Ever had a recipe that didn’t quite turn out like you planned? Hehe, I have.
Recipe Failures are a favorite topic in our house.
As a young broker, I learned to cook out of necessity. Couldn’t afford swanky dinners on my credit card for clients. Besides, our parents’ generation invited people home for dinner….. kind of thought that’s the way it was supposed to be. My clients were mostly men, owners of companies, at least a generation older than me. With a “couple” invitation to dinner, kind wives took pity on me, and taught me a great deal. I was a willing student, and although unplanned, the “come to my house for dinner” bonding time often cemented my relationship with the wives.
There were so many mistakes in the beginning years.
Like the time I bought the most beautiful beef fillets I could afford, had them specially cut by the butcher, but I didn’t know how to grill….. had a penthouse but no grill. I put them in the oven at 350 degrees, and thought they would be “done” in 11 minutes….. just like Dad did when I was a kid. That one was a beauty.
Or the time I bought specialty steaks from a high priced Miami Steakhouse and took them to a Manhattan client as my “guest” contribution for the weekend. The steaks were like rubber…. sold me a crappy lot. We ended up eating potatoes for dinner.
Or the time I decided to make croissants from scratch. Did you know there are 162 layers of butter in a croissant? Bakeries have a machine, called a laminator, to process the dough. It looked so easy to do by hand on a Saturday morning cooking show….. took me all day long. I’ll never make croissants again.
How about the Rum Cake I made to take to a boyfriend’s family for Christmas? It was on the cover of Southern Living Annual Cookbook. The recipe required 12 eggs and an entire afternoon. No one ate a single slice. It even smelled bad.
Or the time I was over zealous to create a spectacular dessert for Christmas Eve dinner, as opposed to a normal dessert, cuz I was trying to impress my boss. I started a complicated pumpkin cheesecake at 8:00pm the night before. Finally got it into the oven at 1:00am, should have been finished at 2:00am…… but then the instructions told me to leave it in the oven, temp off, for another 2 hours, and “don’t open the oven”. I waited and waited, eventually setting an alarm for 4:00am. Yet, because I was up all night with dessert, I nodded off during dinner…. great impression, eh?
There were a few monumental errors. My step-mother was an incredible cook. As a teenager, we watched PBS on Saturday morning. Dad was a frustrated Bob Vila. Often, my step-mother would copy something from one of the cooking shows for dinner. I watched her do it for years, so how hard could it be? Thus, when I was newly married, I was watching one of the cooking shows and thought I could make bagels at home. Why not? Well, first of all they were ugly – the color of oyster white paint. Beyond that, they were hard… all the way through. In fact, they were so hard, we decided to feed them to the birds….. and the birds ignored them. The dough was so heavy the birds couldn’t carry off the scraps… little wings fluttering so fast…. nothing. The guys teased me for weeks, “We don’t need a fence to keep the deer out, we’ll just use Miss Daughn’s Bagels…. better than chain link.” Yeah, that bad.
Or the time I was convinced to create a more “natural” home and start making my own bread. Oh yes, I was determined. I bought books on the subject. Over a $100 of specialty flour and new pans…… and the bread rose to the thickness of cardboard and I ended up with a bread boat.
New husband suggested I call his mother for advice. I scoured the kitchen sparkling clean and begrudgingly called her. Everything was prepared for her ‘lesson’ as if she was a visiting surgeon. She didn’t measure anything. Stuck her elbow under a hot water tap to check temperature. She put a little sugar in the yeast to feed it and so it would foam. “What do you mean, FOAM?”, I said. “Oh dear”, she replied with the contempt dripping from her fangs, “You have to let the yeast foam, otherwise the bread won’t rise.”
Wut?
How come my recipes didn’t tell me about the “FOAM THING”? She was in my kitchen less than 15 minutes, said she would be back “after lunch, it will be done rising”. The sun was shining through the glass door as she waved goodbye, and the sun bathed her like a “bread goddess”. I sat and stared at the bowl for over an hour, flabbergasted. So many things I did not know.
The Diet Light Cookbook was funny….. looking back. I was a pretty good cook by that point, but thought we should start eating healthier. Over a couple of weeks, I made many dishes, all from the cookbook….. everything tasted the same. I came home late, almost dust, and husband was burning sticks in the backyard. He told me to grab a glass of wine and come join him. As I approached, I realized he was ripping pages from the cookbook and burning them. I protested a little, “We could both lose 10lbs and you should drop blood pressure.” He took a long swig of his beer and said, “I’d rather die happy”.
There was no bigger failure than the “Great Potato Soup Escapade”. Hours and hours of effort, over 20lbs of potatoes, but it turned to starch. My husband dumped it out back, behind our old chicken coop. The following spring, it was still there. He had to bury it. Nothing grew there for years.
In summary, to our friends and family, please excuse us while we try to be creative this Christmas. If our project turns out looking like the magazine photo, terrific. If it doesn’t, that’s okay.
The point of the failure becomes – don’t ever stop trying.
Take a chance, try some new skill or ethnic food.
Even the failures become a terrific story.
If worse comes to worse, we can always eat Chinese Christmas Turkey.
