Your Worst Kitchen Disaster [Giveaway]
This giveaway is now closed.
UPDATE: Thank you guys so much for supporting me in this! I am so excited to announce that I won the Pampered Chef Blogger Blunder Kitchen Disaster contest – $3,5000 of Pampered Chef product and a gift card to Spa Finder. I couldn’t have done that without all of YOU.
Even though the giveaway is over now, feel free to leave a comment still if you’d like and don’t forget to read through some of the other disaster stories. There are some GREAT comments in here.
Congratulations to Jeneen for winning the Easy Brie-zy Pizza Set!
Disasters Happen Here Every Day
I say (jokingly, of course) that it’s a good thing that I was asked to share my worst “kitchen disasters” because we all know that I’m too good (I’m totally not) to have a “cooking disaster.”
Eric looks up and says “cooking disasters happen in here every day!” I am baffled, at a loss for words. WHAT? But he quickly recovers saying that by cooking disasters he means big messes.
And he is definitely right about that one, only I don’t view those as true “disasters,” just my genius creativity at work. But I will admit that I’ve never been a very tidy cook and have always felt that the only thing I hated about cooking is the cleaning up part.
My Worst Kitchen Disaster
I’m home from vacation with one day to unload the car, unpack, do laundry, settle the kids and pack myself up again before I leave for another trip, this time work related.
I come downstairs from laundry, quickly rushing to the kitchen. My mind is obviously somewhere else because I’m completely perplexed as to why the floor feels so…disgusting…and crunchy.
It takes a moment for the horrifying scene before my eyes registers with my brain. I realize that what I’m stepping on are tiny multi-colored sprinkles. And there aren’t just a few. There are a lot more than a few. A whole heckuva lot more.
Upon further inspection I find that not only has Madeline emptied several once full bottles of sprinkles onto the kitchen floor, but that she’s sitting on the counter rubbing her sweet little hands together like she’s putting on lotion…only she’s used an entire bottle of green food coloring for the job.
She must be pretty satisfied with herself because she stops rubbing those hands to flash a toothy, chubby cheek smile my way before continuing on her merry way.
The next task at hand — dumping curry powder into some concoction she’s got brewing nearby. Unfortunately, more curry makes it onto the counter than into her bowl. Which then ends up all over the seat of her pants.
At the time I’m feeling all sorts of things: annoyed, concerned, furious… that my 2 year old has figured out how to push a chair from the kitchen table over to the counter so she can get into the spice cabinet.
I’m so beside myself that I call Eric and tell him that I don’t care how tired he is, that there will be child locks on all the kitchen cabinets when I’m home from my trip.
I have too much to do still, and so I leave the mess as evidence but not before I take the chair and the bottle of curry powder away.
The only thing I can think to do is send Madeline out back in her diaper with the sprinklers on and popsicle in hand so she can wash off while I pout about my circumstances.
Payback Time
Only now months later do I realize that this is just payback for the occasion that I, as my 3 year old self, found it quite prudent to create my very first cake on the kitchen floor. Like mother, like daughter.
I think my parents must have known back then that the kitchen would be always be my most favorite room in the house, because after that disaster I certainly made many, many more.
I can only hope that Madeline will one day find the same joy in the kitchen that I do. And that maybe she’ll get a little payback of her own too.
P.S. We now have child locks on every single cabinet in the house, in or out of the reach of little hands.
P.P.S. Every word of this is the absolutely truth.
Now it’s your turn – SPILL IT – what is your worst kitchen disaster?
Were you the cause or someone else? Did it involve a recipe failure, a gigantic mess, or something else crazy? Was it a major holiday recipe disaster or more every day run of the mill disaster? DO TELL! I am so curious!
Even if you don’t have anything to share, I’d love your comment. Comments on this post count as votes on my entry in the contest.
Giveaway Prize (1 winner):
Easy Brie-zy Pizza Set (valued @ $115)
Giveaway Requirements:
- Leave a comment on this post telling me about your worst kitchen disaster.
- You may NOT enter using multiple email addresses. Automatic disqualification.
- Additional entries must leave a separate comment.
- Contest ends April 15, 2011 at 12:00 p.m. CT.
- Contest open to US States only.
- Winner will be chosen via random.org and will have 3 days to respond before disqualified and a new winner chosen.
Extra Entries:
Additional entries can be earned by doing any of the following, giving you a total of 3 entries. Leave a separate comment for each of your entries.
1. ReTweet the following message: Win a @pampered_chef Pizza Set (val. $115) and help @goodlifeeats win the Kitchen Disaster contest http://su.pr/1Kft6v #giveaway
2. Become a fan of GoodLife Eats on Facebook.
Contest Info
The Pampered Chef has asked me to share my very worst kitchen disaster with my readers in a little blogger contest. I own several Pampered Chef products and have always been happy with them so I agreed to participate. Plus, this is a good disaster story and something I’ve never shared here before.
