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Sometimes Cooking Just Gives Me The Blues...*
11 years ago
~Remember~
before submitting a dish please read our club rules and TOS on the main page *This is from an article I still have from the Providence Journal by Mark Patinkin that struck a chord with me - and lets face it, I think we have all felt this at one time when we have done a dish that we sincerely regretted making...or, eaten something that still haunts us to this day!
"And then there was the infamous salmon loaf incident of 1967.
I am not sure why my mother did this to us. I guess she felt she should expand our horizons beyond things like chicken and pot roast.
So, she served salmon loaf. All five of us sons kind of stared.
'What's that?' one of us asked.
'Try it,' my mother said. 'You'll like it.'
That's a bad sign right there. She wasn't saying what it was.
On most nights, everyone pounced so you could have seconds before the other animals ripped you off.
No one pounced on the salmon meat loaf.
We were told we had to at least try it, so everyone put a bite on a fork, tasted it and began choking like we'd been poisoned. But we had to keep at it.
Decades later, I am still suffering from salmon-loaf PTSD.
I got to thinking about this because my newspaper ran a story last week that we'd first run 100 years ago. It was a feature asking Civil War veterans to share thoughts about the worst meals they recalled. Many mentioned "hardtack". I looked it up. It's a flat biscuit that looks like a wallboard.
At the same time, we also asked readers to recall their own worst meals. I can't compete with memories of service food, like MRE's - "meals ready to eat."
But, my mother also subjected us to two other items I'm still traumatized by. Liver and Tongue. I'm not over those, either.
I also survived eight years of school cafeterias. I hear college food is better today - perhaps that's where everyone's $ 50,000 is going. It was different when I was in school. I don't recall any salad bars or custom-order grills. You took what they had.
We were routinely served something aptly named "Mystery Meat", since no one knew what it was. We also had these round something-Parmigiana covered in red sauce. If, as you were leaving the cafeterias, someone asked you what was for dinner, you'd tell them, "Elephant scabs". They'd nod knowingly.
It's hard for me to eat any kind of salmon since it traumatized me one other time.
Around age 30, I was in Paris and stopped by a restaurant at 3 p.m. wanting just a Coke. Using my limited French, I told the waiter, "Coca-Cola...seulement." That means "only."I tried to show off by using a strong accent. I thought I nailed it.
Twenty minutes later, the waiter brought out a Coke and a dinner plate with a large half fish with the head still on it. I don't like food with the head still on it. I'm an American, so I asked what it was.
"Saumon", said the waiter. I guess my pronunciation of "seulement" wasn't so good after all.
I think my worst meals have been those I made myself. It's not pretty to watch a single male cook, at least those born without culinary genes.
One night, I committed to making stir-fried chicken in a wok. I added vegetables and to kick it up, I poured on random sauces. Then I grabbed a bottle of lemon juice and poured that on too.
It made something strange happen. The stir-fried chicken turned blue. I had never seen blue chicken before; I'm not sure anyone had. I tried it anyway. It was as bad as it looked. It's not easy to badly screw up chicken, but I did.
I also once badly overcooked meatloaf, but figured I'd soften it a bit overnight in the fridge. Not exactly. The next day, I had to stab it with a screwdriver to break it up. It tasted as bad as the chicken.
If you asked my children to recall the worst meals they've ever eaten, it would probably be my own signature dish. I'm proud of it, but they hate it. They probably hate it because I make it almost every night. It's chicken, rice and peas. They now refer to it with a I probably shouldn't print here, but it's the first letter of each word in the dish.
I still say it's not as bad as they claim. To prove it, perhaps soon I'll hit them with salmon loaf...and enough random sauces to turn it blue.
...Maybe they'll appreciate me then."
So with that - I know one of MINE was certainly the "drunken cinni-bunnies" as well as my fail strawberry cheesecake - does anyone have any 'fails' that still stick with them?
"And then there was the infamous salmon loaf incident of 1967.
I am not sure why my mother did this to us. I guess she felt she should expand our horizons beyond things like chicken and pot roast.
So, she served salmon loaf. All five of us sons kind of stared.
'What's that?' one of us asked.
'Try it,' my mother said. 'You'll like it.'
That's a bad sign right there. She wasn't saying what it was.
On most nights, everyone pounced so you could have seconds before the other animals ripped you off.
No one pounced on the salmon meat loaf.
We were told we had to at least try it, so everyone put a bite on a fork, tasted it and began choking like we'd been poisoned. But we had to keep at it.
Decades later, I am still suffering from salmon-loaf PTSD.
