Culinary Accidents

This morning I had an experience that made me recall some of the amazing –and not-so-tasty – culinary accidents I have created in my lifetime.

               Let me preface this by saying that I am a reasonably good cook.  Mistakes in the kitchen are not commonplace for me, at all.  If you don’t count the numerous times I’ve sliced myself with a sharp blade, then they are quite few indeed.

               But those few mistakes are pretty….significant.  Catastrophic in a couple of cases.

               The first one happened when I was about 8 years old.  I decided to treat my family to warm cocoa in the morning when we were on vacation.  I crept to the kitchen, opened the fridge, grabbed the milk, and began heating it gently in a pan on the stove.  I slowly added the cocoa powder, stirring until it was the perfect shade of mocha.  Then, as my parents and brothers groggily made it to the table, I poured the steaming brew carefully into each mug.

               All was wonderful until my brother spit his out all over the table.  My other brother and mom sat quietly, discreetly pushing their mugs away.  Only my dad sipped his, sighed appreciatively, and pronounced it “delicious!” 

               It was not delicious.  It was vile.  I had pulled out the carton of buttermilk.  

               I do not recommend warm, chocolate buttermilk.  But hey, I was 8.

               My next disaster didn’t happen until I was 15.  My mom typically did all the cooking and I was just a table-setting gopher.  Apparently, not a particularly observant one.  So when she had surgery, I decided I could make the mac-and-cheese from a box for the first dinner she was in the hospital.  I mean, it was a box for heaven’s sake.  Anybody who can read and follow written instructions could do this, right?

               It was easy-peasy.  Except I read ¼ teaspoon salt as ½ cup of salt.  My macaroni and cheese was disgustingly briny.  My dad, again, ate it and pronounced it just fine.  Then we drank about seven glasses of water each.

               During the years I dated my husband, I cooked many a meal for him – all pretty good, I might add.  So it came as a big and unhappy surprise, when, in our first week of wedded bliss, I made him pan-fried pork chops that were like rocks.  We couldn’t cut them with any knife we owned, nor were our teeth strong enough to tear them apart.

               My hubby was quite nice about it, but I stewed all the next day at work.  What had I done wrong?  Since I had purchased a package of four chops, I decided I would bake them, long and slowly, and cover them with mushroom soup.  That would surely tenderize them!

               It did not.  They were awful.  It had not occurred to me that I’d simply gotten ahold of a bad package of pork chops.  And that’s the night I discovered that my new husband was not a fan of mushroom soup. Or mushrooms, in general.

               He laughingly told me that he learned his lesson – don’t complain about the food or you’ll get it the next night smothered in mushroom sauce.

               Years have rolled and only a few minor incidents have occurred until this morning. We have a wildly producing group of cucumber plants and I made buckets of pickles with some.  At lunch, we put some pickles in two ramekins (nut dishes, you know?).  After lunch, I realized I hadn’t taken my vitamins, glucosamine, calcium, or magnesium. 

               I take all of these supplements in gummy form because I can’t swallow pills easily.  So I dumped these 8 pills into a ramekin and proceeded to eat them. But not before they had become saturated with pickle juice.

               Trust me, this is not a new taste sensation.  Best to leave pickle juice away from your fruit-flavored gummies.