By Stef Van Wyk
Scorched spaghetti, rock hard gumdrop bars, cake fails, Jell-O that doesn’t jiggle, and sizzling steaks are just a few of the “ingredients” that make up the Hometown Press staff’s list of most memorable kitchen bloopers.
While most weeks we strive to bring you recipes and shortcuts to make life in the kitchen more enjoyable, this week we thought we’d turn the tables and share about those times things didn’t pan out so well…
Who among us hasn’t tried to impress a significant other with a delectable dish? (Your author excluded, who avoids the kitchen like a plague—another story for another time.)
“I tried to make salmon patties at my home before we were married, you know, trying to impress the boyfriend that I could cook,” remembered Margaret Vander Weerdt. “He was impressed alright, not really. Multi-tasking wasn't my strong point at that time, and let's just say the salmon patties burned so bad, the dog, who usually ate anything we gave him, took one sniff, wouldn't eat them, and walked away.”
Ashley Van Wyk remembers a pasta night gone wrong.
“When I was in high school, I made spaghetti for my family,” shared Van Wyk. “It was a disaster! I undercooked the noodles and scorched the sauce. My dad was the only one who tried to choke it down. My mom and sister found something else to eat!”
Then-newlyweds LeAnn Hjelmeland and her husband Clayton were living in an apartment in Montezuma a few years back when a steak dinner literally went up in flames.
“Since we didn’t have a grill, I decided to use our oven’s broiler to cook some steaks we’d been given,” Hjelmeland said. “This was the first time I’d used the broiler on that oven. Partway through cooking the steaks, I could tell the grease from the steaks was getting very hot in the oven because I could hear it sizzling. Not long after, when I peeked in the oven, I began to see flames — more than I was comfortable with! I ended up calling in my husband for backup. He didn’t like the looks of it either, so we pulled out our fire extinguisher, opened the oven, and he put out the flames. That did the trick!”
The fire put a damper on the couple’s meal and left a huge mess in its wake.
“Unfortunately, it also left a powder residue from the extinguisher ALL over my kitchen,” remembers Hjelmeland. “I spent the rest of the night cleaning about every surface of our kitchen. Our entire apartment smelled of smoke, so we had every window open to try to air it out.”
In retrospect, the couple is especially thankful for one particular wedding gift: Their fire extinguisher.
“After all the cleanup, when I finally sat down for supper a few hours later, it was to eat a bowl of cereal, not the steaks we’d so been looking forward to,” Hjelmeland remembered. “Looking back, I’m not sure if we would have kept the oven door shut longer, if the flames would have died out on their own from the lack of oxygen? Maybe baking soda would have worked, too. Who knows? I guess the important thing is we didn’t have a kitchen fire, and we learned how to use a fire extinguisher!”
For Jessica Maston, the virtual bookmarking site Pinterest has inspired her to reach new heights in cake decorating, sometimes with less than picture-perfect results. Our resident cake boss does, however, get an “A” for effort.
“I like making a big deal out of my kids’ birthdays, making them feel extra special, and celebrating big with them,” Maston said. “They get to choose their birthday theme each year. Once their theme is chosen, which ranges from sports to butterflies to ‘Frozen,’ I hop on Pinterest for cake ideas. I find super cute cake ideas, and the descriptions make them sound like anyone can accomplish them. Wrong. When I'm on my umpteenth hour of attempting to decorate a cake, and my kitchen is an absolute disaster, I'm always wondering why on earth I didn't have it professionally made. My end product NEVER looks anything like the glamorous Pinterest inspiration, and it probably tastes as well as it looks - not right. I apologize to my kids every year. At least I tried?!?!?”
Improvisation in the kitchen is also a tricky art that our staff has dabbled in, with varying degrees of success.
“Baking powder and baking soda are not interchangeable!” shared Faye Brand. “And when using baking powder for homemade biscuits, it’s best to sift the powder with the flour, otherwise the whole teaspoon of baking powder in one biscuit makes the lips pucker up, and the children boycott the biscuits for several months thereafter.”
Even Hjelmeland, who has the advantage of having a small grocery store in her town, tries to get by now and then.
“I often try to make do with the ingredients I have on hand, substituting ingredients to make recipes work. Sometimes it works… Sometimes it doesn’t.”
Van Wyk remembers a sticky situation back in the day with her sister, the accomplice.
“When my sister and I were in junior high, we decided to bake cookies,” Van Wyk said. “We used powdered sugar instead of flour. The sugar, flour, and powdered sugar were kept in a canister set on the counter. The first white fluffy stuff we found, we used! The cookies obviously did not rise, they spread all over the cookie sheet, and consequently ended up making a huge mess in the oven. Our mom was not very happy about the mess, but did think it was pretty funny!”
Kitchen bloopers are, if nothing else, a teaching tool for future endeavors. Vander Weerdt was reminded recently of the importance of carefully reading the box.
“Just the other day, my four-year-old granddaughter was making cake mix cookies at my house, something she can nearly do by herself, as it involves minimal measuring of ingredients,” Vander Weerdt said. “She took the cake mix off the shelf and showed it to me. It looked like white cake mix from across the room. Have you ever tasted lemon, peanut butter, and chocolate chips together in a cookie? At first the flavor mixture makes you think, ‘Oh, this is awful,’ but by the end of the cookie it's not so bad. I didn’t read the box, she can't read the box, and it was actually lemon cake mix in the mixture. I didn't realize it until I thought the dough smelled lemony, so I tasted it, got the box out of the recycle bin, and discovered the word ‘lemon’ right there in big letters on the front of the box!”
And while sending a relative to the store with your list might seem like a time-saver, Brand has learned this is not always the best practice.
“Never send your sister to the store for a head of lettuce; she might just come home with a head of cauliflower instead!” Brand advised. “Also, I once sent my husband to the grocery store for less than 10 items, and he came home with a $100 worth of random stuff I never even knew he liked to eat!”
Perhaps the best lesson is, even the best cooks among us need a night off every now and then. This is why we’re giving away a free pizza. So, swallow your pride and submit your very best/most embarrassing/most dangerous kitchen blooper for a chance to win. Entries are due Monday, June 13. We’ll publish our favorite June 16, and more importantly, reward you with a large pizza from the Coffee Cup Cafe. Ready, set, enter!
Have a memorable kitchen blooper you’d like to share? If so, email your mishap to press@netins.net or send us a message on Facebook. The winning entry will receive a FREE LARGE PIZZA from the Coffee Cup Cafe! Entries due June 13, winner announced June 16.
