Kitchen Adventures

A few days back I was chatting with some girlfriends and the subject of having things explode came up. The front runner for greatest disaster was forgetting to pierce potatoes and having them explode, this was the front runner until I shared my story.

My girls were still fairly young, maybe five and seven, when this happened. It was just before Easter, In addition to getting the eggs colored we had a bridal shower to attend. In my typical fashion, I was sure I could juggle it all. I started boiling the eggs, with a plan to let them cool while we were at the shower. The girls finished their lunch and we piled in the car to trek down to the south end of the county. I had that forgot something feeling the entire drive. As we pulled into the driveway, it dawned on me what I forgot. I had not taken the eggs off the heat.

I called Grandpa P, my neighbor across the street. As he and his wife had adopted my children as their grandchildren, I had long ago left a spare key with him. I made him promise not to clean up the mess and just turn the burner off. He agreed. He called me a short while later. Not only had the pot boiled dry but the eggs all exploded. There were bits of burnt egg everywhere. As promised, he did not clean up the mess. He did open every window in the house in hopes of airing out the stink. As we returned to the house, the girls in unison requested eggs for dinner.

This was by far the greatest kitchen disaster I ever experienced but by far not the only.

There was the time I picked up gyros from a local Greek restaurant. The gyros had cooled down considerably by the time we arrived home. I opted to popped the whole bag in the microwave, forgetting they were wrapped in foil and there was a stack of flimsy napkins in the bag. Within seconds the microwave was full of flames. The gyros survived but the same could not be said for the microwave,

Along a similar vein was the time as a teen I assumed a Pyrex bowl would work as well for melting butter as a metal bowl on a gas stove. You guessed it, that was the end of the Pyrex bowl.

These are the only ones I recall being directly responsible for. One of my favorite stories is when someone in the household misread a recipe and added a cup of salt instead of a pinch of salt to brownies. This was one of those disasters that likely should not have been salvage, but mom decided to try. By the time she added enough oatmeal and other ingredients to dilute the salt there were dozens and dozens of cookies. As I recall the story, several boxes ended up at boy scout camp with my brothers and were use as weapons against a neighboring camp. Another piece of the story is years later they were used to melt snow after a storm.

Even with the disaster nature of each of these situations they are truly legacy moments. Each one will be with me forever.