Recently I had a discussion about food disasters...you know, those meals that you come away from and vow never to eat that particular food again in your life. For my husband it is blood sausage... a French delicacy. We were in Paris and he was determined to practice the "When in Rome do as the Romans do...". So, we stopped at a quaint little neighborhood restaurant and instead of asking questions about the items on the menu, he simply asked the garcon what the recommended dish was and well...I don't even remember the name of the dish, but it sounded so elegant and much more palatable in the romantic french accent (I still think the garcon was messing with us)!!
One cut into the sausage and the aroma almost overtook him. But he is not one to easily give up, so he plunged ahead and took ONE FATAL BITE. Honestly, I thought he was going to have to get up and leave the restaurant. He had just downed the last of his Coke Zero (and you know in Europe you get no ice). I had an espresso, which he proceeded to try and down as quickly as possible...anything to get that taste out of his mouth!
For me eating disasters come in the form of some American cuisine that I have had some not so good encounters with. One of my most memorable food disaster stories is not about a food I cannot eat because of taste or presentation; it is a food that, because of circumstance, I avoided for years!!!
Back when my husband and I first moved to Panama City and he was newly employed, we were invited to dinner with the boss. To set the stage, we were in our early twenties and had moved here from West Virginia straight out of college. West Virginia might rightfully be "Almost Heaven" as John Denver claimed but I am pretty certain that it is not a mecca for seafood (unless you count Mrs. Paul's fishsticks?!). So, we went to dinner at the restaurant in his boss's hotel. We were the only ones there (I think the restaurant was closed to the public one night a week). A little overwhelming would be an understatement, but then the waiter came out and informed us that the kitchen had a treat in store: They'd just received a shipment of beautiful live Maine lobsters and we would be having those for dinner. With a flourish, the lobsters were presented in all their glory...beady eyes, whisker-things, big beautiful claws...and they were huge!!! Accompanying them were utensils that I thought I had seen at the dentist office on my last visit!! Do I need to continue? I mean I didn't even know how to begin to navigate around this seafood delicacy and while I am very good at studying those around me and following along...my husband to my right had no idea what he was doing and our host and hostess were on the other side of a huge round table with a rather elaborate tropical centerpiece between us. To their credit, they immediately knew that this was a first for us and helped us through the incredibly labor-intensive process of eating a whole lobster. For years after I avoided lobster on a menu...I loved the flavor...but the work required....forget it!
So a couple of things are rolling around in my mouth...I mean my mind. What is your food disaster story? Would I be willing to attack a previous "never eat that again food" and try to redeem it or me or... whatever?
I have decided to do both and something new on my blog....I am going to host my first contest in which you, the reader, can win a prize (no it won't be a rubber lobster) and I am going to try to prepare a food that I have avoided due to unfortunate encounters with it.
For the contest...tell me your favorite/worst food disaster story. I will read it and feel your pain or laugh at the humor...whichever applies. In the end one of you will be chosen to receive an apron made by my very talented and multi-tasking daughter Nicole (yes, in a way this is a shameless plug for her new little business "The Bobbin Bug"). As for my road to redemption...I am going to attempt to gain a healthy respect for a favorite spring dinner menu item....I know what you're thinking....lobster?....but no, this chick doesn't bring home live crustaceans and cook them (this is not an attempt at Julie/Julia). I will be trying my hand at a rack of lamb; another food that my family has never warmed up to but one that is all over Food Network, Cooking Light, and even a recent Today Show cooking segment!
We are going to be in Birmingham for Easter weekend and Nicole and I have made a decision that we can do this!!! We have begun collecting recipes and will eventually settle on one to try. If you have a favorite lamb dish that you feel will change our perspective please send that to me along with your story. On Saturday evening we will pull out the stops to prepare this much loved dish. We will chronicle our adventure with pictures and hopefully by the end of the evening all of the lamb naysayers in my family will have a new favorite dish...we shall see. If nothing else, we will have another food disaster story that I will share with all of you!
So, please share your story and possibly win a fabulous apron. To enter the contest simply click on the comment tab beneath this blog. Good luck!
Once upon a time I was twelve years old and I put Crisco in a tub on my toast thinking it was butter. The end.
ReplyDeleteThe food disasters, they have been legion. Fortunately Allen knew what he was getting into when he married me!