And all was right with the world………
….and, then, there are the times that you are really dubious about something, you do the big reveal…..and it’s even better than you had imagined! (but possibly not how the pictures with the recipe look).
After my parent’s wedding, they went to what was now their home and my mom was determined to cook a “home-cooked” meal. Something pretty basic — beef stew with dumplings. She envisioned a certain look for the dumplings, so adjusted the recipe so there was that much dough and went back to preparing the stew. Cutting up the beef and vegetables…..
When she got around to looking at the dumplings again, there was easily twice as much dough as she was going to need. So, she cut the mass in half and threw half away — and went back to preparing the stew. Dredge the beef in flour and brown in a skillet….
Checking in on the dumplings, they had again doubled in size. After cutting off half and discarding it, mom (who has a Masters in Mathematics — it’s just cooking isn’t her thing) realized she might have to do it again, so she cut the piece she retained into quarters.
After combining the meat and roux and cooked vegetables from the skillet into a pot, bringing to a boil, and lowering to a slow simmer, she was finally ready to cook the dumplings. Sure enough, she had twice as many as needed — so she discarded two of the four, cut the remaining two into quarters, and dropped ’em into the pot. They’re supposed to slowly sink to the bottom, then rise to the top where they can be retrieved using a slotted spoon….but these went to the bottom and stayed there.
Thing is, every time you slice a yeast bread before baking it, you let a bunch of the CO2 that makes it fluffy escape. And that CO2 is supposed to provide a good part of the buoyancy that refloats your dumplings. In the meantime, by exposing fresh cut surface to the stew, that part of the dumpling was bound to get soggy. When my dad encountered his first dumpling, his initial concern was that he may have cracked a tooth — what would have been bread crust had it been a baked loaf was an impermeable, unrisen, solid block. What would have been the center of the bread was a soggy, pasty-tasting, glutinous mess.
My dad, however, was a natural when it came to marital harmony. He chewed and swallowed what he could and discreetly misplaced what he couldn’t, finished what was on his plate and told her it was great. They, then, set off on their honeymoon to the San Diego Zoo (they lived in LA at the time). [Abridged version — they went to San Diego and stayed in a hotel. Every morning they tried to go to the zoo. Each day, they got lost. After three days, they went back to their apartment in LA without having seen the zoo.] Then, again, they must have done something right, because that was 1961 and they’re still married.
I should note that getting to the San Diego Zoo really used to be a complete scavenger hunt. The current main entry plaza is a fairly new addition. The entrance used to be a small gate. There were supposed to be signs to take you through some varied neighborhoods (some entirely residential) to get to the gate. The signs were on weird side-streets where vegetation, pickups, and vans would hide them. And, mind you, the entrance was rebuilt before GPS became common.
My folks went there in the 70s and it was a pain — but, of course, I wasn’t driving so I was oblivious. I just noted that we seemed to be making a lot of random turns as we got closer. In the 80s, I drove myself……yeah…..you really had the scavenger hunt vibe. Visited it with the Fiancee after 2000 — “hey, isn’t this easy?”
Chinese turkey is kinda like Chinese pizza their both very good.
I have failed with alot of recipes and made some alot better than my great grandparents, our selection of spices is much better.
In my zucchini bread I add allspice and pumpkin pie spice,my granny and granddad’s folks didn’t have that option.
When it comes to my grandpa’s zucchini relish,that was his fathers recipe, I followed it kinda to the T.
I figured my grandpa didnt really measure like to the specifics and made everything a heafty measurement, mine is better…
Love your story Daughn,you never cease to amaze.
I started making home made bread items when I was 14 or 15. My mother had given me a Better Homes and Garden book about bread for Christmas. I made all kinds of things, including croissants. Now my croissants are pretty good, but they are not like the store bought ones available now. Given that, I decided to make croissants in the summer one time. NO, NO, NO. The butter all ran out of the dough. I don’t remember now what happened to them, they might have been fed to the ducks and geese that were on the lake.
Yep, refrigerate in-between rolling out.
Yup. I think I set them out to rise after all the rolling out, and since it was a warm day, well that happened!
Chinese restaurants open on Christmas is a lost parable of goodness from the New Testament, I am certain!
Spit!
Bwwhahhaaa
It’s a long-standing joke in the NE (and now Florida) that Jews ate Chinese food and went to the movies on Xmas, because nothing else was open. The Chinese restaurant owners loved Xmas!
We got married in judges’ chambers Xmas Eve morning and for years afterwards could only have a nice anniversary dinner in a hotel restaurant since everything was closed.
Now, in tourist areas such as Florida, Xmas Eve is perhaps the most difficult reservation to get. Everyone wants to go to Grandma’s house in south Florida because she has a big pool and is a mile from the beach, but Grandma doesn’t want to cook a big Xmas Eve meal and turn around to do it again the next day. ..so out to a restaurant they go.
Meal servers don’t mind because they rake in big tips.
