So I just put a pumpkin pie in the oven. As I was making it I re-read the ingredients list multiple times because I have fucked up pumpkin pie twice.
First time, I forgot to add the eggs. That was not good.
The second time, I set the timer so I could turn the oven down from 425 to 350 after 15 minutes, and I got up and turned off the timer without turning down the temperature.
Let’s just say that the results each time were suboptimal!
My third specialty is putting something on the stove to reheat it, or putting water on to boil so I can make my cocoa-wheats. (Fuck you cocoa-wheats haters. Fight me.) I find that nothing good happens when you forget to turn the knob on the stove to, you know, add the heat.
Anyone else have anything to contribute on this front?
*No politics, no hot takes, no blaming, no predicting, no whining about emojis, no random music links. Just cooking and baking.
Can we do it? Will this post win the award for the fewest comments ever? I guess we’ll find out!
cope
Always take the plastic wrap off a roast before putting it in the oven.
Steve LaBonne
I’m 69 and a bit worried about having trouble retrieving words and names, so please forgive me for saying that this post is kinda reassuring. ;)
WaterGirl
@cope: Was it the smell of melting plastic that gave it away? Probably not salvageable? Just guessing.
WaterGirl
@Steve LaBonne: I’m not sure mine is age-related.
I had a similar issue when i was a little girl. I made jello all by myself when I was 5 or 6 or 7, and it was very exciting. When I made it the second time, it turned out perfectly, as well.
By the third time, I didn’t need any directions! It’s so simple!
*forgot that the first part of the water you add has to be boiling. oops.
pluky
1 – Read the recipe! Inventory one’s stock, and make a list of things in need of purchase.
2 – Read the recipe again assembling needed ingredients, utensils and cookware, in the order of their use (mise en place for the cognoscenti). BTW, should be “prepared ingredients – sliced, diced, chopped, measured out . . .”.
3 – Having read the recipe at least twice (more doesn’t hurt!), FOLLOW DIRECTIONS!
4 – Clean up as you go. Less clutter is easier to work in.
SleepyMonster
How about frantically and repeatedly bailing turkey juice into a bowl with a baster because you forgot to buy a roasting pan and wisely decided a cookie sheet with a 3/4″ lip was reasonable? No idea what I was thinking. The turkey was ok, but the oven did cleaning after.
prufrock
My 14 year old daughter and I made the Alton Brown pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving, except we did a graham cracker crust instead of ginger snap.
Rave reviews!
Gin & Tonic
I will forever recall the smell that results when you put a pot of (intended) hard-boiled eggs on the stove and leave it long after all the water boils off. This was a favorite of my mother’s – put the eggs on to boil, go upstairs to her office, concentrate on some task for far too long, and….
I moved out fifty years ago, and I swear I can still smell it.
Rachel Bakes
Pecan pie for thanksgiving. Baked at 425 for 10 minutes then turned it down to 375. Thought, “why did the oven start preheating?” Turned it off, reset. Still preheated. ??? Oh well. Thermostat is wonky. Left it as is and walked away. 20 minutes later it’s a blackened pecan pie. I had set it for 465 not 375.
did the exact same thing last year. I think the squirrels hang out in anticipation of a sugar rush with the pecans when I toss the wrecked pie out for the critters.
dmsilev
@cope: Relatedly, if you get a bird with the organs etc neatly packaged in a little bag, be sure to remove bag from bird before cooking (not direct experience, but happened to a friend).
WaterGirl
@pluky: So you never screw anything up? Wow, that’s impressive.
I hate recipes that say “add the remaining ingredients” without telling you the fine print that the qty for sugar (or whatever) in the ingredient list is to be broken up between two different stages.
Michael Bersin
It snowed this morning. Less than an inch. Sipping a libation. Hard to realty screw up a rum and coke. Watching a mindless movie on the TV machine. Seemed like the right thing to do.
My dear aunt would make a meatloaf recipe (fabulous comfort food) which included boiled eggs in the center. There was the time she forgot to peel the eggs…
Steve LaBonne
@WaterGirl: I don’t really think mine is either, I’ve always been absent-minder. But the good thing is that when I do start getting senile, nobody will notice the difference!
WaterGirl
@SleepyMonster: I laughed out loud when got to “cookie sheet”. Literally! Glad the turkey was a success.
WaterGirl
@prufrock: Does the pumpkin pie crust get soggy when you use graham crackers or ginger snaps? Guessing you cook the crust first?
King Arthur Flour linked to a recipe the other day for pecan pie bars instead of pie with pie crust, and that sounded interesting. I would always prefer ginger snaps or graham crackers.
WaterGirl
@Gin & Tonic: Funny, I could kind of smell it, just reading about it. I bet that was bad.
Melancholy Jaques
My worst ever was when I put one of those heat it & eat it dinners in the microwave but mistakenly put it in for 30:00 instead of 3:00, then promptly nodded off on the couch only to be awakened by fire alarms and my roommate screaming.
On this T-Day I watched my 15 years as an executive chef brother in law put the marshmallows on the sweet potatoes under the broiler to melt, then forget it until it smoked. He got it right on the third try.
Old Dan and Little Ann
My 9 yo is hellbent on making a Harry Potter pudding this evening that somehow involves a sponge cake. This project will not involve me. My wife and her will keep me posted. Lol….
WaterGirl
@Rachel Bakes: That would be sad. At least the first time. I imagine you were chagrined the second time!
sab
The usual. Put it in the oven, turn on bake, set the temp, forget to push start, come back in 15 minutes and the oven is off again.
My new screw up with my new oven, when I do remember to hit start, is to think the temp number is the time (because my new oven uses the time display spot to show temperature when the oven is on). So I have no idea when it went in. I always think it went in at 3:50.
Ruckus
@Steve LaBonne:
I’m 75 and still doing fine. I just walked a mile to the store. And back that mile. So there is still hope. And I worked till 3 yrs ago. That work stuff added up to 60 yrs of getting paid to do something. The first few years it wasn’t bad and after the first 5 yrs I joined the military – USN. Which seemed like it would be far better than being drafted during a war. I believe it was.
HOWEVER
I notice that nothing moves as fast as it did 5 yrs ago or it moves TOO fast. Good times!
WaterGirl
@Michael Bersin: LOL forgot to peel the eggs.
My meatloaf story, which I believe I shared once a few years ago, wasn’t really my fault, but it was a big failure.
I put the meatloaf in the oven, and it had been in for maybe 15 or 20 minutes. I was working near the stove but not touching anything, and suddenly there was a rain shower of glass pieces coming down all around me. I kept trying to make sense of it, and couldn’t.
Finally, it became clear that the safety glass on the front of the oven had exploded into bits. Those little bits were everywhere, including in the cracks and crevices around the oven. So the door wouldn’t open more than an inch or two.
No service person was available FOR A WEEK, so had a spoiled, partially baked, rotting meatloaf in my oven for a week.
It was bad.
Ruckus
@WaterGirl:
There are humans that can do stuff without screwing up.
I’ve never met one or seen one in the mirror but I’ve been told they exist. Possibly they exist in the same way fairy dust does…….
Also forgetting to turn on the stove is a lot better than forgetting to turn it OFF.
sab
@dmsilev: I even looked for the little bag this year and couldn’t find it, so I assumed there wasn’t one. And there it was when I took it out of the oven, Not much harm done because they wrapped it in paper. The dog got her giblets and liver baked not boiled.
Phylllis
@dmsilev: I feel simultaneously seen/attacked. Also, Go Gamecocks!!!
ETtheLibrarian
My pecan pie didn’t turn out as good as it normally does, but since I am the only one eating on it I am not sure it matters.
Jobeth
Peach cobbler – grabbed the celery salt instead of the cinnamon. Didn’t notice until we started eating it – not good.
Sally
@Gin & Tonic: This is why I love induction stove tops. I can now put the eggs on to boil, set stove for, say, fifteen minutes. No more fried pans! Funny thing is, I now remember to go back to the stove. I think the smugness reminds me!
WaterGirl
@Jobeth: Oh, ouch. Not good, indeed!
Kathleen
@cope: And make sure you remove the plastic off of the turkey gizzards and organs before you put it in the oven. This assumes you have successfully found said organs (cough cough).
NOTE: This is why I DON’T “cook”. OK. I’m also lazy.
ETA: Just to second dmsilev in Comment 10.
Baud
Agreed. I don’t cook or bake.
prostratedragon
@WaterGirl: It wasn’t at the time that I did it. (It’s been years, fortunately.)
John Revolta
@WaterGirl: Couldn’t you get the meatloaf out through the hole where the window used to be?
ZeeLizzee
Read the recipe and write it into your baking notebook. Baking is a laboratory science: keep notes, tweak, improve (sometimes not).
WaterGirl
I forgot another one of my “favorites”, which I have done twice.
I absolutely LOVE sour cherries. Cherry pie, cherry galette, sometimes I just make the filling and eat it with a spoon.
