Sandy Supposes....

Cooking = Chaos and Catastrophe

PROMPT: I love cooking and I will admit there have been some fiascos. Knock my socks off with the best fiasco you've created, or been a witness to!

         Over the years, cooking chaos has prevailed more times than I care to remember. When I was a kid, my Mom's kid brother lived with us, and subsequently experimented with the art of food preparation. For some unfathomable reason, he decided that we should try chicken; chicken guts and gizzards to be specific. Jack thought they would make a delectable chili, and so he simmered his 'fowl' concoction on the stove for hours. At suppertime, we were each handed a bowl of slop; it wouldn't win any awards for presentation. We were not chili virgins, our father dabbled with intense spices all the time.

         The intensity of that first blistering mouthful still sears my brain. Seven people hip-checked and elbow-poked as they frantically fought to quench their fires with water from the kitchen faucet. The flowing tears and gasping rendered us miserably mute.

          The offending 'poison' was dumped outside the back door in the snow, pot and all. The dishwasher de jour, moi, didn't want to touch it; out of sight, out of mind. It was volatile. There was no glory only guts.

         By the next evening, Mom was missing that particular pot, so I was sent to retrieve it. I must admit it wasn't much of a reach from the back door. I just leaned out, grabbed the pot's handle, and tugged. Not withstanding my youthful vim and vigor at the time, I was not super-strong. My efforts left me clutching the empty, bottomless, frame of the aluminum pot. There was more than a hole in my 'bucket'. During its banishment to a winter's night of sub-zero temperatures, the pot's chicken chili contents had frozen into a block of red ice. And we were expected to have survived the digesting of this pot-rotting substance?? Unca Jack still insists that too many cooks spoiled his 'broth'. He surmised that everyone sampled a taste and then added more spices.

         One of my own cooking-fare fiascos blessed my family with its presence on a Christmas morning. My adult offspring insisted upon my serving home made pancakes; nothing from a box mix was good enough for them. They anticipated cracking open a bottle of genuine maple syrup, too. I'm a Mom, I obliged. As I sifted and stirred, my youngest brewed a fresh pot of tea, and graciously poured me a cup. I sipped my tea without incidence as I began flipping flapjacks.

         Danielle wrinkled her face in disgust and spit out her tea. "It's salty!", she squeaked in surprise. Dumping out the teapot, she set out to replace the contaminated tea. Grabbing the sugar bowl, she sampled a few of the white grains. "Who put salt in here?" That's a question I've put out there far too many times in my career as a parent; who? I was unaffected; no sweet fix for my tea.

         Danielle personally hauled the sugar canister from the cupboard and refilled the sugar bowl. She was not amused when her second cup of fresh tea was every bit as salty as her first. Oblivious, I served the pancakes as they were ready. Again, it was daughter Danielle who tasted the first pancakes; smothering hers with maple syrup. Once more she was assailed by unwanted salt. Puzzled, I pulled the 'official' sugar canister from the cupboard, and tasted its contents. Mystery solved, several pounds of salt had been stored instead of sugar. I've never purchased salt in that volume, only sugar. The only possible explanation: mislabelling at the bulk baking supplies store.

         This same daughter once had a craving for fudge, and no problem, she'd make it herself. After minutes upon minutes of furious stirring over the hot element of the stove, she hollered to me, "Mom! What's wrong with this?" Of course, I had to enter the kitchen to see what 'this' could be. I saw a gooey mess in the pot, so I quizzed Danielle about the ingredients. Instead of a three-quarter cup of condensed milk, she'd poured in a full can. No amount of heat or stirring would ever create the sweet treat she wanted. She had invented chocolate soup.