Christmas is a great season for everybody! It’s a Wonderful Life! 😉
Have you ever cooked an old chicken? My hubby killed an older rooster, he decided we had too many and so he thinned out some of the roosters. Now this one rooster in particular must have been QUITE a bit older. I put him in my pressure cooker figuring that would take care of a tough old bird. So, after the pressure cooker cooled down, and was opened up, I tried to poke that chicken with my kitchen fork. That sucker was like a basketball. Okay, I decided, maybe that rooster needed more cooking. Back into the pressure cooker, and this time I cooked it a little longer, but when I pulled it out of the cooker, it was STILL as hard as a basketball. Needless to say, that bird ended up in the dumpster.
If I ever run into an old, ancient bird again, I’m going to run it through a meat grinder, probably twice.
Coq au vin is a dish specifically geared towards older fowl. It actually doesn’t work as well with select fresh cuts.
What got me, was I cooked that rooster twice in the pressure cooker. It should have almost been mushy. That particular rooster was “special”, I’m convinced! I’ve cooked plenty of stewing chickens, but this one was something else…..
Well, your standard young chicken is meat and fat — and that cooks with normal recipes.
Older birds tend to have meat and fat and connective tissue — and that works well with braising and stewing, like coq au vin.
Really old roosters might have a significant proportion of scar tissue, and I don’t know how that works.
Straight vinegar!
I have done pickled herring. You leave the bones in and the acid dissolves the bones. Wine and lemon juice also work as ‘tenderizers’.
Vinegar or wine, yes, something acidic to break down the connective tissue.
Gail I love pickled herring.
We ALWAYS have a jar of pickled herring in the frig. It is a staple in our house.
We have also. In Northern Germany they roll the herring up with onion and pickle inside. They are wonderful . My mother made herring with cream sauce and potatoes for dinner.
Old, tough meat cook low and slow, doesn’t matter the animal.
My mom’s best failure was a chocolate birthday cake where she made the icing wrong, using granular sugar and not letting it dissolve properly. The result had the most extraordinary mouthfeel – as if the icing had a whole bunch of SAND in it.
The KIDS, naturally, thought it was AWESOME, even though the adults only nibbled on their pieces, avoiding the icing, which the kids all wanted to eat. The kids just hooted and hollered and wanted more, marveling at the sandy texture.
I begged my mom to make “The Sand Cake” again, but she REFUSED! Even for birthdays – I would WHINE how I wanted a “sand cake”, and told her that she had to give me one because it was my birthday, but she would not do it!!!
My grandmother once made vanilla icing where she misread teaspoons of vanilla extract as tablespoons. It was awesome!!!
KIDS!!! LISTEN TO THE KIDS!!! 😀 LOL!
My mom made a Texas sheet cake one time and forgot to add the flour. Talk about a mess to clean up.
A family friend is very distractible with a handful of kids in the house. She takes out ingredients, lines them up on the counter in the order to be used in the recipe. When added, the remainder is set in a different place. If counter is clear, she knows nothing was missed. Coping mechanisms. We all have them.
Daughn – what a cute story, along with all the delightful pics. You are a gem! Made me feel better about some of my mishaps:)
I had one girlfriend admit to me that she never invited me to her house because it would be like having Martha Stewart over for dinner, too much pressure. Well, that stinks.
Truth was, she never saw my failures……..and we ALL have them.
Daughn I have the same problem.
A friend of my husbands after he and his wife and a group were at our house for dinner told my husband ” I would love to invite you but my wife is a lousy cook.”
I used to put linen table clothe on the table with matching napkins and sterling and bone china cups and plates when girls came over for coffee. I would bake two cakes. No one ever invited me. One day one of the girls said “if you only put a cup out and one cake no table clothe people will not feel intimidated. ”
I did that the next time I invited a group of women they were happy and I felt strange because that was not the way I was raised but I got invited.
Intimidation and/or jealousy is a virus that will eat us alive if we allow it.
So true 🙂
Chocolate Chip Cookie accident – I once made those awesome Toll House cookies from the recipe on the bag – but forgot to put in the eggs – they cam out like chocolate chip pecan caramel short bread – hard like Scottish shortbread – but still delicious. One daughter said she liked them better than the regular.
I have another ‘diet’ chocolate chip pecan cookie recipe that leaves out the butter (they are pretty good) and another called Forgotten Cookies – with just egg whites sugar chocolate chips, pecans and you put them in a 350 degree oven and leave them overnight.
One of the things we used to do when our godkids visited was make oatmeal cookies. We used the stock recipe from under the Quaker Oats lid, but vamped on it. There was one substitution that I insisted on to give them a taste of recipe lawlessness — you’re supposed to tamp brown sugar into a measuring cup and then stir it in later (to unpack it). I’d always say, “screw this, let’s cheat” and go to my notes where it could be added by weight. Over the years we had cinnamon oatmeal cookies, giant oatmeal cookies, oatmeal cookies with Heath bar pieces, oatmeal cookies topped with chocolate, honey oatmeal cookies, oatmeal cookies with M&Ms, mini oatmeal cookies, oatmeal cookies with a variety of nuts, oatmeal cookie bars, oatmeal cookies with coarse-ground added grains….all invented by the kids (of course, we had the ingredients at hand).
We always sent all the cookies back with the kids if they hadn’t been eaten beforehand. Doubtless, some were tossed with a “what were they thinking?” while many others were enjoyed. We were just trying to unlock the anarchic creativity inherent in children in a safe way, where they can experience wins and losses. Mostly wins.
