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.
Bethany says
I’m a facebook fan!
Bethany says
I tweeted the giveaway message!
Bethany says
Wow… so many disasters to choose from! The one that sticks out the most in my mind is when I was working as a cook at a camp back in highschool. I was up extremely early to start making oatmeal for a 7am breakfast and hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before.
I was supposed to put 12 cups of oats into a giant pot of boiling water as well as a much smaller amount of brown sugar. My foggy, sleepy mind must have read it wrong (despite having done it several times before) and I put 11 cups of brown sugar into the water before my supervisor noticed that I’d made an extra trip to the brown sugar bin… It was tremendously embarrassing, and I obviously knew better, but no alarms went off in my head at ALL. Needless to say, breakfast was late, since we had to bring another HUGE pot to boil. Now I can make oatmeal almost in my sleep. But I don’t try.
Bette O says
I have so many that it is ridiculous……….actually there should be a sign at my kitchen door with my face on it circled in red with a diagonal line across the center. It is better if I “do not enter”!
The worst mess (caused by my hubby), I can not tell, because it makes me ill just thinking about it but one of the worst messes I had in the kitchen was from my son.
He was learning to walk and since our house was small, there were no areas he was not allowed to explore. Also this was over 40 yrs ago, long before we were smart enough to NOT store certain items under the sink.
One day, I was in our living room cleaning and he was toddling around. We had a half wall that separated our living room from our kitchen and I glanced up to see nothing but puffs of smoke coming up from below the wall on the kitchen side.
When I went to investigate, there sat my son, on the floor with a Comet can in hand, shaking it up and down as hard as he could, and laughing at the shower of powder falling all around him. It was practically impossible to get all that powder up and off the floor. There was Comet everywhere; on the floor, in the cupboards, in the mop boards, that fine powder went EVERYWHERE . . . . . . . and to get it off of him, I took him out in the back yard and blew it off with the shop vac.
Julie says
After making wonderful stew on a chilly night our family got into an intense wii battle. An hour later we smelled smoke and I realized the stove had been left on and burned the bottom of one of my favorite pans. It smelled for days.
Sarah says
Sorry – hit enter before I was finished. I tripped over my own two feet and the cakes went flying – each of them landing SPLAT upside down and I fell and ripped a whole in my pants! Yeh… I work in an office now! 🙂
Teresa says
We were having a dinner for the Bass Club and I offered to make pecan pies. I baked them and home and took them 12 miles out to the meeting. When I got there I found they were not done so I cooked them longer. When it got time for supper they were still syrupy and never set. Worst pecan pies I ever made. I learned never to take pecan pies to a dinner again. I will stick to cakes.
Joanie H says
ok so i tried to make cake pops last week for a friends baby shower — harder than it looks! they were too big and falling off the stick, not solid enough, crumbs in the melted chocolate … no good. other time, i put waaaaaay to much cornstarch in my stir fry and my sauce ended up being a jelly (made up of only water, chicken flavoring,and corn starch) so it was a lite green color (from the veggies) and it was nasty
Sarah says
In the bakery I worked on several years ago I had just decorated 4 cakes and had them on a sheet pan to put on the cart across the room. I tripped Over my
Krista says
My kitchen is SMALL. So small that I have absolutely no counter space available, so I have to use my stovetop as my workspace. A few weeks ago I decided that I would be all mega-chef and quarter my own chicken. So I whipped out the bird, placed it on a cutting board, and set everything on the largest of my electric burners for stability. Little did I know that a certain somebody had left that burner on (grrr electric stoves!). So a waft of toxic plastic fumes fills the air, and I frantically lift the cutting board up only to dump raw chicken juice everywhere. In addition to this, I had a burner completely covered in plastic. It took me until a few days ago to get around to cleaning it, and it served as a constant reminder of my giant kitchen fail up until then.
Coco and Isa says
I made a birthday cake with triple the amount of salt for my whole family. Yuck!
Rachel Hsu says
I had two strikes against me–I was frustrated while being on hold forever with the phone company and I was experiencing the “pregnancy brain” forgetfulness. I was steaming some broccoli in a pot with a steamer basket. After several minutes, I started wondering why the pot wasn’t boiling. I realized that I had forgotten to put water in the bottom of the pot! By the time I realized this, there was liquid metal starting to leak out of the bottom of the pot. What a mess!!
dana d says
Ha! I think your daughter sounds adorable, lol! 😉
My disaster was kind of done purposely. I have a tub of flour that I was letting my daughter play with by pouring from that container to another bowl. She’s 2. Her brother, 5 decided to join her. I left the room. Later my “ghostly” children came and said hi. 🙂 I ran in and took pictures.
And encouraged two of their older sisters to join in.
Oh, that was a clean up!
But the memory is priceless! 🙂
I just found your site the other day, btw. I”ve been loving it–thanks!
Holly says
I’m excited to “like” you on facebook.
Holly says
My worst kitchen disaster (thus far, I’m sure there will be more) was in middle school. My beset friend and I were attempting to make home made frosting. The recipe called for confectioner’s sugar and we had no idea what that was. We thought maybe it was flour. Boy were we wrong. After seeing our disaster we attempted to bake it to see what would happen. That made things worse and we had a huge mess to clean up before mom got home.
Sarah @ a drop of golden sun says
When my oldest was just 2, he decided it would be fun to color the entire kitchen floor with a bright orange marker. Of course, this has nothing to do with cooking, it just happened to be in the kitchen! Luckily, we quickly learned that a little elbow grease & damp paper towels got most of it out, quicker than we had thought!