So simple! Cherries. Sugar. Vanilla. Cornstarch.
Stir it together, heat on the stove until it starts to thicken a bit, and you’re done!
But if you happen to grab Baking Powder, which they make in the exactly the same size can, with the exact same plastic lid on the can, it doesn’t go so well.
You get this purple bubbling mixture and have to throw the whole thing out. I have done that twice. That’s never happening again – I now double-check the can.
eclare
@Gin & Tonic:
My mother did that with turnip greens. I think she turned every pot she owned black with turnip green residue.
Like you, I will never forget that smell.
Wapiti
We had a recipe for a ginger snap pie crust (like a graham cracker crust but crushed ginger snaps), except the spouse had issues counting out the 40 ginger snaps. I mean, a broken half ginger snap, how is it counted? It wasn’t, none of them were, they just were added to the pile but not counted. Too much crust for the pie.
Second try, we just made gingerbread cookie dough, rolled it really thin, and put it in the pie plate to prebake. It must have had more butter than an average crust, because it sort of melted and flowed down to cover the bottom of the pie plate.
Third try… to heck with all of that. We now make a gingerbread cake, cut out a substantial square, put a healthy amount of pumpkin gelato on top, and then whipped cream. It’s a good holiday dessert.
mrmoshpotato
@Michael Bersin:
Crunchy!
WaterGirl
@ZeeLizzee: I do all of that. :-)
Anna
Not a kitchen mishap, but an embarrassment. I was 17 and had a fantastic babysitting gig with a wonderful young family. As the mother was leaving, she asked me to make a grilled cheese for her son’s lunch.
I told her that was no problem and waved goodbye in a complete panic. Grilled cheese? How the hell do you make that!?
Close to twenty years old and I had to call my mom and ask her how to make a grilled cheese. This story often comes up at holiday gatherings. Now I love cooking, but that didn’t happen until I was in my thirties.
Gin & Tonic
@WaterGirl: We had a chest freezer in the basement. It was for long-term storage, so seldom opened. At some point the mice ate through some wires and the freezer stopped freezing. It was a pretty long while before we noticed. Somehow it ended up that emptying it was man’s work.
Almost Retired
I am useless as a cook, but I periodically attempt it. My wife refers to these efforts as “smoke alarm tests.”
WaterGirl
In my twenties, I went to dinner at a friend’s house. He did not know the difference between a garlic clove and a garlic bulb. Yikes! That was an interesting dish.
eclare
@WaterGirl:
How/why does safety glass explode? So glad that you weren’t hurt!
prostratedragon
@Rachel Bakes: Also, calibrate your oven. It explained many things when I finally stuck a thermometer into mine and discovered that it heated to 450° at the 400 setting.
Sally
@WaterGirl: Have tried writing in permanent marker on the top of the can?
narya
This post is for me!! I was going to make Paul Hollywood’s 7-strand braided wreath, but I thought, gee, I’ll just use a sourdough formula for it. HAH! and HAH! again! I will post a longer bit on the blog (with pics), but essentially the dough was waaaaaay too slack. Imagine a big puddle of dough. I actually had two recipes going and both were puddles; I think my sourdough culture isn’t strong enough, plus maybe too much liquid. I baked some off as rolls to see if I’d get any oven spring. (Narrator: no oven spring was detected.) Imagine flat sourdough thick pancakes. I did NOT want to waste the vast amount of dough, so yesterday I rolled it out (in batches), sprinkled it with a LOT of King Arthur multigrain mix, cut it up, and made crackers. They are SUPER crunchy. Kind of weird-looking, for sure, but edible. And there are a LOT of them–essentially nearly three-loaves-of-bread-dough a lot. For Thanksgiving dinner, I had to whip up a batch of rolls (using yeast rather than my starter [glares at starter]), which were quite tasty, but holy shit are there a lot of crackers.
I found some puff pastry in the freezer, so I’m in the middle of making turkey pot pie; when I write the FAIL up longer, I’ll post a link.
WaterGirl
@Gin & Tonic: Oh, I bet that was ugly. Did the smell ever come out of the freezer? Guessing maybe not.
I don’t know that it needs to be man’s work so much as “someone else’s work who is not me.”
Quaker in a BasementThi
This exact event occurred right here at Chez Quaker this very week. You speak our mind.
Martin
@Gin & Tonic: My technique is to bring the water to a boil, add the eggs, and immediately turn off the heat. Let the residual heat cook the eggs (about 12 minutes). But if you forget about them, it’s usually no big deal because the heat is escaping to the room more than they are cooking the eggs by the end of the process.
Also seems to make them easier to peel.
Dan B
It was my day to cook for the six guys in our communal house. I brought out the entree and realized I hadn’t cooked the broccoli. I threw it into the pressure and cranked up the heat. When I thought it was done I took the lid off… without releasing the steam. The lid flew off and the broccoli blew everywhere, especially on the drop ceiling with the fluorescent lights. My housemates rushed in to find me covered with bits of steaming broccoli and a greenish light through the cloud of steam the hovered near the ceiling. It was reminiscent of being under the sea. I believe enough broccoli was salvaged for dinner but that memory is missing (foggy?).
WaterGirl
I put myself through college working as a grocery store cashier. One of the young baggers – maybe 16 years old but I think living on his own, or maybe without parental supervision – was complaining about the bread he made with the newfangled frozen loaves where all you had to do was bake it!
*oops, thaw first, then bake.
He left out the thawing part and popped the frozen log into the bread pan and was mad because it turned black before it would rise.
WaterGirl
@eclare: It was inexplicable. They told me i must have hit it, but I was a foot away. No idea! Happily, it has never happened since.
It was freaky, trying to make sense of it raining glass in the house. When I picture it, I am right back there in that moment.
stinger
My issue is usually the opposite: I turn the burner on, and while waiting for the water to boil I tend to wander off and forget the fact that I was starting to cook something. It’s been years since I’ve actually ruined a pot, but I assume as I continue to circle the sun the chances of doing that again will increase.
Also I’m pretty good at ignoring the kitchen timer when it’s beeping at me. Oops.
WaterGirl
@Sally: If I fuck that up one more time, I will resort to that. :-)
NeenerNeener
@ZeeLizzee: Yes, cooking is an organic chemistry lab without the hydrochloric acid.
zhena gogolia
@Anna: It’s not actually that easy to make a good grilled cheese sandwich.
The secret is putting mayonnaise on the outside. Don’t tell Omnes.
On the success front, Martha Stewart’s stuffing recipe that was in People magazine came out really well. (I used sourdough instead of brioche).
WaterGirl
@Quaker in a BasementThi: I feel you on that.
edit: I think you have 3 stray characters on the end of your nym. You’ll want to fix that before you post your next comment.
zhena gogolia
@zhena gogolia: And yes, I would call it “dressing,” but take it up with People.
TBone
When saving & refrigerating some pan juices from Turkey Day for soup, do not place the fat you separate off into a soup bowl and leave it on the kitchen counter while making the soup. When it comes to room temp later, you might mistake it for some soup broth you didn’t finish and swallow a big spoonful of liquid turkey schmaltz before you realize what the hell is happening! Gag!
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Fixed.
David_C
I think I’ve cooked any number of dishes in the “didn’t turn down the temperature” mode. Having a turkey ready 45 minutes easier than expected throws the whole.e meal off.
WaterGirl
@Martin: That’s my method, too! Though I think my “recipe” says 24 minutes. It’s been a long time since I made them, though, so I could be wrong. But 24 minutes really sticks in my mind.
I have also tried the “put an egg in each compartment of a muffin tray and bake them” method.
WaterGirl
@Dan B: So glad to see you here!
If the upload link isn’t working, please send me your calendar pics as email attachments to my @volo email account. I have sent you multiple emails, i wonder if I am sending to an account you are no longer using?
stinger
@pluky:
Not the way i cook AT ALL. I slice, dice, chop measure each ingredient as it comes due. That way things don’t dry out while they’re waiting for their turn in the pot or skillet. And it’s just faster to chop later additions while the first ingredients are cooking. And I don’t have to wash up a half dozen ramekins and bowls that briefly held salt, pepper, parsley, etc.
I do try to make sure I *have* all the ingredients before I start!
Gin & Tonic
@WaterGirl:
The freezer itself went to the curb at the first opportunity. There was no possibility of salvage.
MagdaInBlack
Thank you for this post.
Off hand I cannot think of cooking screw ups, other than I have simply lost my baking skills. That’s probably lack of caring and feeding, so they’re lying dormant somewhere in my head.
WaterGirl
@Gin & Tonic: That makes total sense. Costly, though!
WaterGirl
@MagdaInBlack: How does one lose baking skills? Sounds more like maybe losing the desire to bake?
persistentillusion
@Gin & Tonic: Same at work, clean-up assigned to me, a girl. Wearing an expensive dress I had purchased from the place of work as there was a dress code.