I hope that we managed to make food less reverent* for the kids, and let them feel that “de gustibus non est disputandum.”**
* To be understood as reverent to the art director’s photographs and the recipes as written. I would hope they would continue to be reverent in terms of Matthew 6:11.
** A rough translation of this quote is: “of taste, nothing can be debated”, but that doesn’t really capture the nut. A short detour through Spanish can help.
To say, “I like candy” in Spanish, you would say, “me gustan dulces.” Word-for-word, this means [To me] [they please] [sweets]. To say, “I like this dog” in Spanish, you would say, “me gusta este perro.” Word-for word: [To me] [he pleases] [this] [dog]. Such is the joy of learning a language, you get a weird window into the standard mindset of its peoples. You don’t actively like things; you don’t develop a liking; you don’t cultivate a liking — you accept that it is pleasing. If you were to say “you [familiar] like this dog” in Spanish, it would be “te gusta este perro”. The dog’s pleasing doesn’t change — the recipient of the pleasing shifts from me to you. There is an obvious relationship between the Latin “gustibus” and Spanish “gustar”.
Moving to the second half of the quote, “non est disputandum”, there are two elements that are pretty clear. “Non” is negation, no matter how you slice it, and “est” is equivalence. “Disputandum” is a little fuzzier. It really comes down to taking opposing positions. Two NFL teams might “dispute” the winner of a football game, play well, and shake hands afterwards. [Of course, they might also mime canine urination in the other’s end zone.]
A slightly more nuanced translation, then, would be: “of what pleases you, we cannot contest.”
I can’t WAIT until the gender argument makes its way to Latin languages. What the hell are they going to do with their nouns and verb tense?
Mom’s most memorable failure was elderberry jam from the elderberries I picked. I do not know what she did but you could retread a tire with the stuff. Your teeth would just bounce off. We thought it was GREAT! You could chew and suck on a piece for hours. It was sort of like fruit leather taken to the extreme.
I don’t think I have made anything as memorable as that elderberry jam.
I’m trying to recall epic failures. Well, I have learned a few things over the years.
One, when making soup, watch the salt. Two tablespoons per big pot is enough to start with.
Two, avoid all gluten free recipes that substitute avocados for sugar and flour.
Three, super lean ground meat needs extra seasoning. (80/20, OTOH, is pretty tasty)
Four, seriously keep stirring the preserves or it WILL scorch.
On the super lean meat issue… Rabbit, venison and goat are very lean. I always cut the ground meat 50/50 with the cheap hamburger (70% lean) when I use the meat in chili, spaghetti, moussaka, beef stroganoff….
Our friends were coming for dinner and an evening of Bridge. I chose a risotto recipe that called for chicken and mushrooms, but I had no mushrooms. Not wanting to go to the store, I decided dried apricots would make a delicious substitute. They did …
About a half hour into Bridge, our retired Marine Lt Col buddy let rip one of the longest farts I’ve ever heard. His wife admonished him, but pretty soon she let one of her own loose. Hubby followed shortly thereafter, and suffice to say bidding was interrupted throughout the evening as those apricots gave us uncontrollable gas.
Fortunately we were such good friends it became one of those hilarious memories, but I never fixed them risotto again!
Alison, you will laugh.
One time, I was convinced to start eating more healthy and also cleaning out the fridge. I had a freezer bag full of dried apricots leftover from Christmas cookies.
I took the bag back into the office and went back to work on contracts.
Deeply engrossed, I didn’t get up for lunch.
I kept munching on apricots.
Bet I had 30 of them.
Yeah.
I’ll never do that again.
OMG LOL 😂😂
You know that gassy dinner was over 10 years ago, and just two weeks ago I finally bought a bag of dried apricots (always trying to find new snacks). I tried a couple twice, and threw the rest away. Couldn’t ‘stomach’ them 😂😂
Alison —- I thought I was going to die.
I bet !!!!!!!!!!!
Reminds me of the story of the young man that got a job at the prune factory.
We were in southern Portugal on a golf/sight seeing vacation. The local golf course had been carved through an old fig tree orchard and the figs just happened to be ripe at the time. They were so tempting…so delicious and so….effective. . we were punished for our glutton ways!
I use some Apricots in Moroccan cooking specially chicken. I never had the problem but I do not put so many in and buy the one without sulfur.
Don’t EVER eat an unpeeled pear…… it’s digestive dynamite.
I always eat unpeeled pears and we had a pear tree along with apples, cherries, peaches, blueberries raspberries…..
Met my future husband, we were both older and apparently had been looking for each other because it was pretty much instant love. We went out every night for three weeks straight and got engaged and married in 4 months. I started cooking dinners, but having lived alone and on food budget, I was a little rusty.
For some unknown reason (to this day!), for our second dinner I decided to make “meatless meatloaf.” Way before computers so I have no idea where I got the recipe….long since consigned to the trash…along with the meatloaf. I seem to remember lots of walnuts and cheese.
Needless to say, it’s still famous because dear hubby loves to tell the story. Can you imagine, serving a meatless meatloaf to a Sicilian…what was I thinking?!
