Share your kitchen disasters...

[Noodle]

One of the key skills for Mustachian living is being able to cook, but for many (most?) people, learning by doing sometimes means learning by making mistakes. I was thinking about this yesterday as I was burying the corpse of a recent experiment in which I tried to use up leftover greens and carrots by chopping them fine and putting them in a batch of chili. It might have worked in small quantities, but I ended up with an unhappy marriage of vegetable soup and chili that finally had to be put out of its misery. I even tried putting it in the freezer, thinking I might like it better later (why?) but the smell as I was defrosting reminded me why I couldn't finish it the first time.

Probably the most epic disaster that comes to mind right now was a batch of edamame hummus years ago. Not only did it taste awful no matter what I tried, but when I put it down the disposal I backed up the plumbing for not just my unit but my neighbor's...and the landlord very nicely asked me to maybe just leave the disposal alone from here on out.

How about everyone else? We can commiserate...

[RWD]

I accidentally swapped baking soda for baking powder in biscuits more than once. They taste kind of metallic...

I've made a pot of spaghetti sauce and let it simmer for an hour without stirring. There was a very black burnt layer at the bottom.

I once accidentally dumped my entire batch of spaghetti noodles down the garbage disposal while draining the water...

I tried substituting honey for sugar in cookies. All the individual cookies merged together into one giant flat baking sheet sized cookie (which also dripped off the edges)...

I accidentally added water to alfredo sauce. Then tried to thicken it back up with excess parmesan cheese. It didn't taste very good...

There are probably more, but that's what I'm remembering off the top of my head.

[cdttmm]

There are so many...

A fall-inspired soup with 3 kinds of squash and Granny Smith apples -- not sure what went wrong, but I'm not great when it comes to following recipes so it could have been any number of things. It was so bad it was completely inedible. Worst part, I made a large batch...about 40 servings worth. To the compost pile it went.

A peanut sauce that called for rice wine and I accidentally used rice wine vinegar. Nope. Not the same thing.

An Asian-inspired soup in which the rice noodles all gelled together into one slimy mass and the tofu, well, it was bland and tasteless just like tofu is supposed to be.

A quinoa-cranberry-honey bake that was so vile I can't even begin to figure out what went wrong. Or how it could have even been remotely "right" in the first place. Gah.

Those are the ones that come to mind immediately. I'm easily inspired by recipes, but have a hard time following them to the letter. Considering the number of experiments that happen in my kitchen, I should probably be very impressed by my overall track record. In the grand scheme of things, the truly epic, completely inedible disasters are pretty limited in number.

Typed as I wait for a batch of banana-chocolate-chocolate chip muffins to bake. And no, I didn't follow the recipe. Not even close. We'll see how they turn out...

[Trudie]

I have many epic fails:

The baba ganoush that tasted like horse feed.
A carrot-ginger soup that tasted so bitter I couldn't take a bite.
A corn chowder that was watery and gross.

There are more, I'm sure, but I try to put them out of mind quickly.

I read a lot of recipes and follow them to the letter when I'm trying something new, but as I pointed out to my husband who was disappointed in a new cookie recipe he tried, there are so many recipes on the internet and it's hard to tell if they've been rigorously tested.  Also, if ingredients are out of season or not as high quality the finished product can be "off."  Truly good restaurant chefs have to replicate recipes over and over hundreds of times until they come up with a keeper.  Most of us don't have the resources to do that.  So, in the course of home cooking there are bound to be some fails.

[NV Teacher]

Not mine but my sister's.  Recipe called for a cup of melted chocolate chips, she put in a cup of cocoa powder. 

[Tick-Tock]

Accidentally used soy sauce instead of Worcestershire sauce in a batch of Chex mix. Yuck!

Usually I make grilled cheese in the oven. Once when I tried it on the stovetop it burned so badly it left an indelible bread outline on the frying pan.

[Tris Prior]

I had the FAIL corn chowder too. Runny and tasteless. I wonder if we used the same recipe.

Recently I did a black bean chili with dried beans in the crockpot, and the beans just would not soften. I'd never had that problem before. A friend told me it was because I'd added tomatoes, and that will interfere with dried beans softening even when they're pre-soaked - but that's what the recipe said to do? Anyway, I tried choking it down for work lunches for a couple of days before I gave up and tossed it.

When I first started canning, I did a bunch of pickled foods. Then I realized that I don't actually like pickled foods. So that felt pretty wasteful. I was able to at least pawn those off on others.

