In our June 2 issue, Hometown Press staffers brought you, our readers, the colorful details of our most memorable kitchen bloopers. We then turned the tables and asked you for your kitchen mishaps. This week, we are featuring our winning entry and also sharing a few of our favorite entries, all of which made choosing a winner no easy task. Enjoy!
Congratulations to winners Barb Hoogeveen and daughters! Please stop by the Hometown Press for your gift card for a FREE LARGE PIZZA from the Coffee Cup Cafe!
Flying Butter – Submitted by Barb Hoogeveen and daughters Amy Hoogeveen and Emily Vande Griend (“It was a joint effort!”)
It was Sunday noon, and we were preparing our "usual" meal of roast beef, mashed potatoes, gravy, and corn. I was mashing the potatoes in my big mixer. I realized I had no butter upstairs, so I asked one of my girls to go downstairs to the freezer to get some. All was fine, and the food was almost ready. The girls were setting the table, but as usual, I was in a hurry. So taking the cutting board and a big knife, I wildly whacked off a chunk of frozen butter and threw it in with the hot potatoes in the mixer bowl. My thought was the butter would melt just fine since the potatoes had recently come out of boiling water. However, things did not go as planned! The mixer was going pretty fast and the blade caught the chunk of butter hurling it across the room, straight at the girls. With screams, they hit the floor in a lifesaving maneuver as the butter sailed overhead and smacked directly into the glass window of the hutch. The butter slid down the window and landed in a mangled heap on the floor with mashed potatoes strewn along its flight path. Needless to say, none of us could breathe for a while because we were laughing so hard!
German chocolate stepping stone – Sheryl Baarda
“When my husband Craig and I were first married, I decided to bake him a German Chocolate Cake. In those days, there weren’t a lot of cake mixes to be had, plus my mother always taught me scratch baking was the best. I made and baked the chocolate cake according to the directions with no problems. I then proceeded to make the frosting. I don’t remember all the ingredients, but it did include butter, brown sugar, and coconut, I think. I poured the frosting on the cake and placed it under the broiler for the allotted time. When finished, I allowed it to cool until we were ready to eat it that evening. When I went to cut the cake, I could not get a butter knife through the cake. I then went to plan B, a steak knife – still no results. So on to plan C, a so-called ‘butcher’ knife. I STILL could not slice through that frosting. It was so rock hard I don’t think you could have dented it with a pick axe! Being the frugal Dutchman that I am, there was no way I was going to throw the whole cake away. So I proceeded to pick up the frosting at two ends and peel it off the cake. That frosting literally came off in one piece. I could flap it in the breeze with no pieces falling off. I think you could have used it for a stepping stone. It was that hard. We did go on to enjoy the rest of the cake. To this day, I don’t know what I did wrong, and I cannot remember ever trying to bake another German Chocolate Cake.
On another note, when we got married some 40-plus odd years ago, the two popular wedding presents were Crock-Pots and electric can openers. I think we received something like five of each. We returned all of them but one. The next day, when I went to use the can opener, it would not work. I was bemoaning the fact that we kept the one dud out of the bunch. My mechanical husband calmly walked over and said, ‘It works better when you plug it in.’ As a newlywed, I felt about two inches tall. He has since learned that his wife is NOT mechanically or electrically inclined, and those are the things I depend on him for.”
Garlic with a hint of salsa – Lynn Dunsbergen
“Twenty-five years ago, my friend Darci Jansen and I decided since we had lots of tomatoes, we would make homemade salsa. So we gathered everything we needed and started. Our recipe called for a clove of garlic and being young canners, we had no idea what a clove was, so we put the whole bulb in for every batch. That was REALLY a lot of garlic. My house smelled FOREVER of garlic! The salsa was good, but had a really strong garlic taste. We eventually learned what a clove of garlic really was. We laughed so hard after we figured it out, but it was a little too late for that batch. Thankfully, we have become better canners since then.”
Soupy potatoes – Crystal Montgomery
“When my husband Justin and I were first dating, I made mashed potatoes. Runny mashed potatoes. Didn't drain the water off them well enough and then added too much milk, ending up with a soupy mess. Thought maybe I could add a little flour to thicken them up. It's white; he'd never know. Not the case. While the potatoes WERE thicker, he took one bite and he said, ‘Um, why do these taste like flour?’ Crap. Had to ’fess up ... and I still hear about it today, 15 years later! Nearly every time we have mashed potatoes, I'm asked, ‘Didn't use flour, did ya?’ HA!”
Grandma’s pudding – Patti Collins
“When I was a little girl, my Grandma Arment was my mentor and great teacher of recipes and cooking from scratch - which grandma did from her homemade rolls to homemade noodles and homemade pies and cakes. All for Sunday dinner! Not just for special occasions, but everyday. I wanted to make my grandma proud, so I attempted to make her homemade chocolate pudding. I was so proud to make her pudding and was doing good, until I came to the salt. Somehow I had written down 1/4 cup of salt instead of 1/4 teaspoon of salt. OMG, it was so awful! Not edible at all. I was so embarrassed and felt so bad that I let my Grandma Arment down. (Which of course, I hadn't let her down at all.) She reassured me that everyone has messups, but I would always remember this, and I have.”
Slipping through the racks – Rachel Van Maanen
“I was babysitting for my cousins, and my aunt Julie Van Wyk asked me to bake some cookies. She had left out some racks for me to use. I mixed up her famous chocolate chip cookies, scooped them onto the racks, and put them in the oven. About 10 minutes later, I started smelling this burnt smell ... I opened the oven door and smoke billowed out, setting off the smoke alarms just as my uncle Lauren walked in. He just kind of looked at me funny and asked if everything was okay. I said ‘yeah,’ and he went to his office. (I was quite embarrassed.) So I took the racks out that Julie told me to use, and all the dough had started melting through the racks onto the bottom of the oven, causing the burning and smoke! Well, she never told me I was supposed to use those racks to COOL the cookies! They were cooling racks ... not baking racks. Growing up, my mom always cooled our cookies on newspaper covered with wax paper. I had never seen actual cooling racks before. When I put the dough on them, I thought it was weird, but Julie told me to use them, so I did! That was definitely a big kitchen blooper!”
Remedying the Situation
So, the damage has been done. Is there any hope for saving your dish gone wrong?!? Luckily, there are several remedies online for whatever ails your concoction. Here are a couple of helpful hints to file away for safe keeping. Better luck next time!
GARLIC: When too much garlic is added to a dish, just simmer some parsley sprigs in the soup or stew for 10 minutes then remove them. The potent garlic taste will be gone, leaving just enough garlic flavor so no one will ever know too much was ever added.
SALT: There are many ways that excess salt can be removed from foods. For a soup, dilute with unsalted liquid or add a peeled and quartered potato for a minimum of 15 minutes. Remove potato prior to serving. A reliable remedy is to - if extra ingredients are on hand - double the recipe - without the salt the second time around!
