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Post by imec on Aug 16, 2009 22:36:18 GMT
Shamelessly stealing casimira's thread idea from the gardening department...
Tell us about your screwups in the kitchen.
Last week I roasted a couple of chickens. After dinner I placed the two carcasses in a large ziploc bag with the intention of freezing them and making soup with them when I had more time. Well, the ziploc bag was an inferior version from a box that I had picked up from our local "dollar store". As I picked the bag up off the counter, the damn thing split and one of the carcasses fell on the floor. I swore, gave it a quick rinse off and grabbed a new bag. "Won't it just happen again?" says Mrs I. "No, don't be ridiculous, it was just a freak occurrence". I threw both the bloody things out after the new bag split sending both of them onto the dusty basement floor.
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 17, 2009 1:55:44 GMT
I don't do this any more, but one thing I learned in life is that preparing any kind of pasta without mishap is pretty well impossible if you're stoned -- especially the smaller kinds, for some reason.
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Post by imec on Aug 17, 2009 2:29:08 GMT
I don't do this any more, but one thing I learned in life is that preparing any kind of pasta without mishap is pretty well impossible if you're stoned -- especially the smaller kinds, for some reason. I wouldn't know a thing about that....  |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 17, 2009 10:52:51 GMT
The one that always stands out in my mind which I recounted in another thread "way back", had to do with making homemade horseradish in the glass blender with a crack in it and ending up with essence of horseradish root on ceiling,walls,curtains etc.
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Post by livaco on Aug 17, 2009 12:17:53 GMT
Well, I have been know to make drinks in the blender after forgetting to put the cover back on. Which is always fun for everybody to watch....
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Post by imec on Aug 17, 2009 13:28:55 GMT
Well, I have been know to make drinks in the blender after forgetting to put the cover back on. Which is always fun for everybody to watch.... ... or wear. |
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 17, 2009 14:27:09 GMT
It's real important not to forget that you have the pressure cooker heating up.
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Post by hwinpp on Aug 18, 2009 7:29:39 GMT
Have you ever blown a pressure cooker? Can it really happen? I thought they had a security/safety vent?
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Post by Deleted on Aug 18, 2009 12:42:27 GMT
Have you ever blown a pressure cooker? Can it really happen? I thought they had a security/safety vent? I never have but know somebody who did and she was seriously burned. don't know if she had a safety valve or whatever but after her accident I never gave a second thought to having one no matter how much people rave about. I've only had one serious burn in my life (inner thigh from muffler on a dirt bike) and it took forever to heal and was very painful. |
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Post by imec on Aug 18, 2009 12:45:39 GMT
I've only had one serious burn in my life (inner thigh from muffler on a dirt bike) and it took forever to heal and was very painful. Why did you have dirt bike in the kitchen? |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 18, 2009 12:48:25 GMT
I've only had one serious burn in my life (inner thigh from muffler on a dirt bike) and it took forever to heal and was very painful. Why did you have dirt bike in the kitchen? Stoned out hippie chick thrill seeker. |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 18, 2009 13:32:38 GMT
My principal mistake is a time-honored classic: salting something that was already salty.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 18, 2009 13:41:36 GMT
My principal mistake is a time-honored classic: salting something that was already salty. Reminds me of Mr. C. cooking tasso (a Cajun smoked pork made from the shoulder butt)for the first time, one New Year's Eve,big pot of black eyed peas for a party we were having. Tasso is real salty and he added salt. There was no getting around it, it was truly ruined.  |
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Post by traveler63 on Aug 18, 2009 14:16:01 GMT
Remember the hot air popcorn poppers??? I had popcorn going into the sink and then onto the floor  |
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 18, 2009 14:35:36 GMT
Pressure cookers build up and trap the steam. There is a vent on the top that's covered with a small, densely heavy but loosely fitting "lid". Because of the way it fits, some steam can always escape, but you still have to make sure the amount of steam built up doesn't exceed the capacity of the vent to disperse it.
And the liquid inside -- the stuff that can boil over and make a mess from a regular pot -- spews dramatically from the teensy hole in the lid of a pressure cooker.
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Post by auntieannie on Aug 20, 2009 21:21:18 GMT
What do you do with cherry toffee?
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 20, 2009 21:28:22 GMT
What do you do with cherry toffee? You tell an amusing anecdote of how you wound up with cherry toffee! |
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Post by auntieannie on Aug 23, 2009 10:58:59 GMT
hum... I am hopeless at funny stories... but basically, I just love cherries. It has to do with growing up and "revising" for school end of year exams ensconsed at the heart of the cherry tree, gobbling the wonderful black rubies that I could reach without using the ladder. The rest were collected by my mom and dad to make runny (but delicious) jam.