Quit shortly thereafter, but not until the resident parrot had bitten me. Very eccentric store.
Josie
You are all making me feel so much better. I have wandered off to read a book and burned a number of stews, necessitating a major pan scrub. I figure the scrub in my just punishment. Also, I sometimes turn the wrong burner on, which I discover when I smell the empty pan burning. Since I turned 81 on my last birthday, the boys are starting to give me worried looks when I do these things. Today my youngest left the house while I was in the middle of cooking our secret Saturday Thanksgiving meal. He helpfully reminded me to be sure to use the timer and to not forget to turn the oven off. I was proud of myself that I only smiled and replied, “No problem.”
MagdaInBlack
@WaterGirl: Pretty much that, I think. Skills don’t go away, they just wait til they are needed or desired?
Anyway, I’m enjoying the comments !
Leto
@Rachel Bakes: I’d like to take this time to bring up this Thanksgiving classic of a Karen burning her pie, then blaming Marie Calendar for it. This should be a mandatory post for all Thanksgiving posts concerning cooking/baking.
One of mine. This Thanksgiving I bought a turkey breast (no legs/thigs/wings; just the breasts on the carcass), brined it, and on Thursday prepped the oven to go. Oven up to temp (500F for 30mins to get the skin golden), throw the bird in, and go for 30. Bring it back out, throw the tin foil over to keep from burning, stick the temp probe in, and put it back in the oven now at 350F. Notice that the probe says 150F, but think, “Oh, it just hasn’t registered the internal temp, it’ll fall soon enough.” But maybe 40 mins later it says it’s done. Bring the bird out, slice the one breast at the backbone, and it falls over pink.
Motherfcker… Avalune to the rescue: gives me some silicone straps to close the bird back up, put the bird back in and just set the timer for an hour. We ate the ham that I made, along with the 3 sides. Hour later, turn the oven off, bring the bird out, and let it sit. I was so damned pissed. Bird was still deliciously juicy, flavorful, and is now officially leftover food. Even the kid, who declared he doesn’t like turkey, sampled some and said, “That was really good.” I know man… I know.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
Fortunately this didn’t happen to me, but a couple I knew was celebrating their new kitchen with a Friendsgiving when the new countertop detached from the wall and collapsed, breaking many of the dishes stacked on it, just when they were going to serve Thanksgiving dinner.
My own kitchen foibles have just been the usual nasty burns, mixed up ingredients, etc.
Quaker in a Basement
@WaterGirl: Yeah, that happened several days ago and it keeps popping in by default and I keep forgetting to check for it. I’ll tend to it.
Leto
@Josie: In addition to the turkey mishap, I also let the potatoes boil off. I saved them, the mash came out just fine, but it was just another… thing… added to the overall bleh of the day.
geg6
As a 70s stoner teenager, I decided to make brownies one night. I used Pam spray to grease the pan, put the batter into the pan and put it in the oven and returned to the living room to watch whatever I was watching (probably an ST:OS rerun) after setting the timer. The next thing I knew, I heard an explosion from the kitchen. I had set the can of Pam spray on the stove and forgot to put it away. The heat from the oven turned it into, basically, a rocket that went through the kitchen ceiling and through the floor of my older sisters’ bedroom. Thankfully, although one of my sisters was in the room on her bed, it didn’t kill or harm her because the springs of the bed where she was laying and reading stopped the can’s trajectory. I was left with my sister, hysterical because she thought someone was shooting at her, two Pam spray can sized holes in the kitchen ceiling and bedroom floor and the stove top caved in by the force. I’m pretty sure no one can top that one.
Pghmike
I always set a timer whenever the oven or burner is on, to make sure I don’t forget it’s on.
NotMax
Have on very rare occasions switched on the coffeemaker, having added the coffee but forgetting to put water in it.
Once, with the pan on the rack slid into the topmost position, was broiling a thick steak which swelled up so much it became wedged on and stuck to the heating element.
Then there was the year when cooked a turkey in a disposable foil roasting pan, said newly bought pan unbeknownst to me having nearly invisible pinholes in it. Quite the mess on the oven floor.
Was present when another person wanted to serve frozen stuffed chicken breasts which came in individual foil trays and were foil wrapped. but was clueless when it came to cooking them,. She lowered them in the basket, wrapping and all, into a deep fat fryer.
MagdaInBlack
@geg6: Holy cow! Ya I think that’s a show stopper. And your parents reaction to this..event?
P.S. How’d the brownies turn out?
Josie
@Leto:
You did well to save the potatoes. It’s so easy to boil away the water when cooking something. Ask me how I know.
lowtechcyclist
@Phylllis:
Finishing the (regular) season by beating Clemson IN DEATH VALLEY, how fucking sweet is that?? But boy howdy, what a cardiac ending!
MagdaInBlack
@Pghmike: I too have developed that habit.
Leto
@NotMax: our coffee pot has that option of, you can bring it out while it’s still brewing and pour a cup of coffee. The top of the pot has that little dimple to depress the trigger on the basket above, which lets the coffee on through and down to the pot. If you don’t stick the pot all the way under (which I’ve done twice now), the basket above fills up, keeps on going, and basically overflows all over the place. Much cussing ensues.
stinger
Thanks for all the (sympathetic) laughs, everyone. Great thread!
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@Leto: that was too funny: “the fire alarm isn’t a timer…”
Leto
@Josie: It was. And I believe it!
@Phylllis: @lowtechcyclist: both of ya can go take a long walk off a short pier :P Clemson has been shaky all season, but this has been a problem longer than just this season. Oh well.
Rob J.
Whatever you do, don’t set eggs to hard boil, forget to set a timer, and then forget about the eggs unless you like cleaning up exploded eggs.
NotMax
Must have been in the 1950s when Mom complained of a foul odor in the car.
Drove it to mechanic to see what was up. He agreed the odor was there but was stumped. Until he popped open the trunk and promptly threw up into it.
Turns out on her last shopping trip a package of pork chops had fallen out of a grocery bag into the recesses of the trunk and had been sitting there for more than a week.
Leto
@Chacal Charles Calthrop: Avalune had a problem a few weeks earlier with that thermometer, I just confirmed it. There was a wireless dual probe thermometer I was interested in, so now I have an excuse to grab it.
Kirk
Cornstarch is not confectioner’s sugar. And that’s all I have to say about that cake’s frosting.
mrmoshpotato
@geg6: The rest of us are trying for 2nd place!
geg6
@MagdaInBlack:
The brownies were actually fine. My dad laughed his ass off (I was daddy’s girl). My mother was absolutely furious. I was grounded for like 6 months.
Bill Arnold
My mom allegedly screwed up a pumpkin pie once.
She added salt instead of sugar, and didn’t taste-test the filling.
WaterGirl
@Josie: My mom used to drive me crazy after I went off to college. Is she was visiting my house or i was home for vacation or whatever, she would remind me to turn off the oven.
I mean, really, what did she think I did the other 350 days of the year?!!!?!!
billcoop4
I’ve never had a turkey shed that much liquid. What did you add? Or was that a lip just on one side?
BC
Leto
@WaterGirl: always have the heat on? “Why is it so warm in here all the time???” :P
lowtechcyclist
I have made my variation on the Libby’s pumpkin pie recipe dozens and dozens of times. And I managed to screw it up just ten days ago.
The recipe on the regular-sized pumpkin can lists the pumpkin, evaporated milk, and the eggs, and then all the dry ingredients – sugar, salt, cinnamon, ginger, cloves.
So I had the large-size can so I could make a few pumpkin pies, keep one out, and freeze the rest. (They freeze quite well.) It put the sugar in amongst the wet ingredients, and I just plain didn’t notice it. I just check the wet ingredients to make sure I’m starting with the right number of eggs and the right quantity of evaporated milk for the quantity of pumpkin in the can, then I move on and deal with the dry ingredients.
I have a simple rule for them – double the cinnamon, ginger, and cloves, but keep everything else the same. And I did that – for the dry ingredients listed together. Everything except the sugar.
Only after I’d poured the filling into my store-bought graham-cracker crusts did I lick the mixing bowl and realize it was missing something. At first I tried pouring the filling back out of the crust of one pie, but the crust came with it, breaking into pieces at the same time. So that didn’t work. Then I tried mixing sugar into the remaining pies, which is awkward to say the least.
I’m still not sure how that worked out, because I froze those pies after baking them, burying them in the bottom of our chest freezer, and then (since my wife and son were away for the evening) I cleaned up and vanished all evidence that I’d been baking at all. This is the first time I’ve told anyone of this disaster.
NotMax
@WaterGirl
First cousin to shirred eggs.
WaterGirl
@Quaker in a Basement: Looks like you successfully got rid of the unwanted characters. We have to take our victories where we can find them. :-)
WaterGirl
@geg6: Holy shit!!!
mrmoshpotato
Dogsitting a few months ago, I burned BBQ sauce to one of my sister’s sheetpans.