I was not compensated for sharing my worst kitchen disaster in any way, but the winner — you need to comment on my post to help me win — winner gets $3,500 The Pampered Chef kitchen tool makeover and $125 towards SpaFinder.
To follow along with The Pampered Chef SPILL IT! Contest, “Like” their Facebook Page and share your worst story there, too (by Wednesday at noon CT) for a chance to enter this same contest.
Alysa De Felice says
We were having a Hannukah Party in December 2010 and my fabulous chef husband borrowed our vacationing neighbors oven to roast the chicken as we did not have enough room in our own. His chicken recipe calls for 450 degrees upfront and then a lowering to 350 after 20 minutes for the final roast. As the door to their apartment closed behind him, he realized the keys were left on their counter. We were locked out and our chicken was cooking “ON HIGH”. 12 guests in our living room were waiting for the “best” roast chicken ever and the clock was ticking. I rushed to drive 10 minutes and hopefully get a key from a friend. However, that key did not work. In the interim we had called a locksmith who was on the way and arrived at about 35 minutes into the cooking time. Thank goodness he successfully pried the door open and only charged $175 for the service. The apartment was filled with the smoke from the high cooking chicken but crazily enough, it was still edible. Our guests were very gracious and surprisingly excited to be part of such an adventurous evening. Your story and all the others are truly the fabric of life.
Karen Grinyer says
Though I now consider myself quite adequate in the kitchen, I was once a disaster. Literally. My mom wok up one day to fix Saturday morning pancakes only to arrive in a kitchen filled with 3 children, one giant bowl and basically every seasoning, spice and available ingredient at reachable height overflowing from the sides. My siblings and I had been trying to recreate the baking soda and vinegar volcano effect without knowing the exact ingredients. In out experiments we used baking powder, salt, cornstarch, pretty much anything available. To our mother’s dismay, we also emptied an entire bottle of Dancy’s vanilla (the one used in our parents wedding cake). The kitchen was a rainbow of differently colored spills, and that bowl was just disgusting. Needless to say we were in serious timeout for awhile. However, we did purchase them a new bottle around the time we all hit high school 🙂
vesta44 says
I had my best cooking disaster tonight. I baked boneless skinless chicken breasts in the oven for supper. After hubby and I served ourselves, he put the pyrex baking dish on the stove top so the cat wouldn’t get in the pan (she won’t stay off the kitchen table). I had made mashed potatoes to go with the chicken, and thought I’d turned off the burner. Wrong. I turned it the wrong way, to low. So there’s this very small flame heating up the pyrex baking dish, we’re watching tv, and the carbon monoxide alarm starts going off. Evidently, flame and pyrex don’t mix, and carbon monoxide detectors don’t like the fumes. Husband had to open up the back door and the front door to air out the house while I took the battery out of the detector and unplugged it until the air cleared. I’ll be double-checking burners from now on.
Leann says
I was cooking for my younger sister one day and we decided to make some sort of pasta. Well…we put the water in the pot, turned it on to boil, and got distracted. We were in another room when I heard my smoke alarm going off. I ran into the kitchen to find my pan on fire on the stove. It had burned to the point where it was completely engulfed in red and it had burned through the entire bottom of the pot. Oops…that smell stayed for weeks!
MA Ross says
I was invited to test a new “professional grade” non-stick spray before it hit the markets. I was so proud of myself, since this was my first big product review for any company, that I decided I’d leave the can of spray on the counter as a reminder to use it the next morning when making breakfast.
I woke up early, trotted in to the kitchen in my nightgown, and WHOOSH! I felt my feet go sliding out from under me. I skidded the first five feet upright, but somewhere after that the world began to tilt and by the time I came to an abrupt stall against the cabinets on the far side of the room, my nightgown was over my head, my feet in the air, and I couldn’t get any traction to right myself. I’m sitting there squealing like a pig and I hear my husband ask from the door, “Are you ok? Why does it look like you poured oil on the floor?” From behind him peeks my son, a mere four year old at the time.
After much struggling, I manage to roll on to my side and I notice a spray can- the one I was planning on reviewing- hidden slightly under the edge of the cabinet in front of me. The lid was missing. I picked it up and, sure enough, it was empty.
I hold up the can to my Husband and without even turning, he picks up the kiddo and feels his oily, oily hands before nodding at me.
It took WEEKS to get the nonstick spray up. I even had to call the company to ask if they use a specific solvent. Imagine my surprise when they told me laughingly that the situation had never come up before. (Okay, so I wasn’t THAT surprised- there’s a reason we’ve nicknamed our son Chaos…)
However, the product did get a glowing review for being truly “non-stick”!
Kristin says
My worst disaster involved baking a pizza on a pizza stone. It stuck to the stone and I attempted to pry it off with a knife. My hand slipped and I cut my finger. Blood went everywhere. I had to go to the emergency room for stitches. Turns out I also cut a tendon in my finger. My 2 yr-old still talks about it. Everytime we have pizza she tells me to be careful not to cut myself. Everytime we pass the hospital she tells me about when I went there.