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.
Jamie | My Baking Addiction says
Wow, I think there are far more than I care to admit; but a recent fight with a sour dough starter ranks up there as the biggest disaster in my kitchen.
Katie says
I am too scared to try sourdough!
FishMama says
How can I choose just one? I’m going to go with the jar of Kalamata olives that fell out of the fridge, broke, and spilled all over the fridge, floor, under the fridge, etc.
Katie says
EEK! I dropped a glass container of olive oil the other week. What a pain to clean up!
Lady Kay says
Well at our house we say that dinner is ready when the smoke alarm goes off, that’s how often we have a disaster 😉 And before I moved out of my parents’ house, one time my dad came home from work and said, “I smell smoke…is Kay cooking?”
But I keep on trying!!
Katie says
LOL! I love it! Dinner is ready when the smoke alarm goes off. hehehe 🙂
Susan Denney says
Katie — As the mother of four (the youngest of whom are TWINS), I can totally relate to your kitchen disaster story! My twins are now 16 and got their drivers’ licenses a couple weeks ago. I’m thinking back on those kitchen moments with the kids with great fondness now and realize that there are disasters, and then there are DISASTERS — so the ones that involve little colored hands and crunchy colored sprinkles underfoot are truly the sweetest disasters of all. Wishing you all the best!
Carrie says
I asked my husband to puree a tomato soup for me in the blender. I forgot to tell him to remove the center stopped in the blender lid. Hot soup flew all over the kitchen. He then repeated his mistake with the next batch of soup.
Jaden says
Dropping a glass bottle of fish sauce on my kitchen floor! OOOOOH THE STINK!!!
Shaina says
Oooh. I don’t envy this mess in the least.
Adrienne says
I have two kitchen disasters to share…one was in the kitchen but had nothing to do with cooking or food and the other was a “real” kitchen disaster.
The first happened when my son was about 18 months old. I went into the backyard to turn on the sprinklers and got distracted when in the meantime, my son got the LARGE jar of Desitin (original version not the creamy kind) and decided to “paint” my kitchen hardwood floor with it. It took me hours to clean up and my house smelled like Desitin for months.
The other happened when I was taking out a 5lb bag of flour out of the grocery bag. It somehow came open and all 5 lbs ended up on the kitchen floor and all over me.
I guess I should be thankful these didn’t happen at the same time. 🙂
Katie says
I totally feel your pain! Madeline used to sneak into toothpaste and vaseline and rub it all over her body. When she couldn’t figure out what to do with what was on her hands she’d wipe them on her hair.
Kari Fortner says
Mine is cleanup related, of which I am no fan either. I have a tendency to get sidetracked and leave the kitchen sink running. Usually to the detriment of only my water bill. However one unfortunate day I walked away and completely forgot that I was filling the sink for pans. I walked away for a half hour!!! Well there was water falling through every crack and crevice into the basement, not to mention the demise of several lengths of our laminent flooring. Not my finest hour.
Katie says
My sister did that once in our upstairs bathroom! It leaked all the way downstairs after the bathroom floor got all wet. My mom was NOT happy!
Shaina says
My son, Kjell, is a walking kitchen disaster. From age 3 to 4 he would daily find his way into the kitchen, scale the cupboards and get into anything and everything. I am still not sure how I survived it. One day he found chocolate sauce and finger painted our walls. Another it was an entire carton of eggs on the floor as he practiced cracking them so he could help me later.
Kristen says
So much fun having a kiddo around to help create kitchen disasters, isn’t it?
Kristy says
It is rare I make a flop, but when I do I go all out. I was making a bone in turkey breast and had timed it to be ready 45 minutes before I wanted to serve supper. At supper time it was STILL NOT COOKED! Even though it was completely thawed when I started. WHen the turkey did finally cook it had absolutelyNO flavor! We ended up just eating the side dishes.
It was my worst flop ever!
But not as bad as the time my mom dropped a whole batch of my spaghetti sauce – did I mention it stains terribly and it went everywhere!
Mirien says
One Sunday I got up early to bake a rhubarb pie before church. It wasn’t out of the oven yet when it was time for me to leave, so I left my 11 year old daughter home and instructed her to turn off the oven when the timer went off, and then just walk to church (we lived across the street). I didn’t want her to remove the hot pie by herself, but I figured it could stay in the cooling oven until we got home–I even took 10 minutes off the baking time to compensate.
Three hours later, I was gathering my stuff and my kids after church to walk home, when my 9-year old comes running back to church (he had headed home as soon as the service was over) to tell me that there was smoke coming from the front door and he could hear the smoke alarm.
I dashed home, fearing the worst, but there was just smoke, no fire. I headed through the thick smoke to the hot oven and pulled out a charred, completely black pie. My poor daughter thought she’d turned off the oven, but instead had turned it to BROIL! For 3 hours! Luckily there was no fire, but we lived with the horrible smell for weeks!
Aimee @ Simple Bites says
This was so funny, Katie! I would have freak out too. =)
I horribly scorched the cranberry sauce to our Thanksgiving dinner one year. Nearly ruined my favorite All-Clad pot, too.
Shaina says
That’s the worst! Cranberry sauce I can do without, but ruining my beloved cookware, sniff.
Amy says
My worst kitchen disaster happened when I had just moved into my house last fall. I made my kids some quesadillas for lunch, but I couldn’t find the baking sheet to put them on. No problem, I did know where some foil was. I cooked the quesadillas for lunch and all was well. Later for dinner, I was warming up some bread in the oven, and I smelled smoke. I opened the oven and the whole bottom was covered in flaming cheese from the quesadillas. I guess I hadn’t noticed that a ton of cheese had spilled off of the foil. I wanted to throw some salt on it to put out the flames, but I couldn’t find it, it was still packed! I ended up having to put it out with the fire extinguisher which makes a huge mess. Now I had unpacking and fire clean up to do.
Cookbook Queen says
My worst disaster? Rootbeer. Shaken up. ANd opened in the kitchen.
It was a brand new two liter.
🙁
Katie says
Shaking and carbonation in the same sentence – ‘Nuff said!
Stacey says
I worked at a movie theater once and was changing a 4 or 5 gallon box of root beer syrup. The one way plug came off with the cap and needless to say root beer syrup was all over me and the floor. SOOOO fun to mop up.
Barbara | VinoLuciStyle says
Evidence of how bad it was is in your mentioning kitchen disaster and it just jumps to the forefront of my mind.
My children are grown now and this happened when the oldest was probably 12 or 13. I was a single mom and everything was a juggling match; and getting two kids to two different places at the same time and getting them fed prior to leaving was a weekly endeavor (how DID I do that?).
Well, often it was easier to put dinner on the stove or in the oven and feed them when we all returned. The ‘night of the chili incident’ we were in a particular rush and someone (probably me) forgot to turn the chili down. We left the house and returned 90 minutes later to the biggest mess I’ve ever dealt with in my home. Smoke damage. I soon learned that smoke damage from cooking a protein is the worst. It took weeks before that sticky sweet smell dissipated and that involved washing EVERYTHING in the house, carpet, drapes, walls, comforters, pillows…did I mention walls?
Now I never leave the house without glancing at the stove…force of habit…even if I’m not cooking; that left a scar!