Cooking Disasters

(I'm not drinking...honest.  I can't explain why these things come to my brain, or what launches the compulsion to write about them!)

Every married woman has Young Bride stories of times when she ventured to fix a meal for her husband, and it just didn't turn out as expected.  Some of my kitchen disasters were when I was a young bride, but several came after I was a seasoned cook (no pun intended).

Disaster #1:
I've already written about the time that I accidentally bought self-rising flour and made homemade shortcakes with it.  The cakes were too salty to eat.  The mistake wasn't because I bought the flour by accident as much as it was due to the fact that I had no idea what self-rising flour was/is.  Had to throw out both the shortcakes and the bag of flour.

#2:
My first attempt at making gravy.  Ha!  I had watched my mother many times and knew that I had to make a roux with flour in the meat juices, then stir like crazy with a fork when I added liquids.  I just never knew how much flour to add, or how much milk...or even how long to stir.  I knew the process, just not the whys.  That first time, I had a lot of nice meat drippings, so I started adding flour.  And flour.  And more flour.  I added flour until the juices seemed to be the consistency of the gravy I wanted, then I started pouring in the milk and stirring like crazy to prevent--horror of horrors--the flour "dumplings" that occur if you don't stir furiously enough.  (Lumpy gravy was the sign of an inattentive cook and was a no-no in my family.)  As I poured in the milk and stirred, the "gravy" just got thicker and thicker, so I poured in more and more milk...and stirred and stirred and stirred.  When it finally looked okay, I knew it was done.  The result?  My gravy tasted like wallpaper paste with a little beef flavoring!  That day, I learned--among other things--that the cook can add the milk with the heat off, which means it will thicken slower...and it doesn't take that much flour to make the roux.  AND, forty or more years later, I learned about the whisk.  (What a wonderful little tool the whisk is!  To my knowledge, my mother never even owned or used one.) No more lumpy gravy, no matter when the milk is added!

#3.
I discovered early on in housekeeping that cut-up chicken is more expensive than whole fryers.  I was pinching pennies in those days, so I wanted to buy whole chickens to fry, but I had no clue how to cut them up.  I asked my mother for help.  She showed me how to cut up the chicken into wings, legs, thighs, breasts and a back.  Two of each (except for the back), right?  Mom made it look easy. A really sharp knife helped.  At home, on my own for the first time, I started cutting away.  Nothing went quite the way that it had when my mother was doing it.  When it all was fried, except for the obvious legs and wings, I couldn't tell a breast from a back from a thigh.  We had to dig in to check the color of the meat to know which was which!  I tried maybe one more time; thereafter, I decided just to pay the extra few cents per pound to purchase cut-up chicken.  Problem solved!

#4.
My then-husband had some strange tastes in food--mostly meat.  He would eat steak tartar, which is raw beef.  And he liked brains.  Brains??????  Somewhat early in our marriage, he purchased some pork brains and wanted me to cook them for him for breakfast.  I had never cooked brains before, or even watched anyone else do it, so I had no idea where to start.  He told me that I needed to roll them in corn meal, or something like that, and fry them.  Okay...I could do that...but how to tell when they are done??  I did my duty as a wife, but I have to tell you that handling brains was repulsive to me.  I have no clue how they turned out because I wouldn't eat brains unless my very life depended on it, but I did have the courage to tell my husband that if he wanted to stay married to me for very long, he would not ask me to do that again.  I don't believe he ever did again, thank God!

#5.
Again, my husband's tastes.  Joe liked oysters.  I didn't.  He would eat them raw and in turkey stuffing, but also liked oyster stew.  Once, he was fixing himself some oyster stew and had some raw oysters sitting in a pan of milk on the stove.  He made a point of telling me that the milk should never boil because it would "curl the oysters' ears".  I was just happy not to be a part of the process! Then I came along to put a pot of water on the stove to boil, but turned on the wrong burner.  The milk with the oysters in it boiled!  I felt like a total failure, but it was merely a mistake.  In my family, we would have eaten the results anyway, but he threw it all out, which made me feel worse.  The very next time he wanted oyster stew, he asked me to do it.  He had it all prepared.  All I had to do was cook it. I turned on the electric burner but wasn't attentive enough to catch it before it, once more, boiled the milk and curled the oysters' ears.  Again!!  I swear it wasn't intentional, but it sure didn't look good!  

I'm sure there are more cooking disasters...desserts that didn't turn out and meals that weren't timed properly...but my brain is now fried.  At least I know how they feel in hand!