Striving for imperfection

[Adam_Balic]

On Friday we had a Cocktail party at our flat for a friend who had just passed is Ph.D. We had been drinking little bit since about 5:00pm, at around 2:00am somebody asked me what the strange Veg. in the basket was. The Veg. in question was a Jicama (Also known as Yam-bean) I had bought back from DC. I offered to slice some for everybody to taste, but always the idiot I used my Mandolin. On the lattice setting. Mandolin very sharp, Adam very drunk. It took a few slices of Adam for me to notice what was going on. I now have some really cool parallel cuts on my fingers. People were very funny about eating the Jicama, go figure.

[Miss J]

While nothing like as spectacular as Adam's story, I ALWAYS chop my fingernails off while I'm cooking. It's incredibly irritating. I'll be happily chop-chop-chopping along, and all of a sudden - opps! There's a piece of fingernail on the cutting board.

So there you have it: I am a klutz with poor chopping technique.  

Miss J

[tony h]

You want dumb?

Years ago I saw some idiot painting a lattice work of molten chocolate onto an inflated balloon.  When the chocolate sets the balloon is pricked & collapses so fast that you are left with a cage of chocolate.  "I can do that" says I not yet fully appreciating my limitations.

So there I was in my newly painted kitchen with a balloon & pot of chocolate dribbling the molten stuff decoratively around.  Of course, half way through the bloody thing went bang!  Bits of molten chocolate went flying across the room in all directions - over me & over the new kitchen.  Just about every single thing in the kitchen was hit - every cup, hanging pot & pan; light sockets & shades, on the table, under the table & chairs - you could even make out a chocolate silhouette of me against the wall when my body got hit most.  It was in my hair, all over my glasses, in my nostrils - some even got down my shirt & in my socks.  

My partner ran down to see what on earth had happened as all that could be heard was loud hysterical laugher  - tears & chocolate steaming down my face.

That's not all - when I came 'round - a good 10 min later - I stared at all that was surrounding me & said - "maybe the chocolate was too hot".  Another balloon was blown - 5 min later - bang!  Even months later we'd still find little bits of chocolate here & there.

[Adam_Balic]

Ooh, that reminds me of after we had been diving for Abalone, I was preparing them in a friends kitchen, but forgot to clean out their stomach contents. Blam, blam, blam, squirt, squirt, squirt. Abalone shite all over the walls and ceiling. Very stinky.

[Liza]

Oh if only..."You got abalone shite in my chocolate!" "YOU got chocolate in my abalone!"

Hello, my name is Liza, and I am an habitual finger-tip-slicer. Making chicken stock before my brother's wedding on Saturday, sure enough...slice, there goes my ring finger. (Paging Dr. Freud!)

[CathyL]

My most dramatic cooking disaster involved a heavy-duty drip pan for my smoker, sent by a Suthrun friend who had his village smithy fashion one for each of us.  I half-filled the pan with water, set it over the coals, plopped a chicken on the grill, and wandered off.  When I came back two hours later, the smoker thermometer said 450 and when I popped the lid to see if the water had boiled away I looked straight down into flaming coals.  The drip pan had melted.  Completely.  After everything had cooled and I stopped laughing, I picked a number of metal blobs out of the charcoal.

My friend told the village smithy, who claimed it was impossible to melt the pan and muttered several obscenities about dumb Yankee girls.  I had three of the most interesting blobs encased in a cube of lucite, and sent it to my friend as a paperweight.

[Wilfrid]

When I do the fancy fast chopping of vegetables, I regularly catch my fingernails.  I don't cut right through them, happily, but it ruins the polish!

Adam, I remember one of my friends, rustling up a snack after a night in the pub, managed to stick her hand in the food mixer while it was mixing.  Ouch.  I have to say, jicama is not that exciting a thing to be cooking at 2am!

[tommy]

did anyone ever try to cool down overheated oil by adding water?  i did.

[Adam_Balic]

Ouch.  I have to say, jicama is not that exciting a thing to be cooking at 2am!

See above under "Drunk". Actually, it was a good party. Had to call the police and somebody tried to beat me up with a golf club.

[tommy]

Had to call the police and somebody tried to beat me up with a golf club.

you know what they say:  it's not a party until the cops and a kennedy show up.

[Adam_Balic]

Hmmm. The Kennedy must have been the Gate-crasher who tried to feel-up my wife.    

[tony h]

no, that was tommy

[col klink]

One of the larger messes I've made was when I was in high school and I was at my grilfriends house. They didn't have much Hershey's chocolate left in the squeeze bottle so I thought: "Hey! I can use centrifugal force to get my chocolate!" Of course I thought that by just closing the top I'd be safe, but I was wrong and chocolate sauce went all over the kitchen, including the overhead fluorescent lights with the grill diffuser that was nearly impossible to clean.

Of course I've destroyed many-o-cookware by putting them on the stove and forgetting. Currently there's an aluminum dutch oven in my back yard with a melted bottom and bubbled non-stick coating.

[tommy]

i mention "kennedy" only because one of them beat some girl to death with a golf club.  any wife-feeling-up would certainly be handled by yours truly, as BLH so graciously pointed out.  