Dawn Platinum is awesome. :)
Josie
@lowtechcyclist:
Confession is good for the soul (or so I’ve been told).
JaneE
My mom once left out the vanilla in her cakes. When she was a working baker and the cakes were to serve 500. She brushed vanilla extract over the top of every layer. Apparently no one noticed.
Raflw
Telling on my generally extremely talented S.I.L., who once baked a pumpkin pie with no sugar in it. Not like it had splenda, but just forgot the sugar.
We tried drizzling the slices with maple syrup, we had it with sweetened real whipped cream, but it just tasted weird-bad. Like, not inedible, and I’ve had unsweetened steamed pumpkin as a side dish what was good. But an unsweetened custard is odd, and the sugar does change the texture for the better also.
Just one of those lessons learned moments. Also helps me feel less intimidated to cook for her since she’s usually excellent.
mrmoshpotato
@zhena gogolia:
Yup – mayo or butter.
Melting butter using a small frying pan like you’re frying eggs works well.
billcoop4
I was just at friends’ for the weekend where we followed the tradition of toasting the bread and making the stuffing on Wednesday night (which process I’ve taken steps to make sure it ends before 2 am). IT’s not my stuffing recipe and not my family tradition but you go with your family of choice.
Thursday morning, we were pottering around and I watched while Elizabeth put the Turkey in the oven around 1030ish. DIdn’t think anything of it. We chilled.
About an hour later, she went up to shower and during the shower we heard a shriek. And then a somewhat wet-haired and harried Elizabeth coming into the kitchen exclaiming, “I forgot to stuff the turkey!”.
We repairing things, with stuffing in the turkey after some nuking to get some temperature to it first. And it was yum.
But.
BC
Doc Sardonic
@Gin & Tonic: Better off to just bury the whole thing in the backyard. After the nuclear holocaust, future archeologists will find a strange burial vault at the site of my ancestral home, filled with an odd combination of bones from different animals that must have had deep religious meaning to the ancient inhabitants.
sab
@stinger: Tsk,tsk. The French cooking schools call it mise en pret. If you do it (assemble, chop and measure out all your ingredients beforehand) you are much less likely to forget something or to mis-time or burn one ingredient while looking for or chopping another.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
Over the years I have learned that most ingredients work better if they are room temperature (eggs, large pieces of meat etc.), especially if baking. And not trying to do anything else while cooking! No wandering off to the computer “for 5 minutes” while waiting for a pan to heat up. Basically boils down to “pay attention!”.
Baking is much more sensitive to proportions, since (as noted above) it is basically a chemistry project. Making a stew or other main dish has a lot more leeway. As I’ve aged, I find I need to add A LOT more of whatever herbs and spices are called for in the recipe in order for me to taste them in the finished dish. I think I read our taste buds decline as we age. Part of the reason kids can be such fussy eaters – they taste things more strongly.
WaterGirl
So many of these stories are so great, but I don’t want to be obnoxious by replying to all of them.
If you don’t get a reply, pease don’t think people aren’t appreciating them!
Dangerman
College. Spaghetti sauce.
I thought a clove of garlic was the whole fucking bulb.
Still ate it. College.
ETA: still better than the pizza alternative. Cheap pizza place I swear the crust was just ground up cardboard. Still ate it. College.
Dmkingto
Years ago I was visiting home & decided to make some “Chocolate Slims” – a quick and easy thin brownie recipe (from Hersey’s?) that I had made many times. Well, my mom and sisters were dieting at the time, so I decided to make a “healthy” version. Egg substitute & Equal (aspartame) – I ended up with a 9”x13” sheet of material that would have made great shock absorbing insoles!
LauraInNC
@sab: That happens to me every year – can’t find it, or it’s frozen hard to the inside (even in a supposedly fresh bird), but honestly I’ve never known it to cause a problem!
Leto
@lowtechcyclist: You sound like Captain Sisko in the DS9 episode: In the Pale Moonlight. “Computer, delete this log.”
LauraInNC
My rice boileth over just about every time ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Still usually turns out OK, though.
Kayla Rudbek
@ZeeLizzee: https://www.cookingforengineers.com (although I still say that baking is applied analytical chemistry)
eclare
@geg6:
Holy shit! Thank goodness your sister wasn’t hurt.
I think you are right that no one can top that.
Doc Sardonic
@Josie: my late mother in law was famous for kitchen foibles. The best was the day that she decided she was going to cook some eggs and placed the wicker paper plate holder on the burner instead of the skillet. Fortunately I was sitting where I could see the flames reflected in the oven door.and put the fire out.
Kayla Rudbek
@Martin: this is the proper way to make hard boiled eggs.
Eunicecycle
My son has a combination oven/microwave. Well they are separate units but use the same control panel. I have several times thought I was turning on the oven to preheat but nothing happened. Or I think I’m turning on the timer but somehow turn off the oven. I’m so glad I don’t have their setup!
mrmoshpotato
@Phylllis: Clemson got slapped by some cocks.
Also, go Rutgers, and GO BLUE!
Leto
@WaterGirl: @Dangerman: Is this the same event? Tell me it’s the same event!
@LauraInNC: a bit expensive, but get a Zojirushi rice cooker. Japanese product, basically the universal standard for rice cookers. Perfect rice every single time. Plus it plays music when you start it, and when it finishes cooking.
zhena gogolia
@geg6: Hahaha. Glad no one was hurt. You definitely win the thread!
mrmoshpotato
@Dangerman:
Did that turn you into a garlic lover for life?
zhena gogolia
@Bill Arnold: That might actually be kind of good.
mrmoshpotato
@zhena gogolia: Pumpkin pie salt lick!
Rachel Bakes
@WaterGirl: Fortunately had just enough pecans left for another pie. And watched it closely!
zhena gogolia
@sab: I have to do all the chopping and measuring first. It makes me too nervous otherwise.
I am not a comfortable cook.
Suzanne
@pluky:
I find clutter borderline triggering. It raises my stress levels rally quickly.
WaterGirl
@Leto: I think I actually asked her what she thought was happening in the 95% of the days where she wasn’t around to tell me turn it the oven off.
lowtechcyclist
@NotMax:
I have a Cuisinart grind-and-brew coffee maker which is absolutely wonderful. You put in coffee beans and water the night before, and the next morning you hit the button (if you haven’t set the timer the night before) and it grinds the beans, sending the grounds into the filter basket, and heating the water to go through the grounds. Makes great coffee, since the coffee was still beans just moments earlier.
But two things can go wrong: (1) if you forgot to replace the filter basket after having rinsed it out the previous day, you get grounds all over the top of the carafe and the surrounding counter. If you push the button yourself (which I always do) rather than use the timer, you’ll see the explosion of grounds right away, fortunately, and turn it off before the water starts flowing.
And (2) if you replace the filter basket but forget to put a new filter in, the outlet to the filter basket clogs up, and you get weak coffee all over the counter.
Obviously I’ve made both of these mistakes.
mrmoshpotato
@zhena gogolia: Also makes it easier without juggling so many tasks.
Rachel Bakes
College, in student teaching hell. Dining hall was gross that night so I decided to make myself a good cheeseburger in my on campus apartment. Didn’t have the stovetop calibration down yet (week 2 in apartment) and it started smoking. Exhaust fan blew smoke directly at detector which triggered the building alarm and immediately brought fire department out. No fire, just smoke mind you, and I had turned off all heat elements. Since it was a new building I had to flag them down so they’d find the right place.
next day one of my students asked if I lived in Derickson Hall-with a smirk.
WaterGirl
@lowtechcyclist: I double the spices for pumpkin pie, too!
Confession is good for the soul.
edit: I did not copy that from Josie at #103!
Dangerman
@Leto: Nope. My college roommate (Dude) was unimpressed. Dirt poor.
MagdaInBlack
@WaterGirl: I do that as well. (Or did) Because that’s how my mother did it and her pies were delicious.
Dangerman
@mrmoshpotato: Perhaps. Done Gilroy Festival. Love Garlic.
If memory serves (it may not), garlic is great for blood pressure. My BP is great. Like ridiculously good. Could be the garlic.
West of the Rockies
I’m making a standard pot of chili: black, pinto, red kidney beans; onion, tomato, seasoning, lean ground beef. Oh, and honey cornbread. Safe and satisfying.
Prescott Cactus
I have my first ever air fryer and no one has died yet. I’m thrilled
Crispy fried things without oodles of oil and mess !
zhena gogolia
@MagdaInBlack: The construction company we use gave us a huge pumpkin pie as a thank-you. It is extremely bland. I’ve kindly told my husband he can eat the whole thing.