HOWEVER…after going out every night as well as working, after 3 weeks my immune system finally succumbed and I got a horrendous cold to the point I couldn’t lift my head off the pillow. My newly beloved tenderly told me that he would bring dinner to my apartment that evening. He did..so very proudly…it was my first introduction to stuffed calamari he asked his mother to make. In case you don’t know, calamari is a small squid, with the tentacles added in the “gravy.” Not exactly what one wants to eat (nor even look at) when deathly ill!
Soon to be married 44 years and we still chuckle about those whirlwind 3 weeks.
What a great story!
LOL the things we do for love 😘
Such a sweet story of love on both your all’s part!
This isn’t a recipe failure it is a restaurant failure (mine too for not checking)
We and a few friends usually go to Cracker Barrel for Thanksgiving. They couldn’t make it this year so it was just Hubby and I. Since I don’t normally eat salt (BP^) a night out is a real treat. Most get Turkey and since I dislike turkey I get the grilled rainbow trout and the sugar free apple pie for desert.
We get there and wait for 1 1/2 hours to get a table. We sit down and I order the rainbow trout. Not serving it this year…
OK ,well I will settle for the fried catfish although I don’t want the wheat….
Not serving catfish either….
Hubby points out they have roast beef, I read — Chuck roast (we eat it all the time.) Problem is I dislike beef that is pre-sliced and sitting in a warming tray oxidizing… YUCK! I am NOT paying $10 for something I really do not want.
So I decide to settle for a cup of tea ($2.50 for a 5 cent bag) and a slice of the sugar free apple pie… NO APPLE PIE!!! (I dislike pumpkin pie too.)
We got up and left and went to the Golden Corral, got right in with no wait and had EXACTLY what we each wanted right down to the choice of veggies and PIE.
Thanksgiving is NOT my favorite meal since I do not like turkey, bread stuffing, yams, sweet potatoes or pumpkin. (So I am weird) If I cook, I cook a roast duck or goose with raspberry sauce, a rice stuffing, baked potatoes, a salad and green veggies.
Oh. goose is the best! Daughter and I would like to raise our own geese, but first we need to make a coyote proof pen.
Goose is a Christmas dinner. Saving the goose fat is a delicacy.
My husband prefers duck to turkey and he makes wonderful duck dishes.
“…a coyote proof pen.”
Go to a farm store and get the 16 foot cattle panels. (~$20/ea) and enough T-posts so you have one every eight feet.
*https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/product/feedlot-panel-cattle-16-ft-l-x-50-in-h
*https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/product/franklin-industries-studded-t-post-6-1-2-ft125-lb-per-foot
They can be covered with a 2″X4″ mesh garden fence to make it goose proof. Leave around 1 foot laying on the ground out side the fence to prevent digging.
*https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/product/welded-wire-48-in-x-100-ft
On the top you are going to want to run a couple of strands of electric wire. Gray fox can climb chain link fence and trees. (I watched them go after my guineas)
If you do not run electric you will want to cover your pen with the 2X4 mesh.
You can use the idea for a goat shelter but instead of a tarp use wire mesh. I made one using two rows of concrete block with the T-post driven through the middle. This made a much taller shelter that I could easily walk into. (Dig a 3 inch ditch and place the first coarse of blocks in the ditch so they are stable and level.
https://www.roysfarm.com/how-to-build-a-goat-shelter/
This has a variety of ideas:
https://homestead-and-survival.com/18-creative-ways-to-use-cattle-pen-panels/
Thanks. We have some panels from our old dog kennel, and this gives me some ideas on how to adapt them.
I REALLY appreciate all the input – I got interrupted when I started to reply the first time. One thing we don’t seem to have are foxes. Primarily coyotes, along with some raccoons, a bobcat, and hawks are the main predators we seem to have. We had chickens, but had to remove our chicken pen in order to complete a new building project. So we are ready to put in a new chicken pen, but decided we also wanted to put one in for geese. We’d lost a few chickens, probably to raccoons or maybe possums by apparently having their heads bit off, by poking their heads through the fencing.
I hadn’t thought about using t-posts for bracing for the dog panels, and that would really help keep them in place for a larger area. I can even do this for my garden, as we have a whole lot of bunnies as well. (I have used panels for the garden too.) I could run 4 ‘ chicken wire on the outside of the panels. I’ve done 2’ to keep bunnies out and that works pretty good for them. We did cover our old pen so we’ll be sure to do that again.
Both my grandmothers and my parents were excellent cooks and bakers.
We were shortly married and my mother in law kept telling my husband that he will never have such good meals and stocked pantry as he had at home.
The day came when my in laws came for dinner. I had shopped first time in the US my own because my husband was working lots of overtime at the time. I spend all of his overtime money and the freezer was stocked the pantry was full. The first thing his mother did opened the freezer and the pantry.
Now he dinner, I had made a roast beef I had never eaten in Germany roast beef and was foreign to me nor ever saw anyone cook it.
The roast beef was a disaster I roasted it to long. This lifted his mothers spirit and I was crushed. My husband told me it was perfect.
To this day I never made roast beef again . I should have made pot roast instead.
Over the years I know what not to make.
I am not so brave as Daughn to make fancy cakes. I stick with simple things like stollen , apple strudel and fruit tarts and pound cake. I dislike icing and people get a plum cake for birthday.
