My Cooking MISadventures

Fail Town, population: me.

I pride myself on my cooking - my family and friends all (seem to) enjoy it, and I love doing it. I like having people over so I can "show off" with simple, hearty, down-home food. Steak and gravy, homemade apple pie, peach cobbler, The World's Most Amazing Brownies, fried chicken... that kind of thing. It goes without saying that there are definitely no slim waistlines in my house :)

My family isn't terribly adventurous when it comes to food, we like the old tried-and-true favorites (see above), but I came across a recipe the other day that I thought sounded pretty good. I got everything put in the crockpot and headed out for my errands, expecting to come home to a wonderful aroma and dinner ready to eat. It was a recipe for Hawaiian Chicken, and you serve it over rice, so I got started making the rice for dinner. We eat a lot of rice, so I don't really even have to think about it anymore. 2 to 1 water to rice, 20 minutes simmering with the lid on, fluff with a fork, done. When we sat down for dinner last night, however we discovered that something was amiss.

The rice was done, but crisp on the outside. I honestly have no clue how this happened. And the chicken was a disaster - a disaster I'm still trying to remove from the inside of my crockpot, despite the nonstick cooking spray I used before making it. Somehow it was dry, even though it spent all day cooking in a sauce. I don't blame it though, that sauce was gross! I looked up at my DH over the plate of this industrial accident, and I knew that he was thinking about the other major cooking flops of our relationship. Yes, there have been a few.

First, there was the incident with the chicken stir fry. This was when we were in high school, his parents were on a trip, and I decided that this was the perfect opportunity for me to show just what kind of girl he was dating. As I prepared he chicken and vegetables, I was inwardly focused on the surprise he was about to get at what an amazing Domestic Goddess he was blessed with. This to be a man-catching meal, if ever there was one. I was so engrossed in what I was doing, following the recipe and dishing up his plate, that I didn't even really look at the meal itself. When I sat down across from him at the table, he had already taken a bite. I must have looked pretty smug as I sat there thinking "Yes! This is it! He couldn't even wait for me before he dug in! I'm awesome!" Then I looked down at my plate. Somehow everything was the same color - white. You couldn't tell where the chicken ended and the rice began. And that beautiful sauce over top? White as well. I looked at it for a minute, looked up at him - he was studiously NOT looking at me - and back at my plate. I took a deep breath and said "I'm not eating this - it looks awful." He set his fork down carefully on his plate and said "Thank God, because it tastes awful!" I believe we ordered a pizza.

The second time happened the very next night. "Okay, Round 2! That stir fry was a disaster, but I have made spaghetti a million times, and never had a mistake. EVER. This meal will be my redemption. NOW he'll see that I'm an amazing cook and he won't be able to stand it! 'Run away with me' he'll say. That's it." I shooed him off to the game room telling him to relax, play some video games or watch a movie, because my spaghetti takes about an hour to make. I bustled around in the kitchen making the sauce, cooking the pasta, and preheating the oven for some garlic bread. When it was time to put the bread in the oven, I opened it up. Flames came shooting out! The oven was on fire! I quickly closed the door, racked my brain for what it was I was supposed to do, and then calmly said "Babe, could you come in here?" He came strolling down the hallway, expecting his dinner, I'm sure. When he got to the kitchen, I opened the oven door for him. He leaped into action - putting out the fire and the finding the culprit. It actually was NOT my fault - his mother had left a cleaning rag in the oven, which ignited of course, when I turned the oven on.

After we recovered, we still ate dinner, and it was amazing. He didn't ask me to run away with him, but he still requests spaghetti for dinner frequently. Looking back through the years there have been a few other flops, but nothing on the scale of lighting his mother's oven on fire, or miraculously leeching the color out of fresh vegetables. He likes to share these stories with friends when we're talking about that kind of thing, and of course, they keep me humble when I'm starting to get too cocky.

But I always point out that the oven thing was NOT actually my fault... :)

Now that I've divulged MY biggest cooking flops - what are yours??