top electric cook top (which I love) I’ve always felt a bit smug because I’ve gone years without a mishap more serious than the occasional escaped potato that lands on the burner. Well, no more feeling smug for me!

Monday evening…making pad thai. Rice noodles have been cooked and are in the sink draining. So far, so good. Heating the frying pan to high heat, check the recipe and it calls for some brown sugar. OK, grab it from the cupboard and promptly plop it on the still very hot burner that cooked the noodles just moments before. Oooh noooo! But I’m fast, right? I can grab the plastic bag before it melts, right? Not. I yank the bag off the burner and 2 pounds of brown sugar flies all over the stove and into the now very hot sauté pan. I am left with molten brown sugar, smoking plastic bag, much scrubbing (after everything had cooled) and dinner about 45 minutes later than planned.

Seems like the sort of mistake that one makes only once…I hope.

k8

[tamiam]

This is my favorite thread on all of eG. Even without photos, you all give me the absolute best mental images. Grazie.

My story is really about my boyfriend's employee. He and I are kind of the food gods in his workplace. This speaks more to their lack of experience/adventurousness than to any greatness on our part. But we do like to inspire folks to step out and try new things. A really good leftover-lunch of Spanish-style beans made with various sausages and smoked meats impressed one of the young newly marrieds. She asked for the recipe and went off to make it at home. It was the first time she had cooked dry beans, and she was kind of intimidated, but she decided to give it a whirl. Next day she said it came out OK, but not as good as ours. There were tough chewy parts and she thought she did something wrong with the beans.

Turns out that she didn't know you are supposed to remove the plastic sausage casing BEFORE adding it to the bean pot!!

[LJFATS]

About a month ago, I got to work at 10 am as usual, and as usual, there was a case of pork butts smoking over night in the smoker (I hate when they do this). I take them out and check their temp. just in case something happened to the fire. well they were they where between 165 and 170. Next I sample some fresh hot 16 hour smoked pork ass, yummm, then my boss comes up and tells me it was "'bug night'(we cover everything and they bomb) last night. Thow it out. "

EEP!!! My 2 bites didn't make me sick, thowing a case of 16 hour smoked pork ass did.

[hitmanoo]

Use a cutting board on my table top without first placing a towel under it.

Simply placing a towel will keep the cutting board stable and prevent any slips that lead to cut fingers.

[Patrick S]

I have a good one, but I don't know if its been mentioned yet.

I will never again crack eggs over a mixer bowl with the mixer operating. A little too much butter on the fingertips, and the egg shell is dropped into the mixer bowl, broken in a million pieces, and incorporated into the batter.

[fifi]

I have a good one, but I don't know if its been mentioned yet.

I will never again crack eggs over a mixer bowl with the mixer operating. A little too much butter on the fingertips, and the egg shell is dropped into the mixer bowl, broken in a million pieces, and incorporated into the batter. 

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That is definitely a good one. I will have to remember that as I have been guilty of doing the same thing. I did something similar some time ago while making a fritata. I was cracking the 10th egg or so into the pan when someone stepped on the dog's tail, she yelped and I jumped crushing a whole egg shell in my hand and dropped it into the fritata. It was an exceptionally brittle shell and I had to get the tweezers to get it all out.

Note to self: Crack the egg into a bowl you nincompoop!

[arbuclo]

I will never again allow my husband to make guacamole unsupervised. How hard could it be...avocado, chile, salt, cilantro, bit of onion? Gave the ingredients to him then let him go for it. He put it all into a handcrank food processor to blend. I taste it..."why's it crunchy?" I ask. Ha! He forgot that avocados have pits! ROFL The amazing thing is that the pit chunks were pretty small. He musta used quite a lot of arm strength with the hand crank food processor.

and then there's Koolaid.... water, Koolaid packet, sugar...even easier than the guacamole. Somehow he forgets the sugar. Pours a glass for our visiting friend who now sends him the Koolaid packets with sugar already added!

