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Cathy's Brain-Child: FLOPS!

chubbyalaskagriz

New member
Okay, this thread was originally Cathy's idea. Tell us about all the FLOPS and SNAFOOS you've made in the kitchen!

I can hardly wait to read about everyone's funny goof's! :eek:

A few years back I cooked at a silver-mine camp on Admiralty Island, near Juneau, Alaska. At this job, we worked 4-week hitches, then took 2 week RandR's.

On the day the departing cook left and was replaced by the relief cook, the departing cook always planned a super-easy dinner menu so that as he left camp to fly home, and as the newly-arriving cook reported into camp and quickly tied-on his apron to start filling-in, the transition from one cook to the other was as EZ and pain-free as possible.

One time, night before Thanksgiving, as Ethel was walking down the floating-dock carrying her duffel-bag to board the float-plane, and as I was climbing down the ladder off the plane, in passing she told me "Dinner is out and the miners are eating, but I didn't get a chance to finish frosting the sheet cakes to put out for dessert!"

So, as I entered the kitchen, I hit the ground running... washed my hands, tied-on my apron, then grabbed the rolling rack of yellow sheet cakes, frost all 4 of them, sliced into squares, plated and set-out alongside of puddings, apple pie and cherry crisp in the dessert cooler.

Then I went to finish attending the ham/spaghetti/rockfish buffet that Ethel had prepared.

As the miners passed me on their way to the dish-pit area to scrape their plates and turn-in their used silverware, cups and dessert-bowls, they smiled- welcoming me back to camp, and asked how my RandR was... and I became aware that almost all of them were throwing their portions of frosted sheet-cake into the trash! Puzzled, I went to the cooler and grabbed a portion. I sniffed it, then took a bite- and it was somehow "off".

I went back into the kitchen and looked a bit further, and guess what I discovered?

Ethel had several chocolate and cherry sheetcakes stored on the rolling pastry cart right alongside of the stacked convection ovens. So what had I frosted and served as sheet cake? Hmmm...

A bit more investigating revealed to me that it wasn't cake that I frosted w/ butter-cream and served at all- rather, it was the garlicky-sage cornbread that Ethel had prepared, intending for me to use for turkey-stuffing for the holiday menu, next day!

Talk about an embarrassing snafoo- Ha!
 
lol Didnt you notice the cake looked a little funny when you frosted it?

I don't know if I have made any really big goofs in the kitchen. The first time I tried to make apple pie was a disaster. I can make them fine now bit I screwed up something bad that first time. When I was about 14 I tried to make Mom's breakfast gravy. I put in to much flour...I mean WAY to much flour and when I put in the milk it came over the sides of the skillet and made a horrible mess lol. Thanfully I can handle both dishes now.
 
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IC Flops

I already mentioned my inebriated bread baking episode and the beautiful lump of charcoal shaped bread I had baked.
I also had a blueberry muffin fiasco. I had found a recipe for blueberry muffins I I was totally amazed at how beautiful they had turned out. When breakfast was served I was receiving the bad vibes that I had screwed up something. I took a bite of the muffin and found that I had grabbed chili powder instead of cinnamon.
Growing up I loved hot open faced turkey sandwiches. I had a craving for some and being during a warm summer month many years ago, I wasn't going to buy a turkey and roast it up just for the leftovers. This was back in the day where they didn't sell turkey loins and breast and roast.Today if you want turkey there are so many options. Anyway, I went to the deli counter and bought several pounds of turkey breast. It was a store brand. I wanted turkey gravy so I bought a couple jars of the Heinz stuff.
When I got home I heated up the gravy. We didn't have a microwave at the time so I decided to just heat the turkey in the gravy before serving it. Big mistake..... I put the deli turkey into the hot gravy and it just disintegrated. It was as if I had used a turkey loaf and all the gel had melted. I had turkey slop. It didn't taste bad but was very disappointing as far as appearance. I am glad I had cranberry sauce with that dinner. It's the only thing that looked good.
 