[Rachel Perlow]

And I thought I was a klutz! I can usually manage to chop my veggies w/out incident, but I've sliced my left middle finger on several different occasions. I can still recall how each scar was acquired (usually slicing fruit while held in hand instead of on a cutting board). Unattentiveness led to the burning of a favorite skillet, really big flames, thankfully I had the lid to contain the flames nearby. Lots of small burns, even one on my foot from dropping a little almost boiling water. Tattling on Jason: recent grilling had a major flare up. I was yelling, shut the lid and turn off the gas - He ran inside to get the tongs to save the food, got to have your priorities!

Tommy - water on hot oil? Even I'm not that brain damaged!

[Basildog]

i do recall hearing of a woman who whilst drunk and wanting to make chips for her friends, added water to her chip pan to "stretch it out a bit".result one burned down house

My own highlight was being asked by my head chef to go down to the store and bring back an 8ft diameter mirror for a wedding display. Yes I dropped it and brought back many many little mirrors. Kept my job (no idea why)

[Priscilla]

Can one really cook without getting some cuts and burns and whatnot?

And once I stupidly neglected to remove my lovingly cheesecloth-wrapped bouquet garni before bunging a vegetable soup into the food processor for pureement.  Just wasn't happening, at all.

Priscilla

[Basildog]

Oh i just remembered a recent highlight of stupidity. Saffron poached Pears but replaced the castor sugar with Salt. The containers looked similar ok! When cooled i was going to put them in a jar for storage, but thought they looked a bit odd. So i had a taste..mmmmmmmmmm

[tommy]

And once I stupidly neglected to remove my lovingly cheesecloth-wrapped bouquet garni before bunging a vegetable soup into the food processor for pureement.  Just wasn't happening, at all.

LOL!  classic.

i don't know if this is appropriate, or even entertaining, but last summer we were at a beach and had 2 of those outdoor grills fired up, each with a 3 lb beautifully marinated pork loin.  we were all very pleased with ourselves until a seagull came down a grabbed a pork loin with its beak.  it got it about 3 feet from the grill before it realized that it wasn't gaining an altitude.  i was quite impressed with the strength and the b*lls that that bird had.

yes, we rinsed off the sand and put it back on, this time guarding it veeeeery closely.

[Wilfrid]

Confession: when I was younger and less kitchen-savvy, I did throw water on a burning grill to put the fire out.  I think I realised as the water was sort of in mid-air that I had heard this was not a good idea.

The effect was spectacular.  Sheet of flame right across the kitchen.  Somehow it went out - I think I threw a lot of water.  

[=Mark]

Every fool knows you don't try to cook an egg in the microwave, right?  Well, I had a plan...

If I fill a 2 cup pyrex measuring cup with cold water and put the egg in it, the microwaves will heat the water which will then cook the egg, right?   Wrong!!!

A couple minutes after turning on the power there was a spectacular boom, and a second later there was a gush and splash as most of what had become a watery egg drop soup (With added calcium from the shell!) came glorping under the door.  

I can recommend this as a great way to clean a microwave oven as you have no choice but to thouroghly scrub every exposed surface of half cooked watery egg.  Not something you would want to leave to the next day...

[Jinmyo]

Knife right through my left hand. Ha ha ha ha.  

Be careful out there, kidz!

[Pitter]

Ah, I think I beat you all, and it was so innocent!  I always used one of those two-chamber espresso pots, probably twice every day -- the type where you fill the water in the bottom chamber, and put the grounds in the upper chamber.  No problem: it always works.  Well, my friend kindly cleaned the pot one day and removed the screen from the bottom of the top chamber, naturally to clean it, and since I never even knew that such screen existed, and thus never saw that it was missing, I never "missed it."  I'm sauteeing stuff on the stovetop, waiting for my espresso to happen, but nothing seems to be happening.  I wonder, huh, and see some kind of clot at the tip of the spout where the water is supposed to steam off, and start prodding it with a tine.  Prod, prod, WHOOPS, with coffee grounds over every square inch of my rented kitchen complete with pegboard, and first degree burns all over ever square inch of exposed skin.  You see, with the screen missing, the coffee grounds migrated to the top of the funnel, where they hung out and became quite angry under extreme pressure.  At the hospital they actually lifted the burn from my body, including my face, by applying cold, water soaked rags.  It took about 6 hours.

I tossed the pot, but not the friend -- he meant well.

[jaybee]

On Friday we had a Cocktail party at our flat for a friend who had just passed his Ph.D.

Ouch, that must have hurt! Was it in a frame?

My disaster;  Kid working in a pet store, slicing horsemeat into cubes for dog food (c1954).  Lost my concentration and sliced into my thumb, just above the knuckle.  Blood. Pain. Rush to the docs.  Walk into office holding hand chest high wrapped in blood stained gauze. "Cut my hand", I say.  Nurse turns pale and nearly faints.  I'm still wearing my butcher's apron which is covered with large wet blood and full of chunks and bits of red raw horsemeat. The scar reminds me to pay attention when slicing.

[Adam_Balic]

Every fool knows you don't try to cook an egg in the microwave, right?  Well, I had a plan...

OHoHoHOH. I have a microwave story too! Although it's not strickly about food, well human food anyway. I was microwaving a one litre bottle of liquified sheep shit and agar (jelling agent) at work (to feed to some parasitic worms I was working on). Lid was too tight, result, large explosion. The door of the microwave was torn off and hot sheep shit lava was splatted on everything in the room, which then cooled and jelled. Took me days to clean up.

Still don't trust microwaves. Only last week I was micowaving some tripe and it exploded. Stupid machines really.