Tuesday 2 October 2012

Launch Day Contest #2!

If you missed out on the Facebook giveway yesterday, you're still in luck! I'm doing another giveaway today right here through my blog. Tell me about the worst dinner disaster you've ever had in the comments below and you could win a free copy of How to Cook Up a Disaster! (Deadline: tonight at 11:59 pm Pacific Time)

Also, the $25 Amazon gift card is still up for grabs! If I get 75 likes to my Facebook page by Friday, one of my lucky Facebook fans will win it!


My dinner disasters have fortunately been fairly minor, but here are a couple almost-disasters I've had:

I was making roast beef dinner and discovered the potatoes in the pantry had grown roots and gone mouldy and were completely inedible. I didn't have a car at that time, so couldn't run to the store to buy more, so I ended up asking our guests to bring some with them! Another time I dumped an entire bowl of stuffing onto the floor while trying to stuff the turkey. This time I did have a car and was able to run out to the store and buy more bread crumbs. Still, dinner was more than a little late that night.

Like I said, pretty minor. I got nothing on poor Sadie. ;)

24 comments:

  1. I can't believe I'm admitting this in public. Once I had to scramble to make dinner (I don't even remember why I forgot), and found a box of Hamburger Helper stashed in the back of the pantry. (I don't routinely use that stuff but keep something "quick" around for just such boneheaded occasions.) I defrosted a pound of ground beef in the microwave while I got everything else ready... only to discover I didn't have any milk. I debated using water but realized that would be a disaster. What about substitutes? Evaporated milk? Didn't have any. Powdered milk? Never buy the stuff. Watered-down half-and-half? Would have worked but I'd recently switched to Coffee Mate sugar-free hazelnut creamer instead.

    Since so little milk was needed, I decided that the hazelnut creamer could work in a pinch.

    Let's just say I was horribly, horribly wrong. Egad, that dinner tasted nasty.

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    1. Hazelnut hamburger helper? Yeah, I can see that being an . . . interesting combo. ;)

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    2. I did the same thing with vanilla soymilk once! I thought vanilla was so mild, no one would notice. Well, it was quite, er, noticeable.

      We used to drink vanilla soymilk all the time but I think that killed the habit. I never buy it now@

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  2. I can't think of any disasters, but my grandmother made the ABSOLUTE DISGUSTINGEST FOOD EVAR: this weird green jello with celery and cucumber in it. It was AWFUL, and I remember being forced to choke it down. *shudder* It's why I will never force my children to do more than taste a food. LOL

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    1. Oh, gross! I feel for you, Larissa! Jell-O and celery and cucumber should not even be used in the same sentence!

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  3. Not sure if this counts, but once I made a beautiful potato salad for a family dinner--had just gotten married--and as I was carrying it out to the car it dumped upside down in the driveway. The dog liked it.

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    1. Oh, I can add the time I cooked ribs on the grill for about 3 times as long as they needed--charcoal sticks anyone?

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    2. Oh, Liz, that's the worst! At least the dog was there to clean it up!

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    3. And now I want ribs for dinner . . . but not charcoal sticks. ;)

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  4. Once I made chicken salad for a dinner party. I seriously didn't know what I was doing, but I was so proud of myself--until no one ate it. Not even my own family members. Looking back, it did look pretty gross. That was embarrassing, but not terribly disasterish. Worst I've got, though! LOL

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    1. Oh, there's nothing worse than going to a potluck and coming home with a full dish of food. :(

      I spent a good portion of this morning trying to think of the worst dinner disaster I ever had, but they've all been pretty minor, too! Still, I should probably post them!

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    2. It is awful when your dish isn't eaten -- especially when it's a lot of work and you ended up spending $40 in ingredients and everyone thinks it's gross.

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    3. You say that like you speak from experience, Kell. ;)

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  5. Once I tried a new recipe -- acorn squash stuffed with orzo and almonds. Sounds good, right? Well, it wasn't -- probably some kind of user error. If you ask my husband about my cooking, he always says he likes everything I make, except acorn squash. It was ONCE!

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    1. What is it with husbands and never letting you live down that one culinary faux pas? Sigh. :P

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  6. I was staying at my mom's while we were renovating, was toasting some Italian bread to go with our pasta, forgot about it, bread ignited inside the toaster, which also ignited, cabinets nearly took, fire department called...dinner disaster and near calamity. Top that people.

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  7. Things got hectic right before my oldest daughter's high school graduation party, and for reasons long forgotten, I stashed a big plastic bowl of potato chips in the oven, then went on with the show.

    The party was a great success, so much so that our guests wouldn't leave, and wouldn't leave, and wouldn't leave - even though the open house clearly had an end time. I and the rest of the family were starving, since we were so busy getting ready for the party, we hadn't had lunch, so I went ahead and started making homemade pizza for our dinner. A friend had recently told me the best pizza was baked at 500 degrees, so I turned on the oven to that temp, totally forgetting about the plastic bowl full of potato chips.

    Let's just say that by the time the flames were out and the smoke cleared, the rest of the guests were gone. That's how I learned the best way to get rid of lingering guests at a party: start a fire in the oven!

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    1. I do not even want to think about what kind of mess your oven was after that, Karen! (Did you get take-out after that?)

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    2. Ha - as it happens, our stove was an old monster with two ovens side-by-side, so I could still bake our pizza! Then for the next month, I used only the smaller oven, since I couldn't bear to begin the cleanup job on the bigger one.

      But it turned out, the fire was so hot, when I did finally tackle the cleanup, the plastic and the other goo slid right off!

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    3. Oh, well, that's good! As long as it didn't taste like burnt plastic. :P

      I once burned popcorn in the microwave and everything you cooked in it afterward tasted like burnt popcorn. EEWWWW!

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  8. Oh, I just missed it! Oh, well. Congrats on the new book!

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    1. Thanks, Donna! I'll be doing another giveaway tomorrow! Watch this blog (or my FB page for details)!

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  9. I was married in a September and two months later prepared my first Thanksgiving dinner for my new husband and some guests. I made dressing and stuffed the turkey, stitched up the opening. Then I remembered I hadn't salted the cavity! As my directions said to do. So I undid my thread over the cavity and scooped out all the dressing. Salted the cavity and put everything back. Would it have tasted any different? And would anyone but a foolish new cook do something like that?

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