I’m not willing to waste calories on bland!
karen gail
If you leave salt out of yeast bread recipe bread won’t rise properly nor have proper texture; for some reason one member of family would always fail to add salt when they made bread. It became flat, hard and tasteless. The only thing her bread was good for was drying to make stuffing.
zhena gogolia
@zhena gogolia: OTOH, our Thanksgiving host sent us home with his delicious pumpkin empanadas, and I only ate one and gave the rest to my husband, so I’m not entirely unaltruistic.
zhena gogolia
Earl Holliman, RIP! 96 years old
MagdaInBlack
I got a wild hair and dug out my stove-top espresso pot, made some, and poured it over a couple tablespoons of vanilla bean ice cream. Someone will tell me the proper name for that, but I named it delicious
zhena gogolia
@MagdaInBlack: affogato?
Gin & Tonic
@zhena gogolia: Correct.
MagdaInBlack
@zhena gogolia: Yes! Probably not as much ice cream as the google photos show, but yes!
lowtechcyclist
@Leto:
Pretty much!
Though it was kinda funny, there was a turn in the conversation at Thanksgiving dinner where telling this story would’ve fit right in, and I was about to jump in and tell it (getting ready to preface it with “J. (my wife, who was right there) doesn’t even know about this yet, but…”), but someone else jumped in and said something else before I had the chance, and the conversation moved in other directions, so it never came up.
So my wife still doesn’t know, because what would be the point of telling her now?
pluky
@WaterGirl: I’m human! But between my mother’s direction (4 kids in six years, with a husband getting shot at in SE Asia while every one of us was being born. We all learned to cook early), and years in chem, bio, and med labs I’ve learned to be disciplined.
The portioning of ingredients part across stages is exactly why repeated close reading of recipes, along with the preparatory staging there of (e.g. add so much to the pot while cooking, then add so much more prior to serving, is two separate mise en place instances).
BTW, doesn’t hurt that I’m a bit OCD!
NotMax
@Dangerman
Chicken with 40 cloves of garlic recipe.
@LauraInNC
How to Stop Rice from Boiling Over.
Another tip: Once the rice and water comes to a full boil, lower the heat to a gentler simmer.
lowtechcyclist
@sab:
In my pumpkin pie story, I thought I had done exactly that!
Phylllis
@lowtechcyclist: I had kinda given up on them, to be honest. But our fabulous QB put us on his back once again.
pluky
@NeenerNeener: Mix salt and vinegar –> sodium acetate and hydrochloric acid!
Phylllis
@Leto: I can’t do anything about your stubborn coach who won’t accept the reality of college football today. I can heartily enjoy his downfall, though.
MagdaInBlack
@NotMax: When I raised ducks, I did duck stuffed with garlic several times and it was delicious.
WaterGirl
@Dmkingto: Yeah, I try to make stuff at my sister’s house that comes out perfectly at home. Different over, different pots and pans, somehow it’s never exactly right.
Booger
@NeenerNeener: Speak for yourself.
WaterGirl
@Leto: I do not believe I knew Dangerman in college!
DetroitBeanCounter
When I was a kid in the 60’s, we had an electric stove and my dad was famous for turning on the stove to warm up some leftover coffee from the morning in the aluminum percolator and then laying down on the sofa and falling asleep. He melted several of those coffee pots that way.
lowtechcyclist
@Josie:
I’d say if you were doing those things when you were in your 30s, 40s, and 50s, you have nothing to worry about. But do remember to change the batteries in your smoke alarm twice a year!
stinger
@sab: I’m aware. I just don’t bother.
Scuffletuffle
Cooked a frozen lasagna in my toaster oven for 85 minutes and couldn’t figure out why the top was so burned and inedible…until I realized days later that the oven was set on “Broil.”
zhena gogolia
@WaterGirl: It’s like playing a different piano than the one you have at home. I’m about to experience that in the church Christmas concert. It never ends well.
WaterGirl
@Rachel Bakes: I get the best pecans. The new crop comes in late fall every year, and they are simply better than any pecans everywhere else. They come to the local farmer’s market for one day with the new season’s pecans, but when I miss it, they will ship them. So good.
They are “cracked” so they are partially in the shell, but the cracking means you can take what’s left of the shell off by hand. If anyone LOVES pecans, let me know and I can post the link.
I will probably make pecan pie or something close in the next week or two, but in the meantime I just eat 5 of them for breakfast with an apple or whatever.
Just got mine about a week ago.
WaterGirl
@Prescott Cactus: What brand?
Josie
@lowtechcyclist: Yeah, it’s not a new thing. I get distracted by the computer or a good book, or I just try to do too many things at once. I’ve always been sort of a klutz.
ETA: But we do have a good smoke alarm.
WaterGirl
@Scuffletuffle: Oh my god, 85 minutes of broil!
I guess it probably wasn’t so bad because if you thought you were baking, at least you surely didn’t have the rack at the highest level.
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia: I predict that you will notice, but no one else will. :-)
bluefoot
This Thanksgiving, I ended up having to make pie crust three times. I’ve never messed up pie crust, but for some reason I was not braining on Wednesday. First time I prebaked too long and no pie weights, so it slumped into a crunchy disk. Second attempt, too much salt. WAY too much salt. Third time, didn’t let it chill long enough because I was getting frustrated and it lost all definition when baked. Argh. At least it tasted good.
I had the brilliant idea of having ten people over for Thanksgiving, conveniently forgetting that I don’t have a dishwasher right now. I may eat takeout for the next week so I don’t have to look at another dirty dish. Or pot. Or coffee cup. Or…
narya
@WaterGirl: that sounds great—I’m switching from almonds to pecans whenever I can, for climate reasons, so yes!
Sure Lurkalot
I also had issues with making rice in a pot…boiling over, sticking, so I purchased a very small (2 cup) rice cooker.
It came with a measuring cup and instructions for how much water to rice, press a button and when it clicks off, done. Easy peasy, right?
Well, every time I used it, the rice was mush and gross.
I was just about to give up on it when just for grins, I measured the rice as I would have if cooked in a pot on the stove…1 part rice to 1-3/4 parts water and set a timer for 20 minutes.
Perfect. Every. Time.
The answer isn’t always follow the instructions.
stinger
@WaterGirl:
I love pecans!
WaterGirl
@bluefoot: Having to make the pie crust 3 times, that would be disheartening.
How did you know the 2nd one had too much salt? how do you test a pie crust before baking and serving?
TheOtherHank
Early in our marriage I decided to splurge and make my wife a white chocolate cake with white chocolate ganache frosting. I got a little over enthusiastic mixing up the ganache and the cream turned to butter and a lot of water. I’m usually a pretty mellow person, but the story of my ranting and raving around the kitchen after ruining the frosting still gets told (we’ve now been married for over 30 years). The unfrosted cake was really good, though.
ETA: I was in graduate school at the time, so the expense of all the white chocolate was noticeable in the weekly grocery bill
WaterGirl
@narya: @stinger:
Voss Pecans
Glidwrith
Always have a label on frozen mystery meat so you know what it is.
To this day, I cannot describe what it was like coming home to a slow cooked crock pot of calf liver.
I don’t even know when or why it was purchased.
mrmoshpotato
@Scuffletuffle: I accidentally broiled a frozen pizza years ago. It was surprisingly decent – the cheese was just really well done.
WaterGirl
@Glidwrith: eeeew! ick, ugh. yikes. shudder.
hitchhiker
thanks for the thread, @watergirl!
my mom used to make all the things from scratch, including bread (6 loaves every week) and pies (usually only on holidays).
so we’d seen plenty of bread-making … not so much pies.
one of my brothers and i decided to make a pie one night; we were middle-school-aged.
we thought that ALL dough was meant to be kneaded the fuck out of, and could not understand why our pie dough had turned to cement.
no pie was produced that night.
prufrock
@WaterGirl: You blind bake the crust. It stays nice and firm.
geg6
@Glidwrith:
OMG, that’s terrible and I even like calf’s liver if cooked correctly.
WaterGirl
@hitchhiker: You don’t know what you don’t know!
But yeah, I bet that was bad.
WaterGirl
@prufrock: But you can only do that with some pies, right? Like chocolate cream pie.
But you can’t do that with pumpkin or apple or cherry, right? Because the crust would get cooked twice.
What am I not understanding?
mrmoshpotato
@WaterGirl: For some stupid reason, I once bought in-shell pecans for a recipe. They were an absolute pain to shell.
Thor Heyerdahl
At Christmas 2020 I didn’t join family due to Covid and proceeded to try roasting a ham Swedish style. There were drippings from that that fell out of the roaster into the oven. I proceeded to forget about the drippings.
…Until a few months later when I was roasting chicken thighs in the oven (tarragon chicken). I started seeing black smoke come out of the oven. I opened the oven and saw the drippings had caught fire.
Thw oven door was slammed closed and oven turned off. I tried to salvage as much of the chicken as I could which was now raw and smoked. I opened my windows and turned on all my fans (no range hood fan in my apartment). I made sure not to open the apartment door because I didn’t want to set off the building alarms and have the fire department show up.