In the first year being married the problem was the spices I did not know what they were called in english and we had a couple of disasters. My husband always told me how relishes everything I cooked was. I ask him later” why he did it even though food dit not fast good ? ” He said “he did not wanted to discourage me.”
I will trade you a cake for a stolen or strudel ANY DAY OF THE WEEK.
Correction: Food did not tasted good .
My father’s mother (Nanny) was a terrific Southern cook. Her biscuits were to die for!
My entire childhood, my mother WOULD NOT cook any kind of biscuit that didn’t come out of a can. One day when I was a teen, I found out why.
Mom could not cook a lick when she got married. My Nanny was determined to teach her to cook so my father wouldn’t starve. So, they started with biscuits.
My mother worked half-days on Saturdays, but my father was home, so one Saturday morning, mom got up to “surprise” him with biscuits. He was tired from working all week and wouldn’t get out of bed to try them (think he may have known something). Mom got mad, and threw the biscuits out for the dog before she left for work.
When she got home, they were still there. Even the dog wouldn’t eat ’em!
Canned biscuits were all we got from then on.
this was not my cooking disaster, but too funny not to share.
Last year, (unbeknownst to me) my future daughter-in-law’s sister wanted to bake pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving and since she was making 2, she mixed everything in one huge bowl and then divided the filling between 2 crusts. Well, in her hurry to get them done, she mistook the salt amount for the sugar amount! The pies turned out salty and disgusting and couldn;t be eaten…but everyone had a good laugh about it.
Fast forward to THIS year. My son asked my to bake the pumpkin pies for the dinner he was co-hosting at his future in-law’s house. I made homemade crusts and using the Libby recipe made 2 awesome pies, which I put on the sideboard in the dining room. As more and more guests arrived, the sideboard quickly filled up–with pumpkin pies–everybody remembered the previous year’s failed attempt and made 2 pumpkin pies–even the sister who wanted to redeem herself…we had 10 pumpkin pies, a few cream puffs and one flan..
Failed recipes…we had many semi not successful recipes Thursday (won’t call them failed)
I didn’t feel well at all Wed afternoon through Thanksgiving afternoon. Dinner suddenly fell into my husband and children’s lap. They were so good about trying their best! Good but not the same.
-Didn’t peel the acorn squash after roasting it and then cutting it for a creamed squash dish so we had hard bits of skin to fish out. + didn’t add in the sausage.
-no stuffing…forgot to make that side dish
-mashed potatoes missing key ingredients we usually add for extra yumminess (cream cheese!)
-Turkey no fresh herbs included that I had bought for the inside of the turkey
-pumpkin pie, doubled the pumpkin by accident so not as sweet or flavorful
So, was it a good meal? YES!! Wonderful of them to prepare and serve. I ate in a chair covered in blankets, not lifting a finger. Son even helped me eat for a little while (yes, it was a bad little bout but faded off by evening and am almost all back to usual now). They even tried to arranged the table – not something they would Ever think to do for themselves. They did it all for me because they know traditions are important to me.
So our Thanksgiving meal tasted like … love.
Thank you to everyone who prayed for me. I was Very disappointed to not be able to cook for them as I love doing it and creating the holidays, good food, memories, atmosphere of love… Instead, they gave me love and I received.
Biggest concern was not actually the Thanksgiving meal but if they would be able to travel. I was already expected to stay home but if I didn’t feel better or at least make them think I felt better they would have to cancel their plans. Good news is that I felt better throughout the afternoon and they have been gone since Thurs evening and are enjoying visiting with family. And I am doing just fine. Whew! Didn’t want the to miss because of me!
New “problem”: Now, how what do I do with this great husband who is so excited about buying me something for Christmas that I don’t want? I kind of need it and it could come in useful and I might be glad I have it some day….a weaponized flashlight that shoots out a paint ball or something…almost $200 which is way more then the rest of my entire wish list some nice little treats and things I would like!
But he is so excited and I think he already bought it yesterday. Can’t hardly believe we are spending that much money on something when …. Oh, well. So I will just say Thank You and enjoy his excitement for this things which is Very excited!
I will also appreciate that my safety is important to him. (yes, we have other means of protection but one doesn’t want to go to that step instantly and there are places one can’t protect one’s self in that way)
Thankful, blessed and Full – no family home so I have eaten pumpkin pie for breakfast the last two days! 😉
“So our Thanksgiving meal tasted like … love.”
MAGA Mom, I like that. Glad you’re feeling better.
Thanks, ladypenquin!
They all had a big learning experience too, and in a very loving manner. They won’t forget it either.
AND, sometimes you have to experience a situation to appreciate what you’ve taken for granted. I have no doubt you’ll get LOTS of praise for your dinner next Thanksgiving!
Yes, that is the silver lining. We all took our first bite of pumpkin pie…and then went quiet. It was good but just not what was expected. first comment was, Mom, I think I like you pie better.
My child that had made the pie was quiet but bounced back quickly when I explained that I never follow the recipe exactly.
With my health issues I often think about what I am not doing and yet I know they are still learning and growing to be mature adults because of the way they take care of me. No family is perfect.