I got to thinking about this because my newspaper ran a story last week that we'd first run 100 years ago. It was a feature asking Civil War veterans to share thoughts about the worst meals they recalled. Many mentioned "hardtack". I looked it up. It's a flat biscuit that looks like a wallboard.
At the same time, we also asked readers to recall their own worst meals. I can't compete with memories of service food, like MRE's - "meals ready to eat."
But, my mother also subjected us to two other items I'm still traumatized by. Liver and Tongue. I'm not over those, either.
I also survived eight years of school cafeterias. I hear college food is better today - perhaps that's where everyone's $ 50,000 is going. It was different when I was in school. I don't recall any salad bars or custom-order grills. You took what they had.
We were routinely served something aptly named "Mystery Meat", since no one knew what it was. We also had these round something-Parmigiana covered in red sauce. If, as you were leaving the cafeterias, someone asked you what was for dinner, you'd tell them, "Elephant scabs". They'd nod knowingly.
It's hard for me to eat any kind of salmon since it traumatized me one other time.
Around age 30, I was in Paris and stopped by a restaurant at 3 p.m. wanting just a Coke. Using my limited French, I told the waiter, "Coca-Cola...seulement." That means "only."I tried to show off by using a strong accent. I thought I nailed it.
Twenty minutes later, the waiter brought out a Coke and a dinner plate with a large half fish with the head still on it. I don't like food with the head still on it. I'm an American, so I asked what it was.
"Saumon", said the waiter. I guess my pronunciation of "seulement" wasn't so good after all.
I think my worst meals have been those I made myself. It's not pretty to watch a single male cook, at least those born without culinary genes.
One night, I committed to making stir-fried chicken in a wok. I added vegetables and to kick it up, I poured on random sauces. Then I grabbed a bottle of lemon juice and poured that on too.
It made something strange happen. The stir-fried chicken turned blue. I had never seen blue chicken before; I'm not sure anyone had. I tried it anyway. It was as bad as it looked. It's not easy to badly screw up chicken, but I did.
I also once badly overcooked meatloaf, but figured I'd soften it a bit overnight in the fridge. Not exactly. The next day, I had to stab it with a screwdriver to break it up. It tasted as bad as the chicken.
If you asked my children to recall the worst meals they've ever eaten, it would probably be my own signature dish. I'm proud of it, but they hate it. They probably hate it because I make it almost every night. It's chicken, rice and peas. They now refer to it with a I probably shouldn't print here, but it's the first letter of each word in the dish.
I still say it's not as bad as they claim. To prove it, perhaps soon I'll hit them with salmon loaf...and enough random sauces to turn it blue.
...Maybe they'll appreciate me then."
So with that - I know one of MINE was certainly the "drunken cinni-bunnies" as well as my fail strawberry cheesecake - does anyone have any 'fails' that still stick with them?
Chopped challenge: jicama: pork shoulder: cherry tomatoes: cous-cous: golden raisins 
Hmmm...I'll have to think of some past fails if I can...off the top of my head I can only think of undercooking rice more than once ages ago (i'm a pro at cooking it perfectly now XD) so hm...*racks brain*
Other fail of mine was this hake in prawn sauce, it was tasty but the looks.. xD http://www.furaffinity.net/view/10220912/
oh... the biggest fail i've ever made was at the fathers of my boyfriend house... I tried to make villeroise chicken, (wich perfectly did at home http://www.furaffinity.net/view/10190132/) and they became an abortion xD
Marinated Ground Beef Tacos.
...just... Ooooh, that didn't go well.
Fortunately, that was a self-only fail.
I did make some Italian holiday cookies once that turned into BRICKS, But that was simply due to the recipe not specifying SIFTED flour, and me using packed cups of it. The taste was fine, but they required some effort to consume. Made properly, they've come out okay since, but they're not really something I have down perfectly.
I believe my father ended up cutting it into thing chunks and eating it as i it was energy bars. It had that exact same dense "this barely qualifies as a baked good" texture as a lot of energy bars!
Oh still not nearly as good as pork cheeks, but ya know, not many cuts of meat like that in the world. I think some "nasty bits" are gross too (brains for example), but a lot of the extra bits are really good.
On another note, and to answer your question: I burned hamburger helper once, and I went to culinary school. Dear lord so much suck. I burned it so bad that it was inedible, we couldn't salvage any part of it. I also feel like I've gotten rusty with my cooking, but food keeps getting more expensive so I don't get to make a lot of the good stuff. Not any significant fails, maybe my chicken was dry a time or two though, darn birds and their sensitive flesh. :P
I'll come up with something. This sounds pretty simple and fun