Lots of clothes washing followed since everything smelled like smoke.
Glidwrith
@WaterGirl: yes, yes, yes! I stopped buying almonds because I got tired of funding the ass almond grower in Northern California that’s always using road signs complaining about Democrat-induced droughts while busy sucking up huge amounts of water for his almond crops.
Nukular Biskits
Biskits.
That is all.
SuzieC
@pluky: Mise en place! French for having all ingredients and utensils ready before you start cooking.
I love discussing cooking and baking, but late to the thread as usual. Was watching the disastrous OSU/Michigan game and aftermath.
After retiring from my lawyer career I attended a 32 week French cooking school and a 16 week patisserie series. Enjoyed all of it far more than the practice of law.
Prescott Cactus
@WaterGirl: Phillips. It has a window so you can watch the cooking. Did bacon tonight !
narya
@WaterGirl: thank you! Will order.
KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager))
I had never in my life heard of cocoa wheats. Now I want to try some. I know I haven’t seen them at the lokal supermarket. Amazon?
NotMax
@Glidwrith
Have a slow cooker recipe somewhere in the cluttered files for liver with red wine and onions .
WaterGirl
@mrmoshpotato: Yep, and the nuts all break, which I don’t like.
But the machine cracking leaves the shells so you can peal them off with your hands, and the pecans are intact.
Joe Falco
I don’t think my pumpkin pies set up as good as they could have. I baked until the knife came out clean from near the center, but it may still have needed an extra 5 or so minutes in the oven. Le sigh.
WaterGirl
@Thor Heyerdahl: I came home from thanksgiving and had to leave my coat and dress out on the screened-in porch overnight because they both stunk from however they had roasted their delicious turkey.
They were fine by morning, thankfully!
Betty
The most dramatic episode, though hardly the only one, happened one Thanksgiving when my sister-in- law and I undertook to cook the family turkey. The extended family consisted of about 50 people. My Mom had passed away the year before, but we held on to the house as a gathering place for a few years. We got the turkey ready, put the oven on pre-heat and before long noticed a strong, unpleasant odor coming from the oven. Upon inspection, we discovered flaming dish towels and melting plastic. My other sister-in-law had decided the oven was a good place to store the dish towels in a mostly empty house.
Cleaning the melted plastic was going to take a few days so we needed to find a free oven on Thanksgiving. We were able to track one down. The turkey turned out fine, and the story became part of the family legend.
WaterGirl
@SuzieC: Wow, that’s quite a switch from law to french cooking!
Whatever makes you happy.
KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager))
Lol right. Like I’m organized enough to even have a baking notebook, much less remember to write notes in it. I might remember to scribble notes on the margins of the recipe.
WaterGirl
@KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager)): Our local supermarkets carry them. Cocoa wheats hang out in the aisle with oatmeal and other hot cereals.
Gloria DryGarden
@Glidwrith: i like calves liver flash cooked with onions. I cannot imagine it in a slow cooker… how was the texture..
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Leto:
We have a $30 cheapie rice cooker from Walmart. Perfect rice every time.
We’re not big into one-use kitchen appliances but a rice cooker is an exception to that rule.
WaterGirl
@Joe Falco: My recipe says “until the knife comes out clean one inch from the edge of the pie”.
What makes you feel that they aren’t set up enough. I don’t think pumpkin ie is supposed to be hard. It just needs to hold its shape when you cut a piece. Does it do that?
Starfish
@WaterGirl: That sounds like it smelled terrible
WaterGirl
@Betty: Who puts flammable items or cloth items in an oven?????
Pete Downunder
Many years ago I was visiting my father for a holiday. He was an excellent cook (learned in the army). I would sous chef for him. At one point my step brother wandered in and asked if he could help. So far as I knew the only thing my brother could make was reservations. My dad assigned him the task of boiling water for coffee. A few minutes later we noticed that the burner was on adjacent to the one on which the kettle sat. My father said to him that while he had heard of people who couldn’t boil water, he was the first he’d met.
WaterGirl
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I tried two different rice cookers, but i don’t want to cook food in something that’s plastic, and all of them seem to be plastic.
Plastic + heat and plastic + freezer are not good combinations, health-wise.
Even the name brand rice cookers seem to have hot plastic touching the food.
Miki
@zhena gogolia: “It’s not actually that easy to make a good grilled cheese sandwich.
The secret is putting mayonnaise on the outside. Don’t tell Omnes.”
Truth.
WaterGirl
@Starfish: Rotting meat for a week. It really was a foul smell. It was a long week.
Anyway
same here. Mise en place is for a restaurant kitchen with sous chefs to do the prep and dishwashing staff to take care of all the tiny dishes. Wildly overkill for a home kitchen. For an extra -fussy recipe I’ll do a once-over and check that I have the ingredients and do the prep as I go along. Managed ok so far. I love the grandmas cooking on YT.
WaterGirl
@Pete Downunder: That’s a fun story.
karen marie
@Jobeth: II was making brownies one day and discovered I was out of sugar. Shocking, I know! My cousin wasn’t home, so I let myself into her apartment and poured two cups of sugar into my measuring cup and proceeded with the recipe.
WHO KEEPS A GIGANTIC UNMARKED GLASS CONTAINER OF SALT?
My cousin, that’s who.
Glidwrith
The first time I made cranberry sauce from cranberries, I thought you needed to add gelatin to get it to thicken.
Once I pried the disk out of the pan, you could use it as a frisbee.
Leto
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: agreed.
Ratatouille is on atm; perfection.
WaterGirl
@karen marie: Crazy.
I am still using the sea salt I had to order in a qty of 6 small bottles at the beginning of the pandemic.
WaterGirl
@Glidwrith: I am really enjoying all these stories. Is that wrong? :-)
Glidwrith
@Gloria DryGarden: Soupy texture, smelled like urine. Husband held the trash bag while I dumped it in and we hustled it out of the apartment to the dumpster as fast as possible.
Glidwrith
@WaterGirl: This is the best!
Timill
@WaterGirl: People who need to protect things from pets. Our oven usually contains bread and butter…
mrmoshpotato
@Pete Downunder: LOL!
VeniceRiley
Best post ever?!
My own stories are a pale comparison. I’d probably have more by now if these UK ovens, what with their incomprehensible icons that have all rubbed off, and buttons and wall switches …. FLUMMOX ME. Bake temp or Fan temp? C or F? Arrrrgh! How do I turn it on again?
Have an 8 qt instapot, a Ninja food processor, and the wife just ordered an air fryer. She hates when I make a tasty meal that requires a call to FEMA to clean up. Pray for me.
Ps. Those Ninja blades are sharp as F and there is human blood in that meatball sandwich.
WaterGirl
@Timill: My bread and any interesting food that might normally live on the counter goes into what I call “protective custody” in the kitchen cupboard.
But I would never put anything that could melt in the over, unless I wanted it to melt. If you had offered me a million dollars to find the hidden butter in the kitchen within a minute or less, I would never have looked in the oven.
mrmoshpotato
@VeniceRiley:
Marinated meatballs!
WaterGirl
@VeniceRiley: Icons are the devil.
Jackie
@KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager)): I’ve never heard of Coco Wheats either. Both my adult children (early to middle 40s) still love chocolate flavored Malto Meal.
I love regular (original) Malto Meal, but never liked the very artificially tasting cocoa version.
Albatrossity
Thank you all for some very good laughs tonight!
Gloria DryGarden
On pecans: a friend sent some from Georgia once, fallen, and collected from under her aunt’s tree. In the shell, they were good for two years. Lasted way longer than shelled pecans.
on rice: a friend arrived for dinner once, and i had burned the rice, that was going to be with stir fry. Somehow my smart assed voice took over as I greeted her at the door, and I say welcome , hi, I’ve made my specialty, smoked rice. I did not prepare this speech in advance, it just slipped out that way. Anyway dinner was fine, I just used the unburned part of the rice. She said, this is good, how do you make it? And deadpan, I explained, you cook the rice ( in a pan on a stovetop) until it’s done, then leave it on medium high for another 20 minutes. I’ve burnt the rice often…
on French cooking: I was bored in home EC class, having started cooking when I was 7. So for one of the required dinners we had to make, ( the teacher said áll 3 required dinners cannot be hotdogs w Mac n cheese) I found a complex French recipe in the Chicago tribune: Rack of lamb marinated in wine for days, baked in mushroom slices and puff pastry. Mom and I learned how to make puff pastry by hand that year. The stupid gooseberry sauce would not set up right, but it otherwise was a delicious success. Cocky 8th grader me turned in my write up, menu in French, pleased with my show off know it all self. I think mom ánd I kept making puff pastry in subsequent years. It takes two days, but became our thing.
i have burst a Pyrex measuring cup, which i didn’t think was possible. Too hot, on the stove next to some pan of hot cooking stuff. Poured hot broth into it, it shattered, hot broth and glass everywhere.
because of years eating wheat free, and now no corn or dairy, I’ve gotten inventive with recipes and substitutions. Sometimes it works out, sometimes, it fails. And I cannot, never could make the roux thing w flour and fats, and the liquid, for gravy. Forget it. Always lumpy, terrible.
and im late on the thread, I know.
KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager))
This is a really good idea. I’m going to start doing this. I wonder if I can get my husband to remember todo it.
Pete Downunder
@WaterGirl: Same step brother another year. We had stopped by his house for some reason. Thought I’d get a snack or drink from the fridge. Absolutely empty, just as it was when new. Amazing
eclare
@Pete Downunder:
At least he admitted (implicitly) to his limitations!
Starfish (she/her)
@WaterGirl: Was your dog disappointed when the house no longer smelled of rotting meat?
WaterGirl
@Jackie: @KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager)):
Cocoa Wheats is subtle. Way more subtle than, say, Cocoa Krispies. It’s like there’s a tiny bit of cocoa powder – it’s a super light version of chocolate. Picture the lightest version of cocoa on a paint chart, and then dilute it by half again.
Just enough to make it interesting!
WaterGirl
@Pete Downunder: So, what, does she just order out all the time?
Of course, if he did that, he would likely have leftovers in the fridge. Hmmm.
Are we sure he eats? :-)
WaterGirl
@Starfish (she/her): I don’t think I noticed. I was personally very happy when the meatloaf was taken away. I threw it away, pan and all.
The repair guy had a good laugh over it. Me, not so much.
Gloria DryGarden
@KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager)): I’ve got to use a timer. I finally learned that stepping away to do just one thing, just for a minute…. was never going to be realistic. I’d forget completely about something on the stove.
Lymie
@WaterGirl: I made these bars and they turned out well, despite the fact that my oven is dying and all i have is convection bake. They take almost 2 lbs of butter all together between shortbread crust and topping, so they are very rich. I sent them off with the #1 daughter, for her 20 somethings house, and they were very well reviewed, “better than pie!”. Not hard to do, either.
If you ever want anything from KA, let me know, I am 10 miles from the mother ship.
prostratedragon
@narya: narya’s Braided Wreath Sourdough: The Series
Looking forward to it.
Gloria DryGarden
@WaterGirl: my nearby ice cream shop has that subtle background chocolate in a chocolate chip ice cream. I forget what they call it, over at lickety split ice cream, now called Liks. Other Denver peeps might recall.
they made it by accident. Small amount of chocolate materials left in the bowl, then they made the vanilla formula for chocolate chip. And it was so well liked they kept it. It was good, for sure.
Timill
@Gloria DryGarden: These days, I have a simple fix: “Alexa, remind me in N minutes about X”.
hitchhiker
If we get tired of these stories, we could tell tales about our pets and their thieving ways.
My very gentle, well-behaved dog Utah turns into a determined bandit when left with temptation of any kind for any period. Once I made some gorgeous focaccia to bring to a potluck … got all gathered up and out to the car when I realized I’d left it on the counter.
Couldn’t have been five minutes.
Raced back in and one of the two round loaves was 3/4 gone, on the floor. He didn’t even bother to look guilty.
WaterGirl
@Lymie:
Do you think the pecan bars would freeze well?
That’s a kind offer, but then you would have to ship it to me.
Do they have a storefront there? It never occurred to me that they would, but that would be fun.
eclare
@hitchhiker:
I can no longer leave anything on the stove unattended, because my cat William will jump up on it. Did I mention that I have gas burners?
Solution for when I want to slow cook something: put William in his room with the door shut.
WaterGirl
@hitchhiker: Maybe I should put up a Pet Thievery post next Saturday?
WaterGirl
@hitchhiker: My cocker spaniel was never sorry when she stole food.
Sure, she might be sorry that I was yelling at her, but she was never sorry about what she’d taken and she would do it again in a heartbeat.
p.a.
Dead thread? But:
Not cooking really, but when you clean the coffee maker with white vinegar don’t forget to rinse it multiple times before making your next cup.
Another not really cooking: used to have a nice cheap Lil’Chief electric smoker. Bought a big pork shoulder, put it in the basement fridge to defrost. At least a week and a half later I was downstairs and… uhhh, what’s that smell? Had forgotten about the- now rotten- shoulder.
Gloria DryGarden
@Melancholy Jaques: please help, why does any one put marshmallows on sweet potatoes, ever? Ever? It was a sign from fsm and all the other gods. IMO. YMMV
sw potatoes are good plain. Or w gravy, or butter, or aú jus. Oh well, sigh. I just feel strongly about that one. Marshmallows are for hot cocoa, rice Crispín treats or some mores.
eclare
@p.a.:
Oh no! I love pulled pork shoulder.
hitchhiker
@WaterGirl: Yes!
Gloria DryGarden
@WaterGirl: can you suggest a pecan bars recipe ?
also intrigued by ginger snap crust. Sounds amazing. I did find gluten free graham cracker crusts in the freezer section of the store. It was good.
Lymie
@Kayla Rudbek: My father, the physicist called chemistry “cookbook physics.” After my mum died, he got quite good at the malliard reaction.
Gloria DryGarden
@Timill: except it was usually a walk to the car to get something, I’m just going to pull this one weed, oh look at those tulips.
If I had an Alexa, I’d be too far away to hear it. I’d have to say Alexa, when the timer goes off, play Led Zeppelin really loud on the speakers..
not actually willing to have Alexa in my home.
Lymie
@WaterGirl: yes, I think they would freeze quite well, it’s all butter, sugar, and nuts.
KA has a whole tourist destination, baking school, store for all their catalogue products, and a cafe for dining. A charming location in Norwich, VT.
It’s always funny when folks say, where do you go for vacation, and you live in a destination!
Lymie
@Gloria DryGarden: Here’s the link for the KA recipe:
https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/easy-pecan-pie-bars-recipe
p.a.
@Lymie: I love pecan pie, but I’ve had it in New Orleans so even really good ones elsewhere are 2nd place, and one holiday in a pinch I picked one up at a bakery I’d never been to before. Was not looking as it was boxed, probably eyeballing other stuff. At the party (do not remember what holiday exactly) the hostess opened the box (no big reveal or anything, a table full of both bought & homemade desserts) I was horrified and pissed. Looked at up close, it was a top of pecans, a pastry crust, and chocolate fucking pudding filling.🤬🤬🤬
WaterGirl
@Gloria DryGarden: The one I am thinking of is a King Arthur Flour recipe.
Google “King arthur flour” and once you get to the website, go to their recipes section and type in “pecan” or “pecan bar”
That should get you to it.
Nancy
@Ruckus:
I suspect that those flawless humans are from some other planet. This allows me to feel better about myself and my errors; I’m not from the flawless planet.
Fairy dust works as a rationalization–I don’t have any, don’t know where to get some.
Gloria DryGarden
@WaterGirl: cool. I knew google would be involved here, somehow.
most charming way yet to say, google it. I will go fishing…
Gvg
@WaterGirl: One cold night at a restaurant where I worked um 40 years ago, it was slow and we employees were all sitting at a booth in the front. The front door of safety glass 20 feet away suddenly collapsed and fell to the ground in surprising rain of squares. No one was near or touched it. They said perhaps a wind gust of a different temperature had hit the cold glass. The manager had to stay late waiting on some plywood. Then a new door the next day. No real conclusion was even proven but there were about 10 witnesses to….nothing.
WaterGirl
@Lymie: That sounds lovely!
So funny reading the comments on the recipe. “I made it just like the recipe said, only I changed these 7 things.” :-)
Having mocked the KA commenters for that, is there anything you would change? That seem like a lot of honey, do you think you could get by with less? Also, someone else suggested increasing the toppings because the bar crust is really thick. Any thoughts?
Gloria DryGarden
@Lymie: oh, i am drooling. This recipe gives me happy ideas.
WaterGirl
@Gloria DryGarden: I often see you asking people about things that are easily googled, so I thought walking through the process might be helpful for you.
You seem to value independence, so I thought his way you wouldn’t have to rely on other people to find information for you.
mrmoshpotato
@hitchhiker: Hahaha!
Back in high school, my best friend and I were house/dogsitting one weekend for his aunt and uncle.
His aunt had made a bunch of sandwiches that we could microwave. I got one out of the microwave and set it on the counter. Went to go use the bathroom and surely enough, to my confusion, it was gone when I got back.
We concluded the dog had snatched it when we found scraps of paper towel in the living room.
Oh Tyler, you magnificent, sandwich swiper!
WaterGirl
@Gvg: Thank you for sharing that story. I feel vindicated! :-)
Trivia Man
Happy to report mrs trivia is a big fan of the stuffing in a waffle iron
Nancy
Wearing a clown suit made me laugh out loud.
I needed that laugh.
Thanks.
mrmoshpotato
@p.a.: Oh no!
mrmoshpotato
@p.a.: That’s a letdown, but did you still eat some?