You remind me of a silver lining in my family. In raising our special needs son (very complex medical & behavioral challenges) I was often very depleted. This resulted in my other 3 kids often having to fend for themselves even when relatively young. Instead of being resentful (for the most part) the kids have grown to be quite thankful that they gained skills in self-sufficiency that might not have happened to the same degree if I’d been one of those “Betty Crocker” moms that did everything for everyone. One of my kids said they were the only one in their class (early elementary) that packed their own lunch.
As I get older I’m so thankful to see all the kids developing skills for independence but compassion for caring for those in need (within & without the family). Perhaps learning to serve the ones who did (or should have) serve them will continue to allow them to increase in Christlikeness! What a blessing to give to our family, preparing them more fully for this life…& the Life to come! Blessings!!!!
Yes, my husband is a great example to them. I know he doesn’t really care about this sort of thing. He would have been fine cooking a normal lunch and heading out of town sooner. But he went through cooking all morning and guiding the young cooks because he knows its important to me. Great example for children.
Your children will want to learn what you do. I’ve heard a lot of people lamenting that they wished that they knew how to make – fili in the blank – like their mother or father did. I helped a gentleman figure out how his mom made a certain oatmeal cookie as his mother just had an ingredients list but no instructions. He said he and his sisters could not make this cookie come out like his mother’s.
Maybe next time you could enlist their help for some items.
A couple of funny stories. We should talk about defrosting the turkey…
One of the most difficult problems our household always faced has been getting the turkey defrosted in time for Thanksgiving without it being too many days in advance. Being that I’m a nurse I’ve always been a bit obsessive about food too long in the frig. Hubby has been a big help, and when we’ve been fortunate to have really cold nights – which doesn’t happen often in SE Virginia at this time of year, putting the “bird” out on the porch the day before has worked fine.
But, when it has to be in the refrigerator, that’s another story. Boy scout, engineer hubby would often devise a way to defrost the turkey in the cooler the day/night before – keeps adequately cold, but defrosts. Except for the year he wrapped the frozen turkey in newspaper and closed the lid to the cooler…
Frozen turkey Thanksgiving morning. 😂
Now when it’s holidays and guests, we get a fresh turkey from the local butcher.
Second date with hubby, our 1st date was in a Chinese restaurant, where my fortune cookie said, “You will marry after a very brief courtship.” Saved it for years. We were engaged after 2 months dating, married within 6 months of meeting.
Anyway, 2nd date, I invited new friend over for dinner. Turkey legs. Cooked over an open Faberware broiler – I had no idea that was NOT the way to cook turkey legs!
Very nice, Southern gentleman that this new beau was – never said a word, just worked his way through chewing some very tough bites of meat. He still laughs when he tells the story.
When I was in 7th grade, we had a class assignment to form groups and follow a recipe. It was supposed to teach us about working together and following directions. My group was assigned a recipe for “no cook divinity.” To this day, I still don’t know what the hell that it is. This is what it’s supposed to look like:
I’d never heard of it and neither had anyone in the group. We were doomed from the start.
Anyways, the recipe called for beating egg whites into “stiff peaks.” Nobody in the group had any clue what that meant. Whatever—it’s a weird recipe for a weird food. We’ll just beat it like we were making a pumpkin pie. We mixed all the ingredients together with an electric beater that I borrowed from mom until the batter reached a soup-like texture. When we reached the step in the recipe where it called for spooning the batter into little balls on the pan, we were stumped. How are you supposed to spoon “soup” into a flat pan? Well…we tried our best. And made a giant mess. We still followed the last step of the recipe and threw some chopped nuts on top of it.
In short, the final product looked exactly like vomit.
The teacher took one look at it and yelled at us for “not beating the eggs into stiff peaks.” “But I don’t even know what that means,” I yelled back.
Naturally we got a big ol’ F.
Bless your heart! Cooking is supposed to be fun, adventure or at least an act of service out of love for those for whom you are cooking. That sounds like a terrible experience.
Divinity is homemade candy – yummy, melt in your mouth. I LOVE making candy. Take me back to childhood and my Mom, Grandmother and Great Aunt in the kitchen making it during a family visits to Florida. They laughed and laughed and laughed…Loved seeing the happiness.
They have all passed and now I make the candy. I never did make it with them but I feel like I am when I make it. And we now have our own memories making Divinity and Sea Foam…memories of what a Mess I make Each and Every time I make it! and how I have such a terrible time watching for the sugar to get to temp and the correct consistency. The mess, the chaos, the laughing, the excitement eating all of the mistakes with no regret, all part of making memories for my children.
We haven’t made it in several years and I don’t want the children to outgrow the memories – you now they forget so much from their early years as they get older! I planned our Christmas week menu yesterday and added making candy, by which I mean these two recipes, to the evening of the 23rd. Fun, Fun, Fun!
These are very light and airy candies and I suppose your recipe was going for stiff egg whites instead of boiling the sugar and then whipping it with 2 eggs whites, etc.