[jerkhouse]

I will never again allow my husband to make guacamole unsupervised.  How hard could it be...avocado, chile, salt, cilantro, bit of onion?  Gave the ingredients to him then let him go for it.  He put it all into a handcrank food processor to blend.  I taste it..."why's it crunchy?" I ask.  Ha!  He forgot that avocados have pits!  ROFL        The amazing thing is that the pit chunks were pretty small.  He musta used quite a lot of arm strength with the hand crank food processor.   

and then there's Koolaid....  water, Koolaid packet, sugar...even easier than the guacamole.  Somehow he forgets the sugar.    Pours a glass for our visiting friend who now sends him the Koolaid packets with sugar already added!

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The guacamole story reminds me of something I did back in high school. We had some sort of "international day" where all the students who took foreign languages would make something relevant (all the kids who took french made crepes, etc). I took spanish so I was going to make gaucamole. I bought a bunch of avocados the night before and took them over to my friends house to make it; the only problem is that I hadn't taken account of the avocado's need to ripen; so I had a bunch of super hard avocados on my hands. Knowing at this point that the recipe was going to be crap no matter what I did, I decided to soften it up by throwing some extra ripe bananas in the mix, and for the hell of it, a bunch of Dave's insanity sauce. It was totally disgusting, but one of the janitors liked it so much that he asked my spanish teacher if he could take it home. ???

[Viola da gamba]

I have a good one, but I don't know if its been mentioned yet.

I will never again crack eggs over a mixer bowl with the mixer operating. A little too much butter on the fingertips, and the egg shell is dropped into the mixer bowl, broken in a million pieces, and incorporated into the batter. 

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Mmmmm - extra roughage!!

[hitmanoo]

I will never again allow my husband to make guacamole unsupervised.  How hard could it be...avocado, chile, salt, cilantro, bit of onion?  Gave the ingredients to him then let him go for it.  He put it all into a handcrank food processor to blend.  I taste it..."why's it crunchy?" I ask.  Ha!  He forgot that avocados have pits!  ROFL        The amazing thing is that the pit chunks were pretty small.  He musta used quite a lot of arm strength with the hand crank food processor.   

and then there's Koolaid....  water, Koolaid packet, sugar...even easier than the guacamole.  Somehow he forgets the sugar.    Pours a glass for our visiting friend who now sends him the Koolaid packets with sugar already added!

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Reminds me of a dish I was served that had minced garlic. Not a real problem except that the garlic was not yet peeled.

[Luckylies]

lemon curd is not duck fat, especially not on potatoes.

[NulloModo]

I will not try to cut slices off of a loaf of flaxbread I just baked after drinking Bacardi 151 with friends.

In my defense, we weren't intending to drink anything that powerful, we just discovered we were out of anything else palatable. Oh well, the fingertip will grow back... and hey, my fingerprints now won't match what the state has on file should I ever decide to commit a felony ;).

[RonC]

My wife reminded me that I should never again grab chicken broth instead of lemon juice when making sorbet. Tasty is was NOT!

[Smithy]

My wife reminded me that I should never again grab chicken broth instead of lemon juice when making sorbet. Tasty is was NOT!

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I went the other way round making a lamb and rice pilaf one night. I thought that cup of frozen chicken broth was unusually yellow, but it wasn't it was thawed and pitched into the dish that I realized it was frozen Meyer lemon juice. Man, that finished dish had pucker power...

[snowangel]

Back track to last Saturday. Don't get so busy dancing and singing to the Mamas and the Papas that you forget to put the eggs in the buttermil pancake batter.

[fifi]

Heh heh . . .

How did they turn out? You could just rename them: "These aren't pancakes, they are gabanaras, an obscure recipe out of the highlands of Peru."

[snowangel]

Heh heh . . .

How did they turn out? You could just rename them: "These aren't pancakes, they are gabanaras, an obscure recipe out of the highlands of Peru."

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Peter declared that they were the consistency of fried play dough. We had a good laugh. I just hit the griddle with a mess of butter, let it foam, and did some easy over eggs. At least I didn't waste precious blueberries we gathered at the Cabin (and froze) on this batch! Then we put on Trout Fishing in America and ate our eggs to "My Hair Had A Party Last Night." Memories are made in the kitchen. Bet my kids remember these "pancakes" far longer than most they have had!

[fifi]

I am betting that they also remember your dancing to the Mamas and Papas. That is a really good thing.