[tj]

I'm always paranoid that I haven't cooked my animal protein long enough. I haven't really figured out how to streamline it. :(

[NYCWife]

Two to add from a NYC kitchen . . .

Note to those who want to make homemade soup that calls for you to puree the soup when it finishes cooking. My husband and I were making homemade caramelized onion and butternut squash soup. I poured a batch of it into the blender and put the lid on, then turned it on to puree. Um, I think I missed the science lesson in which we learned that hot liquid expands. It exploded ALL OVER our tiny NYC kitchen, giving my husband, who was standing behind me, second degree burns. After that, we invested in an immersion blender.

Last week when making my own pizza, I forgot to put salt in the dough. I realized it as I was rolling it out (after letting it rise), so I figured sprinkling some salt on the top before adding toppings would probably work. Nope. Gross!

Oh, and I second the person who said that you are rolling the dice with online recipes. We have been itching to try making ramen at home. We found a simplified crock pot version. Smelled delicious as it was cooking, but it tasted SOOOO bland! Sadly, we made enough for a week and a half. Being Mustachian, we choked down most of it before finally giving up on the broth and going just for the vegetables and pork and repurposing them into different configurations. So, that fail was not my fault! ;-)

[pbkmaine]

I made tofu lasagna once. Even the dog wouldn't eat it, and he ate everything.

[FINate]

I'm always paranoid that I haven't cooked my animal protein long enough. I haven't really figured out how to streamline it. :(

Get a ThermaPen (http://www.thermoworks.com/products/thermapen/) and you'll never have to guess again. They aren't cheap at $100, but we've had ours for years and use it almost every day. The probe is thin so it doesn't make large punctures, and it only takes 3 seconds to get a temperature reading. This one kitchen tool has been a great confidence booster for us since we no longer have under/over cooked foods.

[fanstashtic]

Not my disaster, but I remember when my grandma served the family her baked beans. My father dug in, and realized they tasted bad, but was too polite to question the off flavor, and kept on eating. My uncle took one bite and said "ma, what's wrong with the beans"? It was then that my grandma realized that the molasses was next to Robitussin... and oops!

[Rural]

Once misidentified "grape leaves" early in my foraging career and nearly killed my husband and myself.


I can't make pancakes without setting off the smoke alarm. Hoecakes, no problem. Pancakes, big problem every time. Makes no sense.


Everyone has an epic fail or two, even really good, instinctive cooks. The point is to keep trying (and generally to eat it anyway if it's not, you know, poisonous like my #1 above). Hot sauce will cover a world of sins.

[CATman]

The first time I tried to make pesto I mixed up the terms head of garlic and cloves of garlic. The recipe called for 2 cloves so I put 2 whole heads of garlic in the food processor. I figured it looked like too much, but went for it anyways. The heart breaking thing is that it was the sauce on a pizza with artichoke hearts and sundried tomatoes so I didn't find out the error of my ways until the entire pizza was done. 2 lessons learned that day: 1) taste as you cook 2) a head and a clove of garlic are two very different things.

[Astatine]

Loving this thread!

Years and years ago I made instant couscous. It was so rubbery and inedible. Had a pet rat at the time. Rats are omnivorous and eat ANYTHING. Anything except rubbery couscous, as it turns out.

I found a recipe for falafel online. Made it, ate one mouthful and retched from the taste. DH managed to eat some of his (he'll eat almost anything). The rest went in the compost. Lesson learnt: only use online recipes from trusted recipe sites (eg taste.com.au) and only use recipes with at least 5 reviews and at least 4/5 star rating.

The most recent was Friday. I had some ham bones (leftover from pea and ham soup) and odds and sodds of veggie scraps stored in the freezer. Cooked them all day on Friday to make soup stock. Tried half a mug of the stock as a clear soup Friday evening. It was disgusting. I managed to drink a few mouthfuls then started to gag on the taste (if I don't like something, I retch - unhelpful because I can't even force myself to eat stuff I don't like). DH gallantly drank his but agreed without hesitation when I suggested it all just get chucked in the compost.

Once misidentified "grape leaves" early in my foraging career and nearly killed my husband and myself.

I'd love to hear the full story.

