Kitchen Nightmares

Greetings, Mr. & Mrs. America, and all the ships at sea: It's really true that anyone at all, who spends any time at all on social media, would know that it was my birthday last week, thanks to our friends at Facebook - from whom no secret is safe, and privacy is just an antiquated notion from a bygone era - and admittedly, things seem to have slipped away from us in an overall sense of dropping through the cracks, laying down on the job, and falling asleep at the switch, like some irresponsible malingerer out on a spree. And so, in honor of my (now belated) natal day, I have called upon JULIEBUGSMAMA and her friends at www.seriouseats.com for a couple of kitchen cautionary tales that should, at the very least, make the rest of us feel better knowing that no matter how bad things may appear, they can indeed always be worse, believe it or not. So without further ado, anchors aweigh, Miss Julie! ============================= HALF-BAKED I remember it like it was yesterday, even though now it's been 28 years. Mom and I decided it was time to get a serious cleaning done in the kitchen. We scrubbed the kitchen floors on our hands and knees, and then followed up with a hand applied wax. Then we tackled the oven. Not a self-cleaning oven, rather an old-fashioned gas oven which needed to be sprayed and scraped and scrubbed. This took the better part of a whole day. We then decided that, as a reward for all of our efforts and toil, we would bake a batch of Toll House cookies. So we measured, sifted, and stirred, then put our rounded tablespoon measures of perfect cookie dough onto our greased cookie sheets, and went to put them into our pristinely scrubbed and preheated oven, which sat on our shiny, freshly waxed floor. Then it happened. The fates looked upon our activities and smiled a sinister smile. In this June Cleaver moment, they instead envisioned Lucille Ball ... and the planets re-aligned to alter the scene. My stockinged feet slipped ever so slightly, just at the precise moment I was leaning into the oven with the cookie sheet full of dough. The sheet up-ended, landing dough-side down all over the hot interior of the opened oven door. Frustrated and panicked that the cookies would begin baking on the hot surface, my mother filled a bucket of hot, soapy water. We set the bucket down on the clean floor. We began scooping hot, melty cookie dough out of the oven, and into the bucket of soapy water. Just as we were cleaning the last of the mess out of the oven, my knee hit the bucket. Two gallons of sludgey, cookie-dough, melted-chocolate-infused water spilled all over our newly waxed floor, leaving a pool of mush and mayhem all over the kitchen. We sat in the mess and laughed until we cried. Even though it was, by all counts, a complete kitchen disaster, it remains one of my mother's and my favorite memories of being together in the kitchen. What is your funny kitchen disaster story? <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> COMMENTS: Oh Julie, thank heaven you could both laugh about it. What a hilarious story! Here's mine: It was one of those days where you didn't have an extra minute. I had a toddler and an infant. I was baking a cake and was stressed-out because I had a million things to do. I forget who the cake was for, but probably somebody's birthday. Anyway, I had mixed it and was walking the bowl across the kitchen to pour it into the baking pans when I slipped, threw the bowl into the air and when it hit the floor, not only did it break, but batter was everywhere, including the ceiling. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. So, I cleaned it up and started over. About a week later we were visiting my husband's family when his mother dropped something, and my adorable little angel daughter, who was just learning to talk, let out a long string of very inappropriate 4-letter words in a row, getting louder and louder. Of course, my shocked mother-in-law wanted to know where she had heard such language. (Hanging head in shame.) I promised myself that I would be really careful not to drop stuff and curse for a long time after that, although it was my dear hubby's suggestion that I be banned from baking, since it made me hostile and use really bad words. PerkyMac