So I first bought two handfuls for my pleasure... and forgot them until they had become furry... so when the "Pound a punnet" guy sold cherries, I bought a pack and made jam. And decided mine wouldn't be runny. So I added lots more lemon juice than the recipe prescribed ... and cooked it until setting point, jarred it (there was only enough for one medium full jar and two thirds of a second jar. So I put that second jar in the fridge and urged Maffoo to eat it quickly. (I rarely eat jam these days).
He tried and said "it is solid" to which I answer "I made it solid on purpose, because you like solid jams and marmalades"... but he said it's not solid like that... It is SOLID... ah ... I tried to put a spoon to it and it bounced back! So I left it out of the fridge and thought we would try again that evening or the next morning. That time, the spoon was able to make a slight dent to the surface of the jam, so I put a knife to it, thinking proudly ah! must have made fruit cheese as they call it in England when overcooking jam. Well, the knife got into the jam... and got almost stuck! a kind of newfangled Excalibur for the modern times.. I managed to wrangle the knife out of the pot, but the jam got glued to it!
So here it is ... cherry toffee... any ideas, anyone?
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 23, 2009 16:57:15 GMT
Oh, funny, Annie! That sounds like something I'd do.
Hmmm. Try setting the jar in a pot of very hot water so it will soften enough for you to get the jam out. Then heat your "toffee" very gently with enough water or juice to get the consistency you'd like.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 2, 2009 19:40:09 GMT
I finally remembered to buy black peppercorns for my pepper mill today, so I decided to fill it. Remembering how peppercorns can go wild when you are trying to pour them, I cleverly put the pepper mill in a frying pan, unscrewed the top and filled it without spilling hardly any peppercorns. I was proud of myself, so I picked it up to screw the top back on.
Unfortunately, I had forgotten that the top screw also holds the bottom of the mill on, so I proceeded to release all of the pepper onto the kitchen floor.
I now have a vacuum cleaner bag full of peppercorns.
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Post by bixaorellana on Sept 2, 2009 23:08:32 GMT
Gesundheit!
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Post by auntieannie on Sept 4, 2009 14:48:52 GMT
oh, no! poor peppercorns |
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Post by Don Cuevas on Sept 4, 2009 18:46:52 GMT
Well, I have been know to make drinks in the blender after forgetting to put the cover back on. Which is always fun for everybody to watch.... I once started up my blender with the feed cap down in the beaker. Oops! |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 21, 2009 8:33:55 GMT
One Sunday I cooked a duck breast in red wine and plum sauce. At the end of the meal I had half a duck breast and some sauce left over. I put the duck on a plate and poured the sauce from the pan into a glass bowl and set both duck and sauce on the counter to cool before putting them in the refrigerator.
Then I needed something from the cupboard directly above where I had put the bowl of sauce and the meat. I opened the cupboard door and BAM! a jar jumped out and landed right on top of the sauce bowl. The jar remained whole, but the bowl exploded. For a moment I just stood there, staring in shock at a pool of sauce with evil-looking pieces of broken glass in it and splats of crimson sauce everywhere. Strangely enough, none of it got on me, but there were few other places in the kitchen that escaped. Luckily, my kitchen is nearly stain proof, so the sauce wasn’t the worst part. The glass was. As you may know, heat-resistant glass doesn't break like regular glass. Besides the expected pieces of all sizes and shapes it also breaks into tiny fragments, almost like sand, and these were in all the places the sauce was, plus a few more, making it very difficult to mop up the sauce without risking some cuts. And of course I was standing right in the middle of the area with the most glass – and my feet were bare.
My first act was to take a standing jump away from the glass, to go and get myself some shoes. After I had finished wiping, mopping and vacuuming up the sauce and glass and the adrenaline started to wear off, my big toe started to throb. I hobbled into the bathroom and took off my sandal and found I was bleeding. A pressure test indicated that a shard of glass was lodged in my toe, but no amount of probing with the tweezers could dislodge it, so I ended up by bandaging the toe and hoping the damn thing would work itself out. (It did, after an uncomfortable few days).
The worst casualty was the duck breast. It had been sitting right next to the bowl when the accident happened, and was decorated with tiny glittering pieces of glass. I am not a risk taker, so instead of trying to wash off the glass, I threw it in the trash.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 21, 2009 11:26:31 GMT
And then the next time you wanted duck, you went to McDonald's instead?
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Post by Deleted on Sept 21, 2009 11:39:11 GMT
Nope. I have another one in the freezer and am on the lookout for the perfect recipe to use it in. But I have become very careful about how I stack stuff in my cupboards...
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Post by bixaorellana on Sept 21, 2009 15:57:54 GMT
Icy ~~ you don't have a tape of what you said when the jar fell? ;D
Gawd, I've done that more than once, but always just broke an object. Seeing exquisite food into which you'd put so much effort go into the garbage must have really, really hurt.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 22, 2009 8:43:13 GMT
I almost cried. I was too shocked to say a thing when the accident happened. The swearing started when I saw what had happened to the food.
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