A grandmother is a mother who has a second chance

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Food Disasters I Have Known

This past week I was making dinner when I discovered that I had mistakenly (yes, it definitely was a mistake) taken out the powdered sugar container instead of the flour. And I was making a sauce. I had sauteed the mushrooms, garlic and onions. Then I added the "flour" and thought - wow, it isn't clumping as much as usual. That should have been my first clue, but, alas, no. I added the liquid whisking away and, again, noticing that there were no clumps. I just figured that I was getting pretty good at this. It cooked for awhile. I added the Marsala Wine and noticed that it wasn't thick enough. So I got some hot water and put a tablespoon of "flour" in it to use as a thickener and THAT'S when I noticed that it was a bit shiny and, horrors, it was powdered sugar! I was able to drain the veggies and re-make the sauce and it turned out pretty good (the Marsala masked the extra sweetness).

Apparently somewhere along the way I thought it was a lovely idea to put both the flour and the powdered sugar in similar containers. And store them practically next to each other. So now the powdered sugar has a big red X on top of the container. Hopefully that will work. I know, I could rearrange my cabinet, but that is so much more work than a red X.

I'm no stranger to food mishaps. First one was when I cooked my first turkey and left the little bag o' stuff in the bird when I stuffed it. We've probably all done that at least once (please tell me you have all done that....).

At 40 I finally accepted the fact that I needed reading glasses when I was making baking powder biscuits and used 2T of baking soda instead. They tasted like baked Alka Seltzer. Not good.

In college I had a roommate who wanted to make her family recipe for spaghetti for me. Being Italian, I had doubts about the German "family recipe", but it was two pages long and she really wanted to do it. When we sat down to eat, the sauce had an odd taste which I mistakenly mentioned. She was insulted and insisted that her family had been making this recipe for years. Then SHE tasted it. Turns out that when she copied it she forgot to add the word "garlic" after the word "clove" so she had put 1T of cloves into the sauce. Do NOT try this at home!

And who in the family can forget my youngest stepdaughters first attempt to bake a frozen pie. She took it out of the little pie tin and put it on a cookie sheet. As you might guess, she wound up with a cookie sheet full of melted pie.

Any food disasters in your life?

2 comments:

the thrifty ba said...

i, of course, am perfect in the kitchen! but i had a friend who had no problem with switching up the ingreadients. one time she was making as casseroll and didnt have tuna (i know-i have a case in teh basement) so her thought process was 'well, tuna lives in the warm waters, so i will just use PINEAPPLE since it is a warm climate fruit.
yea-her family hasnt ever forgiven her.

Desert Diva said...

How can I have a "food disaster" when I don't even cook? ;-)