[MsPeacock]

Many years ago made "pesto and pasta" with my boyfriend. I was about.. 17 and he was 22 or so. I had literally never heard of pesto. I had no idea. He had a vague idea of what it was, but no recipe. He did think that it seemed to call for basil, which was like really expensive and hard to find, so we used parsley. And pasta, well, he had wide egg noodles that we could use. And some kind of oil - which they are all the same, right - so corn oil should be fine. And, pinenuts - WTH are those - skip that ingredient! I am pretty sure that no cheese was used at all. So - the dish was oily egg noodles with pureed parsley - served cold.

[Carless]

I learned that some spices can be toasted, but trying that with dried hot peppers is more akin to some sort of volatilized weapon than food.

[Noodle]

Oh, and I second the person who said that you are rolling the dice with online recipes. We have been itching to try making ramen at home. We found a simplified crock pot version. Smelled delicious as it was cooking, but it tasted SOOOO bland! Sadly, we made enough for a week and a half. Being Mustachian, we choked down most of it before finally giving up on the broth and going just for the vegetables and pork and repurposing them into different configurations. So, that fail was not my fault! ;-)

Yes, I learned the hard way to be careful about Internet recipes...I finally figured out that if my instincts say one thing and the recipe says something different, I'm probably not the wrong one.

Another recent one was trying to make a steak salad as the inaugural meal in my new condo. I thought I followed the directions to pan-cook it properly (we're not allowed grills) but ended up with clouds of billowing smoke which quickly overwhelmed the vent fan. Then discovered that the smoke detectors are wired into the building electricity and the only way to get them to stop going off (and pissing off my brand-new neighbors) was to flip the breaker, thereby turning off power to half the condo. Burned steak tastes especially good in the dark...

[Jakejake]

I had some success using zucchini in cookies (kind of like zucchini bread). Inspired by that, I thought surely I could do the same with okra from the garden. Cookies went into the oven. Cookies came out of the oven, warm. Cookies cooled down, and tasted - ummm, a bit okra-y. Then, inexplicably, the cookies began warming up again. By the next morning, the okrosity had intensified and the tupperware they were in was hot to the touch. My husband still refers to them as the thermonuclear cookies. My mother suggested okra cookies were such a bad idea that they decided on their own to just begin the composting process immediately.

[Adventine]

I once tried to make a peanut butter carrot smoothie. Never, ever, ever again.

[Goldielocks]

This past week, with cauliflower finally dropping in price (no way was I spending 7 a head!), I got to make the recipe for spicy roasted cauliflower from "Good and Cheap" Leanne Brown:
https://8b862ca0073972f0472b704e2c0c21d0480f50d3.googledrive.com/host/0Bxd6wdCBD_2tdUdtM0d4WTJmclU/good-and-cheap.pdf

Great recipe, but I cut them a bit small and left them in for the full hour.  1/2 the pan was blackened and crispy!  Kids would not touch the black bits although I managed to eat them.

Another memorable night was when my DH experimented and added about 2 inches of mashed banana -- to the spaghetti sauce.
UGH!!  Never EVER add banana to tomato sauce!

LOL

[CATman]

I once tried to make a peanut butter carrot smoothie. Never, ever, ever again.

I'm fairly adventurous when it comes to food, but this seems like a non-starter even to me. You're a brave soul.

[Adventine]

I once tried to make a peanut butter carrot smoothie. Never, ever, ever again.

I'm fairly adventurous when it comes to food, but this seems like a non-starter even to me. You're a brave soul.

Brave, misguided, and ultimately traumatized.

[shelivesthedream]

The thermonuclear okra story is amazing!

The only one that leaps to mind right now is when I made a huge pot of beetroot soup from these discounted packets of pre-cooked beetroot I picked up at the shops one day. I had been so pleased with my cunning purchase and plan that I totally failed to notice the large "IN VINEGAR" on the packet. We tried adding baking powder to neutralise it but gave up after about three large tablespoons did nothing to the steaming bowls in front of us.

Actually, there was also the Chocolate Pudding Incident. I preheated the oven, mixed up some melt-in-the-middle individual chocolate puddings, went to put them in the hot oven and...dropped them. Of course as soon as the liquid touched the oven it cooked instantly, and it went all over the bottom of the oven and somehow started sliding down the inside (I.e. Between the outer and inner layers) of the oven door. I think I literally cried. Not only did we now not have chocolate pudding but we had to spend the next forty-five minutes chipping crusted pudding out of the crevices of the oven.

[Larabeth]

Thank goodness for this thread!! I feel a bit better now after several messes recently.