ReplyDeleteLately we've been on a vegan diet(don't ask--it's a long story, and it's only for a limited time) but the adventures in the kitchen have been quite extensive. Suffice it to say that the fake alfredo sauce was a hit. The eggplant lasagna rollups were...not. :)
My story is more about what I didn't cook, than what I did cook. First off, Erich's mom cooks a 5 course meal every night. Salad, meat, veggies, rolls, desert...the works. When we had been married for less than a month and living in Hattiesburg, MS they decided to drive the hour over since his mom had a school board meeting there. His dad and sister would eat with us and his mom would pick them up after the meeting. I was barely used to cooking for Erich and I was soooo nervous to have his dad and sister eating with us. I was thinking of feeding people in bulk (yes from 2 to 4 is in bulk)so I made a pot of red beans and rice. Now, Erich's sister has downs syndrome, but that doesn't mean that her comments don't hurt. Downs are known to be BIG eaters, sometimes that is all they look forward to. So, after we each had one big bowl of red beans, Sarah, his sis, wanted more. Well, I wasn't used to one pot of red beans being gone after the first round, but There was NONE left. So, his sister pitched a fit that there weren't seconds. She went on and on until I was almost in tears. After her dad calmed her down, she started asking about desert. Desert? I didn't think about making desert. My family didn't have desert after every meal. So that set off a whole 'nother round of carrying on about Morgan not cooking desert. I was furious by the end of the night and my feelings were really hurt by her insults. His dad really didn't try to calm her down so she kept going on and on. It obviously affected me because I can still feel the hurt after trying so hard to please them with my first family dinner. Needless to say....we now have desert EVERY TIME Sarah is here visiting!
ReplyDeleteI attempted to make lemon chicken once when we were first married. The recipe called for lemonade mix and chicken breasts...and that was it. I made the chicken, and we threw it out. It tasted like lemonade chicken, and dry as all get out. I have never tried to make it again since.
ReplyDeleteFudge was a very special treat during my childhood since there was rationing of sugar so when it magically appeared for very special occasions we were thrilled. Skip ahead several years when Bob and I decided to make some fudge on our own. I imagine the recipe was from the back of the Hershey’s Cocoa mix and it looked easy enough with only six items: sugar, salt, milk, butter, vanilla and Cocoa. We had a gas stove and followed the directions very carefully and stirred constantly and dropped a bit of the mixture into a cup of cold water to see if it was done. The tricky part was determining if the mixture stayed into a ball or just spread out in the water. We were never sure if it was right, as we didn’t own a candy thermometer, and when it didn’t set up, you had to eat the sugary mess with a spoon so we returned it to the pan for more cooking and cooked it so long that it burnt and stuck to the pan. We ended up throwing the pan and fudge in the garbage. We probably fought over who got to lick the spoon but we laugh at our fudge making memory.
ReplyDeleteThis didn't happen to me, but my cousin was making cookies for her daughter to take to school. As the cookies were baking, she realized they smelled strangely like tacos. Turns out she had put cumin in the cookies instead of cinnamon =) She thought about maybe sending them to school with a side of salsa and pretending this was normal, but in the end she just threw them out!
ReplyDeleteI was making Mexican Chicken Lime soup for us and some other people. This was a new recipe that I had found in Rachael Ray Magazine and it looked like something that my husband would love so I was really excited about it. The recipe called for 2 CANNED chipotle chiles in Adobo sauce, but I read 2 CANS! If you have any idea how hot chipotles in adobo are...I can't even compare it to anything... Anyway, I put two cans of chopped up chiles in adobo sauce in, its cooking away and in walk my husband and a neighbor who is supposed to be eating with us (not David, he is not this stupid)...My husband looks at it and says "Wow that's red." I said, "I think it is gonna be really hot, I don't think we can eat this." And then--My neighbor takes a bite! I thought he might die, he actually had tears in his eyes!! I looked back over the recipe and realized what I had done. Now the soup is a family staple and I make it all of the time...but with just 2 chiles! Here is a link to the recipe http://lifeinthishome.blogspot.com/search/label/Recipes
ReplyDeleteI love cooking and have a great recipe book collection! Breakfast is one of those meals that I rarely use a recipe for. A few summers ago we had Tripps's family staying over and I was making an early morning breakfast for Ginny and her cousins. French Toast was the main course and I was trying to make it special by using french bread and heating flavored syrups. The kids wanted powdered sugar to use as a topping and so I poured a big bowl of the "white stuff" and gave each child a spoon. They started eating and were soon raising their hands asking for more syrup - in fact I had a heat a new batch to meet their requests! The dietitian and Mom in me quickly became concerned about the amount of sugar they were consuming! I was sipping coffee and I quess the caffiene kicked in- my brain woke up and helped me realize my mistake- no wonder the poor children needed gallons of syrup- I had given them cornstarch instead of powered sugar! Lesson Learned: Always drink coffee before cooking breakfast!
ReplyDeleteOne year at Christmas I decided I wanted to make cookies for all my friends. Being a poor college student, my good friend Nicole said I could borrow her kitchen and some of her supplies. Well, I got to Nicole's apartment and set up shop in her kitchen. I was missing flour, so she graciously said I could use some and pointed to a blue container that was filled with flour. Happily I made my cookies and placed the balls of dough in the oven. A few minutes later I returned to the aroma of delicious cookies only to open the oven and find....... a cookie sheet covered in liquidy cookie dough. It had covered the entire cookie sheet and was spilling over the sides onto the oven. Nicole came rushing in with a look of concern on her face. We soon figured out the issue....... the "flour" was actually confection sugar. Opps! I just cut the cookies up into squares and served them anyway.... everyone still remarked how great they tasted!
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