Cathy's Disasterous Pot Pie

:DI love it!!! Kevin's Cake:confused:
Janie's gravy:eek:
and IC's Turkey & gravy:(

Last year we bought some baby chicks...I was intending to keep all the laying hens and butcher and eat all of the roosters except 1. Well the 1st Rooster to go was a breeze, and we gifted him to our neighbor, who Grilled the meat for the 4th of July, telling us how delicious and tender the meat was! Cool, I decided which rooster had to go next (when they turned mean and started trying to spur us OFF WITH 'ER HEADS!!!)so the next rooster I decided to make into a pot pie for my family. Well as we ate that pot pie you could have heard a pin drop, each bite was like trying to swallow a lump of clay, and just sort of had to be swallowed real hard in order to go down:confused: Finally we all finsihed our plates, (everyone declined seconds) and as all our plates were all washed and put up we all sat down and my 8yr.old finally broke the silence..she said "It sure is hard eating something you named"!:eek: The tension was broke as we all agreed and the rest of the roosters were for the neighbor, who loved getting them!

P.S. The leftover pot pie I took to work and the girls had it for lunch, and just bragged on how great it was, and I thought it was just horrible..go figure, what a mind trip! I kind of get that feeling when I eat deer meat, I just have problems swallowing "Bambi"
 
My most recent flop in the kitchen would have to be...a Chocolate Souffle. I put it in the oven and it baked so beautiful....When it came time to take it out of the oven I reached in to get it and the rack tipped and my beautiful Souffle fell to the floor and the dish broke and what a mess !
Then back at this past Christmas I baked a pecan pie...it burned to a crisp on top and was not even done in the center ! My electric stove gives me fits.I'm saving up to buy a gas stove.:p
 
I used powdered sugar instead of flour in soup, whoops! I didn't have the container marked. I thought the soup was a little to sweet. Cookie :)
 
I don't really have any funny stories like that. The only thing I can think of is a cake that I made when I first went gluten free made of teff and it substituted applesauce for eggs. Well it sounded good. Teff flour makes delicious banana breads Unfortunately the cake turned to mush over night. When I woke up it was a plate of slime. Very upsetting when you are using expensive flours. I won't make that recipe again.
 
I think my worst was making blueberry sauce. I had the heat a bit too high and had to answer the phone. Once it cooled it set up like concrete. Took me more than a half hour to get it out of the pan and get the pan cleaned up.
 
That is so funny Cookie!!! You thought it tasted a tad sweet huh?
You crack me up:)

Bubba I was making some carmel sauce for Flan one day and over cooked it and it turned hard like your Blueberry Sauce!!! I guess we went a wee-bit towards the hard-ball stage...and then some:eek:
 
Anyone who's worked in a HOT, sweaty kitchen during the dawg-daze of summer... (especially if your are a big person w/ thunder-thighs) will identify w/ this story! (And I SWEAR this wasn't ME... rather a co-worker as chunky as me!)

For those thin & fit folks w/ no clue, fat folks have an unpleasant summer dilemma sometimes. One's hips often rub together when they get all over-heated and their inner-thighs can rub and become sorely chapped. Sometimes this can get severe and become quite a painful problem. But there is one wonderful remedy. Cornstarch! If you dust a little cornstarch down below- as you would talcum powder, that brings a bit of cool relief- and it also absorbs excess moisture and slows down the rubbing together and soothes the painful chaffing.

Well, our co-worker, Mario, was a big ole mean dude, and by July he was always walking bow-legged in the kitchen. Several times he would disappear from the busy line in the restaurant kitchen to go to the restroom to dust himself. (He always kept a bowl of cornstarch under the vanity in the men's room.)

One day Chuck had played a cruel joke- when Mario took off, hippity-hoppin' to the john, we all sneaked and followed to get-in on the joke! Mario was in the restroom a couple minutes. We then barged in just as he had taken his forst 3-4 steps after dusting himself "down there".

He stood perfectly still, feet locked into place, seemingly frozen in cement! In fact- he WAS! Chuck had replaced Mario's conrstarch w/ powdered sugar, and when Mario grabbed a handfull to dust himself, it scattered into his shorts, mixed w/ the moisture there and liquified- turn into sticky frosting, adhering his thighs together in a sticky, syrupy mess!

Boy... was Mario mad as a hornet's nest lit a-fire! Hee-Hee!
 
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