Keep in mind, I work 12 hour shifts at 911 and am exhausted when I come in.

I burned toast... The whole 6 slices I got out of my loaf of bread.

I tried to hardboil eggs and apparently took them off the stove too soon. They were soft boiled and gross.

I didn't cover pork correctly the first time I made it in the crockpot so the top layer didn't cook.

The last time I made red beans and rice I used a flavored broth and it tasted absolutely revolting.

[11ducks]

Put a bowl of pasta on the stove and walked away to work on the computer- 5 mins later was noticing a burning plastic smell. I went back to the kitchen, and saw a tea towel on fire, with metre-high flames licking the kitchen cupboards- id turned on the wrong burner by accident. Put it out, no harm done thankfully, though ive managed to burn a hole into the laminated kitchen bench.

[kvaruni]

Quatre-quarts, or pound cake, is very easy. Just one part egg, one part milk, one part butter, one part flour. I weighed the eggs and mixed it with equal parts milk, butter, and flour. Into the oven it goes for an hour.

Wait ... milk?! That had to be sugar! The end result was a tasteless, soggy, bread pudding lookalike.

[meg_shannon]

Let's see. We decided to put jalapeños on our burgers. I cut one in half, seeded it, and squished it flat. While the burgers were cooking I cooked the pepper in a small cast iron pan on the stove. Big mistake. The capsaicin, and other related spicy oils, went into the air, and we could barely enter the kitchen. With an open floor plan and a one year old at the time, we opened all the windows and left the house for a couple of hours.

[MandalayVA]

If you should drunkenly throw a handful of frozen french fries into a pan of overheated oil, the resulting fireball is worthy to be seen at a Metallica show.

Um ... not that I would know anything about that.  ;D

[lizzie]

I was making a huge pot of pinto beans to portion out and freeze, and I accidentally added cinnamon instead of cumin. I realized my mistake right away and scooped it all out while it was still floating on the top. And I personally thought that there was no difference. But I made the (second) mistake of mentioning this to my family, so they all called them the "cinnamon beans" and wouldn't eat them.

Another time, I tried a recipe for a kind of chicken stew that called for two heads(!) of fennel. It was totally inedible. I don't know what I was thinking, I don't even like fennel. But somehow I thought, maybe, this would be good. We had all this fennel from the CSA, and after that I tried to give it to a coworker. He said no thanks, he's got his own fennel problems.

[lizzie]

OMG I almost forgot the biggest kitchen disaster we had, right before Christmas. DH made a ton of candies and cookies to give as Christmas gifts, and packaged them all up nicely in boxes with bows. The cat started to look interested in all of that, so he put it all in the oven for safekeeping. Yes, we’re both old and experienced enough to know better. I can’t explain it other than to say I guess we both thought we’d be careful.

Anyway, you can guess what happened...the next day he started pre-heating the oven to make a pie, and everything was ruined. He melted a big tupperware container (not sure why he put that in the oven, actually, other than just to keep everything in the same spot) and the cookies were awful. He managed to convince himself that the candy that had retained its shape was still OK, but really it tasted like smoked plastic. Lots of expensive ingredients (chocolate, cream, almonds) gone to waste, and one of the oven racks is coated in plastic (luckily nothing dripped anywhere else).  Worst of all, he felt like he had to run out and buy a bunch of stupid last-minute gifts for his family members that he had intended to give the candy and cookies to, which he found really depressing.

[CheapskateWife]

There was a time, I got into homemade wine...Wild grapes are delicious, peach is heaven, freezer burned mixed berries divine....Pumpkin, not so much.

[Chris22]

Recently tried Alton Brown's recipe for skirt steak.  You cook it directly on the coals, 60s per side.

When I did it, it came off tasting like charcoal, didn't cook through enough (even for me and I like it rare) and was still very tough/stringy.  Good thing I had also cooked up some shrimp, because the steak was terrible.

[Drifterrider]

I'm always paranoid that I haven't cooked my animal protein long enough. I haven't really figured out how to streamline it. :(

Slice it thinner to cook faster and use a good meat thermometer.  AND.........   Watch "Good Eats" with Alton Brown.

[Digital Dogma]

The first time I made chicken noodle soup I added the noodles at the beginning, turning the entire pot into a big lump of chicken noodle jelly.

I ate all that jelly. It was delicious.