We Never use corn syrup…except for this recipe. These are not the recipes we will follow as I have always just made from the hand me down family cookbooks (makes me feel connected and loved even though they have passed away some time ago) but I can’t reach the shelf where I keep those books so here are some recipes for you to get the idea of what you were going for. Of course, the teacher should have told you and explained. I think hands on is great but you still have to do the teaching part1
https://www.nobiggie.net/sea-foam-candy/
https://www.thespruceeats.com/divinity-521368
https://thedomesticrebel.com/2016/11/30/easy-homemade-divinity-candy/
https://houseofnasheats.com/old-fashioned-divinity-candy-recipe/
https://artofnaturalliving.com/2014/01/09/grandmas-sea-foam-candy-divinity-no-corn-syrup/
mine tend to come out a little different each time because I just never do seem to follow a recipe exactly. This time I am going to use an infused vinegar to add a special touch.
Thank you for explaining this! Even Googling it years later, I still wasn’t totally sure what kind of food divinity is. My mom could cook a good dinner, but she almost never baked or made sweets.
My grandmother made divinity. It’s like a super shot for a diabetic coma, pure sugar fluff.
It’s wonderful, eaten in small pieces.
This has to be the worst recipe failure ever recorded. 🙂
1:14 in length
[youtube
“Crater Cake”
I was learning to bake in junior high, and wanted to surprise my parents with an anniversary cake. The dial on the oven was set to 350 degrees, but evidently was just off enough that it warmed the oven but didn’t bring it to full heat.
When the timer went off, I pulled the pan out of the oven. Within 2 mins the center collapsed and left a huge crater in the middle. The outside edges were cooked, the center was like chocolate pudding.
I like to think of it as being ahead of my time. Today they sell it as Chocolate Lava Cake and sell it at fine restaurants for $20 a serving.
Dear Daughnworks247,
While I am sorry for your frustrating experience I am Delighted that you shared them! You have accomplished so much and have so many stories of success that I am encouraged to know you are not the unrealistic perfect person to whom I have been comparing myself and coming up short.
Now, I Still come up short if were to ever compare CVs, business experience or even all of your wonderful successes and skills at homemaking. But at least I know you are not perfect! 😉
Reminds me of a Wonderful homeschool mom who blogs, writes and creates curriculum and takes the loveliest of pictures, dispense wisdom, etc. So there she is accomplishing so much with her Many children and me with my very small family knowing how little I accomplish and wondering if mine will be ready for advanced learning, life, etc.
At the beginning of a school year several years ago, she posted what curriculum she was using for the year. My eyes popped open wide, I got excited and I started quickly clicking through her web site to see what she has posted the previous year. I was right! She was posting 1 program that she had used the previous year with the same child/children …. that meant she wasn’t perfect and had not finished it the previous year and by not finished really not finished as here she was listing it for a 2nd year in a row! Yippeeeeeee!!!!! She wasn’t perfect and neither was their homeschooling!
Now, don’t get me wrong, this woman (like you, daughnworks247) could and does work circles around me, is very accomplished and I admire her. However, I was So Encouraged to know that neither she nor her life were perfect.
Would I go to her website if she only focused on her failures? Probably not as much…just like I LOVE your wonderful stories. I go to her site to learn from her and to enjoy her stories and encouragement. But a little glimpse of human imperfection – refreshing and relatable. And yet, you Still taught lessons from it and seemed to take the mistakes/failures in stride as part of life. Impressive even in mistakes! 🙂
Always enjoy your writing and look forward to the next story.
Mountains of failure.
The thing which helped me most of all was to realize when I’m out of my realm.
No one can do everything well and it’s foolish to try to APPEAR that way.
I’m consistently amazed my friends who have uncommon expertise is the weirdest subject matter.
It’s kind of like the Q Tree.
I mean……… look at us.
Where else would we find a group with people like Gail, who is the expert on caves —- to the Chemistry thread the guys have going on the U Tree —- all the way across the spectrum to JamCooker’s new hints.
I mean, It’s amazing.
We’re never too old to learn something new.
Dear “Mom”, I’ve seen a number of your comments here at the Q Tree but don’t have a great grasp of your situation…so please take this with a grain of salt. It sounds like you are carrying a burden of guilt &/or sorrow about being in a difficult place, perhaps due to (physical, mental, emotional, spiritual?) health issues. I may be projecting onto your comments due to my own struggles…so hopefully no offence here…
Anyway, as a way of processing some of what burdens me I’ve done a number of posts at my blog on the topics of PTSD &/or (Special Needs) parenting &/or trusting in the Lord…here are a few which may be encouraging to you:
https://specialconnections.wordpress.com/2018/08/18/complex-ptsd-personal-touchpoints/
https://specialconnections.wordpress.com/2019/03/25/my-help-comes-from-the-lord/
https://specialconnections.wordpress.com/2019/06/25/rewriting-an-old-tape-of-lies/
https://specialconnections.wordpress.com/2018/10/17/special-forces/
Most of these posts contain some encouraging scriptures overlaying images that enhance their meaning in a way that touches me beyond just mental assent to Truth…perhaps you might be blessed & encouraged by any of these posts where feet of clay are on display but in a way that ultimately is (hopefully) glorifying to the Lord!
Hang in there, these “light afflictions” will surely fade in the face of His Eternal Glory…
May the Lord continue to strengthen & sustain you & give you His Joy in the midst of sorrows…In Christ’s Love