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.
Mandi @ Life Your Way says
Oh, man…I bet you were finding those sprinkles for WEEKS!
brooke says
I have 2 kitchen disasters that come to mind.
1. We went to pick up Indian food for dinner, bring it home and as Im taking my container out of the bag I somehow drop it sending green spinach curry flying EVERYWHERE. On the carpet, on the tile, on the walls, on the ceiling on the windows. I don’t know if I was more pissed about losing my dinner or having to clean up the mess afterward. For weeks after I was still finding curry splatters in random places.
2. We had a valentines “top chef” cook off for our office. I found a recipe for chocolate cake in chocolate bowls and thought it looked easy enough. As I was making the bowls I got impatient and didnt let me melted chocolate cool off long enough. I dipped balloons in the chocolate, set them on a baking sheet and put them in the fridge. More than one balloon popped from the heat of the chocolate sending chocolate EVERYWHERE. In the fridge, outside the fridge, on the walls, on the floors. etc. The few that did survive turned out pretty well, but it will be awhile before I try making that again.
Deliciously Organic says
Friends were gathered at our home, we’d just finished our Thanksgiving meal and it was time to serve pie. I’d made two pecan pies, two pumpkin pies, and a pumpkin banana tart. I sliced, served and looked over at my husband. He’d just taken a bite of the pumpkin pie and had a sour look on his face. I quickly took a bite and made the same face. It tasted like soap! After a few minutes of speculation, I realized I’d prepared the filling ahead of time and stored it in a mason jar that hadn’t been completely rinsed. It tasted terrible. Really. A few moments later there was a knock on the door. More friends arrived for dessert. The door opened and one of the little kids ran up and said, “Hey! Come on in! But don’t eat any of the pumpkin pie. It’s nasty.” Laughter erupted and I told them the story. The pumpkin pies went into the trash and we sliced up the tart and pecan pies and had a great time.
Debby G. says
My worst kitchen disaster happened back in college when my husband and I were dating. I was visiting him at his mother’s house and we decided to christen her brand new oven by baking a giant chocolate chip pan cookie. Unfortunately, we accidentally used powdered sugar instead of flour. It wasn’t long before the smoke alarm went off due to the bubbling concoction spilling over the sides of the pan and all over the bottom of her new oven. What a mess!
Katie says
Oh dear! my friend did that, only with a cake. Not something fun to clean up!
Ronda C. says
Mine is not nearly so dramatic but cucumbers, though delicious do not belong in tuna salad. They get weird and too much squish factor for one food.
megan @ whatmegansmaking says
When I was in junior high I was making cookies for a bake sale, but somehow I left out all the flour! They were very flat and very unedible 🙂
Jamie | My Baking Addiction says
I have done this exact same thing! Sometimes it’s twitter or my phone that completely distracts me!
Sydney Davis says
My worst kitchen disaster happened recently. It was all my fault, the only thing I can blame it on is the drop in IQ that occurs during pregnancy! I was attempting to my yogurt from scratch for the first time. After you heat the milk and add the cultures, you need to keep the milk at 110 degrees. To do this, I put the bottle of milk (soon to be yogurt) in a styrofoam disposable cooler. To keep the cooler warm, I thought it would be a good idea to put it in the oven at 200 degrees. This turned out to be a horrible idea, melting the cooler, sending toxic fumes into the air, setting off the fire alarm and the carbon monoxide alarm and waking both of my napping kids. My oldest was crying inconsolably, convinced our house was burning down! We had to go to the neighbor’s house for two hours while we waiting for the alarms to go off and the smoke to clear out.
Maris (In Good Taste) says
Funny! I’m a pretty messy cook too and your counter did not look all that bad in the picture! Once I forgot I had bread cooking in the oven and left it in there for like 3 hours. It didn’t burn but the bread came out hard as a rock! Ha!
TidyMom says
oooh, I didn’t tell you about the time when my daughter read the directions wrong to heat up some honey bbq chicken in the microwave – she read the time for the oven and caught the microwave on fire!
TidyMom says
Oh I have many…….because I’m NOT tidy when it comes to baking or cooking.
My biggest mess though, was one time during the holidays when I was short on space and decided the oven was a good place to store some plastic containers filled with cookies and desserts………
I’m sure you know where this is going………..
out of sight, out of mind…..and a day later turned the oven on to preheat………biggest mess EVER to clean up!
Bethany O'Neill says
I was making a chocolate milkshake in a plastic blender and using a metal spoon to push the ice cream futher into the blender. Of course the blender was on (big mistake) and the spoon touched the blades, the spoon hit the side of the blender, the blender shattered, ice cream and chunks of plastic went everywhere. It’s a wonder I didn’t put my eye out!!! There was chocolate ice cream on the floor, counters, cabinet doors, and even the ceiling. What a mess!
Marlis says
My goodness you WERE lucky!
Beth says
I did almost the same thing! I was making something in the blender (maybe hummous), I had turned the blender OFF and stirred with a metal spoon… and then forgot the metal spoon in the blender and turned it back ON. The metal spoon went straight through the glass blender jug! One thing I will say for it: the heavy duty glass blender jug didn’t shatter other than the hole where the spoon handle went through…
Cate @ Liberal Simplicity says
Oh my gosh, I so feel for you re: the sprinkles! Thankfully my daughter has never gotten into anything of that caliber, but she has discovered the permanent markers and colored all over her hand-painted-by-grandpa toybox before. Grr.
When I was a kid, I dumped an entire box of Lucky Charms onto the couch so I could pick out the marshmallows. My parents were real happy about that one.
Brooke says
In the middle of a breakfast rush one morning, I asked my 4-year-old to put the bottle of Pancake Syrup into the microwave for 45-seconds.
Minutes later, we’re all sitting down to eat when the sound of gunfire erupts and we’re all hit with little pellets of….what? what was that stuff? Syrup.
Seems my little helper had put it into the microwave for 45 MINUTES, rather than 45 seconds, and about 9 minutes into the process, the whole thing exploded in the microwave.
Aside from nearly having a heart attack, we also enjoyed wiping syrup off of Church clothes, walls, the floor, and even the ceiling for months afterward.
In fact, two years later, when we went to sell that house, the house inspector asked about the brown spots on the kitchen ceiling. Sigh.
susan from food blogga says
That reminds me of the time my aunt found my cousin (3 yo at the time), sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor “making a cake.” He had cracked eggs all over the floor, dumped a bag of flour everywhere, and used just about every kitchen tool my aunt owned!
Kathy - Panini Happy says
I recently decided to make a little spur-of-the-moment snack cake with my daughter. I found a recipe on Allrecipes that I would just cut in half. I also decided to replace the flour and baking powder with White Lily self-rising flour, which I’d just determined has terrific rise. Well, turns out that if you use Allrecipes on your iPad, use the site’s tool to change the number of servings, close Safari and then reopen the window…well, the number of servings reverts to the original. I didn’t realize this, made the full recipe – with extra-rising flour – poured the batter into my 8×8 pan and set it in the oven. And watched that cake bubble over incessantly for about an hour. It was alive!! 🙂 (I could have just taken it out but I held out hope that maybe some might end up edible, which it was).
judy says
I had just finished up with a party. I think there were 35 or more people. It was supposed to be an outdoors party but it ended up raining and the whole party ended up inside my tiny 800sq ft 2 br house. Afterwards, my friend and i were cleaning up. We went to the store and came back and found out that I had forgotten to turn off the faucet in the kitchen sink.
Katie says
Rain on a party day – say it isn’t so! Those are the worst and you can never really predict when planning.