[gardeningandgreen]

I once tried to make a healthy chocolate pudding or ice cream(I never want to make it again.) It had avocados and baking powder and I have no idea what else but avocados and chocolate is a terrible idea. NEVER put them together. Anyone who says its a good idea lies to you.

[Geostache]

Not a food disaster, per se. But take my word for it. NEVER chop jalapenos bare-handed and then go get a shower and clean your nether-regions with those same bare hands. I burned for a couple of days afterward.

[Digital Dogma]

Recently tried Alton Brown's recipe for skirt steak.  You cook it directly on the coals, 60s per side.

When I did it, it came off tasting like charcoal, didn't cook through enough (even for me and I like it rare) and was still very tough/stringy.  Good thing I had also cooked up some shrimp, because the steak was terrible.

I've done something similar with skirt steak, but instead of going directly on the coal I used a 1'X1'X6" slab of granite over a half dozen lit logs that had been burning for about 4 or 5 hours. Smoked flavor was nice, don't think I could've achieved the same thing in my BBQ smoker.

Since that bit of foam isn't a disaster I'll add another one:

I've brined and smoked pork belly before, I've done 3 at a time even. So I decided I could probably do 8 at a time in the smoker no problem right?

Wrooooong, only the top rack got smoked, I had to continually rotate all the bellys to the top as they dripped fat all over the ones below. Not only was I juggling huge slabs of meat all night, but the quality just wasn't there due to the moist/fatty conditions. It was a pork fat downpour. 3 bellys is my limit from now on :)

[katstache92]

I was on an internship and they put us up in a furnished apartment.  This was great because I didn't have any furniture or household things at the time since I was living in the dorms.

I decided to make tuna helper.  Unfortunately the furnished kitchen somehow did not have measuring cups... so I decided to use the coffee pot from the coffee maker as my measuring cup.  Very quickly realized that the "cups" shown on the coffee pot have nothing in common with a measuring cup.  I did save the dinner, but I wasn't sure there for a while.  I think the smoke alarm went off, but only for a few minutes.

[FINate]

My first attempt at grilling sardines I did not gut them first. Results were an awful mess. In hindsight I have no idea what I was thinking.

[AZDude]

I love pad Thai. I have made it myself a few times, with generally delicious results. However, tried a different recipe for it once, and somehow I turned one of the greatest meals on earth into a bitter, disgusting, vomit inducing waste of resources. Guessing it was too much vinegar or something. Not totally sure, but I threw the recipe in the trash and blamed it on the recipe's author.

[Helvegen]

This was nasty:

http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2014/04/the-best-general-tsos-chicken-food-lab-chinese-recipe.html

I tried to make brownies with prunes subbed for the fat, but no matter how much the recipe poster claimed you couldn't taste the prunes...you could taste the prunes. Also turned out very rubbery.

I once killed a curry by putting way too much fresh parsley into it.

Tried making a whole wheat pizza crust on Thursday for Friday. It ended up being very dense and heavy. My husband didn't mind it, but I thought it was weird.

I made some BBQ sauce about a month ago and it ended up disgustingly sweet. BBQ flavored candy. I had to throw it out and start over.

I tried three times to make mozzarella cheese and three times have failed. It always looks great until the stretching and then it just either turns hard as a rock or crumbles into ricotta.

[Bracken_Joy]

There are many, but one of the most memorable played out right here on the forums, live stream style.

http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/journals/the-goal-tolivetolaugh-(and-be-financially-sound)/msg877844/#msg877844

The saga of "Duckferno 2015" is one of my finer moments.

Otherwise:
When I didn't know you were supposed to soak quinoa
When fruit flies invaded my sour dough starter
That time I lit butterscotch cookies on fire (still no idea how that happened)
The time I forgot to factor in "residual heat" for a squid recipe, which resulted in my date choking on the food (literally choking... luckily he got it coughed up before I had to heimlich, but COME ON). Distinctly not-sexy evening.
The time I reaaaaaaaaally messed up a chowder and it ended up a weird rubbery cement (I was in HS at the time, and my father thought this was hilarious- he discovered that cutting portions off made acceptable bouncy balls)

Anyway, I was a self-taught cook. Many disasters paved the way to success.

[simpleFIblog]

My roommate in college ran out of butter and attempted to make Mac n' Cheese with Pam instead. I didn't try it, but based on the face he made, it was not a good choice.

I once tried to "enhance" a breakfast casserole recipe by adding a few items I thought would be delicious. It basically tasted like dirt held together by eggs.