Josie (also)
@Eunicecycle: My parents had a microwave convection oven. I put the roast in and thought I had it on convection but it was on microwave mode. Roast was toast (inedible). Fortunately we had leftovers from the previous day.
And I have also left off the eggs in the pumpkin pie.
Gloria DryGarden
@WaterGirl: they were nice instructions.
i don’t know why it seems I value independence, what have I said? it’s just all I’ve got most of the time.
Actually I relish getting what has worked for others. And the interchange of ideas. Some recipe searches result in 10 recipes and horrible ads, and too much scrolling. Although I can usually abstract or aggregate from 5 or 6 recipes, it’s a bit tiresome and daunting.
pecan pie is so sweet and sticky, I might try the recipe just as it is the first time, though I’ll make the crust with almond or rice or coconut flour, just to see how it goes. And use non butter, like coconut oil, and coconut milk. It’s not quite changing 7 things, but one makes do. Once I try it, I might adjust to have less sweetness. Or a thinner crust. Or perhaps, even try it w some ginger snap sort of thing.
im feeling so lazy I might just try pecans w honey, or w honey and brown sugar, under a broiler. Or I’ll google candied pecans and figure out how to not make them so crunchy. Now I’m surely up to 7 changes.
I hope you’ll let us know how yours turn out.
Gloria DryGarden
@Lymie: this is the first time I’ve seem a pecan pie recipe thing that does not use corn syrup. This is so wonderful.
you have single- handedly saved me from wading through endless corn syrup based recipes. I love when something comes easily.
prufrock
@WaterGirl: First I heard of that. The blind bake is only seven minutes long. Worked out great!
WaterGirl
@Trivia Man: So you just pack the stuffing in and cook it like a waffle?
WaterGirl
@prufrock: So that works with something like pumpkin or fruit pies, that have to be baked?
So you bake the pie crust and then bake the whole thing again with the filling in it?
Just trying to understand whether that’s what you are saying.
Gloria DryGarden
@WaterGirl: if I asked these questions, you would tell me to google it.
it’s confusing
WaterGirl
@Gloria DryGarden: No, it sounds like prufrock is saying that you can pre-bake pie crusts and then bake again with filling. I have googled that in the past, and I thought that was a no-no. But prufrock sounds like they know what they are talking about, so I am asking for clarification of what they are saying.
Trivia Man
@WaterGirl: yes, I learned it here a couple days ago. Several people commented that they do it. She made a (gluten free) stuffing for a pot luck. We missed the pot luck so had a large bowl of leftovers. Tried this one weird trick and it wad a hit. Scoop the stuffing into the waffle iron and cook it. He stuffing was pretty moist so the cooking spray (yesterday’s experiment) was not used today.
Today I let it cook some after the light said FINISHED and it got a little crispier. Nummy.
frosty
@WaterGirl: Yes! We have a couple of excellent pet thievery stories. Great idea.
anitamargarita
On Thursday, I for got to cook the yams, and forgot to put the cranberry sauce out😧. Yesterday, I had leftovers with yams and cranberry sauce😀!
Gloria DryGarden
A friend sent me a photo of canned cranberry sauce standing up alone on a saucer. You could see the rib ripple lines from the can. The caption said
ribbed, for your pleasure
Jay
@WaterGirl:
Teach a man to fish and he spends thousands of dollars on a boat, motor, lures, gear, bait, electronics and spends whole days in a boat on the lake drinking beer.
prostratedragon
@Glidwrith:
Theme song, really for the whole thread: “Good Advice,” J.B. Lenoir. I think we can add several verses.
Jay
Only one I can think of, is every Xmas, I make a standard sugar cookie recipe, but add finely chopped candies ginger and ginger infused sugar sprinkled on top.
One year several years ago, instead of 2tsp of baking soda in the double batch, I put in 2tbls.
Not good, did not know until we ate them. Worse yet, it was for a pot luck.
It was like eating ginger flavoured TUMs or ENO.
Gloria DryGarden
@Jay: referencing also #257 and #261,
if you send a woman fishing on the google river, her boat trip might be long and far away from people and other online forms of pseudo community. Her default alone time and screen time will be increased, but at least she won’t bother other humans with questions she should know not to ask.
like your well equipped fishing trip it’s expensive. It’s also a recipe for enhanced distance.
i have been so very politely invited /sent/
Jay
@Gloria DryGarden:
People right now, are “cranky”.
Some people have Google Fu, some do not.
T always askes me to “google it”, because I always find “it” in a click or two.
What you type in for search terms has a huge impact on what you get and AI is starting to muck that up.
But like I said, right now people are “cranky”,
Sometimes we just need to be a duck.
eclare
@WaterGirl:
Yes, you bake the pie crust to some extent, then put the filling in to bake til it’s done. The contestants on Great British Baking Show do this all the time.
A good friend of mine ordered pie crust weights and a crust protector for Thanksgiving baking.
Chris T.
@Gvg: (leave it to me to comment on a dead thread – but I’m home for rest and recovery and some hefty oral antibiotics for the pneumonia, which are working, and now I’m wide awake at 3 AM… anyway, for you and WG both):
“Safety glass” is intentionally pre-stressed. It contains a lot of small glass beads sandwiched between two plates of glass that are under tension from holding the beads and a filler-matrix substance. The plates are necessarily quite strong (in the ways that glass is strong, which are all but one crucial one) because of all this internal pressure to explode.
When something does cause a fracture in an outer plate, the idea here is that the explosive release of the internal pressure causes the matrix material to crumble to sand and release the glass beads. The beads, being round, won’t cut; the sand-ified matrix material won’t cut either; and the ripping effect on the plate-y part produces rounded edges as well wherever it doesn’t all stick together from the matrix material.
This works extremely well in practice, but it has one flaw of sorts: if there’s any kind of manufacturing or installation defect in a strong tensioned outer plate, any old stress—not just the window-shattering kind you get from hammering nails into glass or whatever—triggers the safety-shatter mechanism. This stress can be from the normal expected thermal changes.
It’s pretty rare, but it happens.
Note that you can see the beads when you look at safety glass through polarized lenses. That’s why some sunglasses make car windows look weirdly dotty.
Chris T.
@Chris T.: I thought of another way to put this: We can’t actually make shatterproof glass, so we fake it.
The two standard kinds of fakes are safety glass, which is pre-stressed so as to shatter into the beads mentioned above, and laminated glass, which contains a sticky membrane to hold the post-shattering glass in place.
On cars, front windshields use laminated glass. Rear windshields and side windows use safety glass.
To know which kind you have, you can break it and see (but then, as Gandalf might have put it, you may have left the path of wisdom in search of knowledge), or use polarized light.
eclare
@Chris T.:
Glad you’re home! Thanks for the glass info.
stinger
@WaterGirl: Thank you!
Lymie
@WaterGirl: I wouldn’t, the topping is sooooooo sweet. I went “light” on all the sugary bits, just by a couple tablespoons……
WaterGirl
@Jay: Well, there is that, but it’s kinda long, so that’s probably why they left the rest out. :-)!
WaterGirl
@Jay: oh, ick. I was thinking “that’s not so bad” until I got to this part: eating ginger flavoured TUMs. Ack.
But the candied ginger and ginger sugar seem like nice touches.
WaterGirl
@Chris T.: So glad you have been sprung! Take care of yourself.
I knew some of that about the glass, but not all of it. Thank you.
NotMax
@WaterGirl
Nothing makes ginger snap cookies sing like the addition in the batter of some black pepper.
bluefoot
@WaterGirl: dead thread but – I got lucky with the 2nd crust. I was mixing it together idly looking at the measuring spoon on the counter when I realized it was the wrong one if I had used it for the salt. So I tasted the dough. I don’t normally taste dough for pie crust or bread, though I will if I’ve changed anything.
KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager))
@WaterGirl: All of the rice cookers I’ve seen have the plastic on the outside. The inside is metal, with a removable metal cooking vessel that makes cleanup easier. We had several pass through the house when my ex-DiL lived here (never a Japanese one though).
I finally broke down and bought an Instant Pot to cook rice and dried beans (my cooking disaster involves a pressure cooker, third degree burns, and skin grafts, which I won’t share here).
Kayla Rudbek
@WaterGirl: yes, the term is “blind baking” although you can/should put a small chain or dried beans into the empty crust so that the base doesn’t rise up too much.
Uncle Cosmo
A couple of decades back, I undertook to reproduce for a friend a batch of Mom’s variation on classic Italian sesame seed cookies: Sugar cookie dough from scratch, rolled into a cylinder, sliced, topped with the seeds instead of a second dose of sugar, then baked. They’re quite tasty if you’re not a sucrose junky – so long as you include the amount of sugar specified in the dough.
I forgot it. Haven’t attempted to bake anything sweet since (though upon occasion I do make a mean 4-ingredient chilled cream cheese pie).