Not quite a disaster, but I once attempted to make cauliflower pizza crust to impress my now girlfriend on a date. It tasted great, but the crust completely feel apart. We now affectionately refer to it as "pizza pile."

More recently, I spilled bacon grease on a burner without realizing it and created a small bonfire on my electric stove.

I also sliced half my fingernail (but magically missed the skin completely) off a couple weeks ago while, of all things, cutting cheese. At least I know my knife is sharp.

[Bracken_Joy]

I also sliced half my fingernail (but magically missed the skin completely) off a couple weeks ago while, of all things, cutting cheese. At least I know my knife is sharp.

Finger nails: the front bumper of the human body =P

[CheapskateWife]

Forgot one!  It was this weekend in fact...

I make roasted (broiled) tomato salsa and marinara on a regular basis...my go-to pyrex however has decided it is done with that nonsense.  Both of my large pyrex casseroles inexplicably exploded after removing them from the oven.  Absolutely ruined 10 lbs of tomatoes and the pot that I had all the marinara veggies started in.  3 days later and we are still finding tiny shards of pyrex in the kitchen.

[Jakejake]

I made some BBQ sauce about a month ago and it ended up disgustingly sweet. BBQ flavored candy. I had to throw it out and start over.

That brought back memories! I hate those awkward moments when you tell your spouse you're making BBQ sauce and when he comes back 20 minutes later, you have to explain it wasn't working out so you turned it into cake batter. And 20 minutes after that, it's not a cake at all; it's batter for chicken.

[Fishindude]

Was out of detergent for dishwasher.
All I can say, is don't try using regular liquid dish soap.

[Dollar Slice]

Let's see... the first time I worked with chocolate, I tried to melt it in a double boiler and I think it seized from getting steam into it or something. At any rate, it was lumpy and I assumed it just wasn't melting, so I then proceeded to heat it for so long it burned. Yes, I seized AND burned the same 8 ounces of chocolate. Finally we just said "well, it's not melting, let's just put it in the recipe anyway," and it came out pretty well aside from tasting like burned chocolate. :-/

The first and only time I tried to make beef stock, I still haven't got a clue what went wrong. I got really good quality cuts of oxtail and shank, slow-simmered it with onion, celery, carrots and herbs for many hours. It was a really rich color, had an incredible amount of gelatin (like tire rubber when it chilled in the fridge!) and tasted pretty much like dirt with no meatiness at all. :-(

Tried to make gluten-free brownies from scratch after my SIL was diagnosed with celiac. They came out a totally bizarre texture, which I have never seen food achieve before or since. Threw them away and brought a few pints of ice cream to the dinner party instead. (I later learned how to make pots-de-creme, creme brulee, and flourless chocolate souffle for GF desserts, to rave reviews...)

I've had several mixtures break completely inexplicably - a ganache, a custard, etc. Tried and true recipes, no idea what happened. The ganache broke when I combined chopped chocolate and heated cream and stirred. The custard broke when I added a vanilla bean. WTF?

When I was about 11 or 12 years old I was invited over to another girl's house (who I honestly didn't like very much but you know it is when you're a kid... Mom decides you should be friends with her friend's kid or whatever, and you're stuck). We decided to make chocolate chip cookies but I'd never really done any baking without an adult and didn't realize how recipes worked. We dumped in all the ingredients at once. Before we could attempt to mix it together her mom came in and got all mad at us for doing it wrong and wasting all those ingredients.

[freezerburn]

Only yesterday I started a grease fire in my kitchen. I turned on a burner under a skillet with congealed bacon grease in it intending to melt it enough to pour it out before scrubbing the pan. Then I left the room and got distracted... I noticed the smoke and ran into the kitchen just in time to see the whole pan catch fire (it made a FWOOMPF! sound). Three-foot flames. Tried smothering it, didn't work and just spewed hot grease everywhere, spent frantic seconds hunting for the baking soda, and put it out. My little house was filled with smoke. Nary a peep from the smoke alarm, which it turns out is in a spot weirdly shielded from the stove. I had to open all the windows and doors and turn on the fans for over an hour and it still smelled. We had a rack full of laundry drying in another room that now smells like burned grease.

Earlier last week I burned a batch of roast brussels sprouts after I, uh, left the room and got distracted... Some of those were at least partially edible, what in my family is known as "pleasingly brown." We also had laundry drying that day.

I'm not usually this bad, but yesterday my boyfriend referred to me as "The Burninator."