Do Not Try This At Home

CollageMama's Top Ten Kitchen Disasters

These adventures are all true, but are not necessarily related to food preparation.
While some of these disasters are at least partly the fault of my sons’ father, none of them were major contributing factors to our divorce. In fact, some of them were high points of our marriage.
It is not entirely bad being asked not to bring home-cooking to potlucks.
Countdown

10. My earliest kitchen disaster took place in the hospital kitchen where I had my first “real” job. The hospital, for reasons I will never fathom, occasionally served hot pickled beets to the patients. After supper was served and cleaned up, one teen part-timer stayed “late” until 7:30 p.m. to assemble and deliver trays to patients admitted or given permission to eat after supper time. Small amounts of the supper foods were kept in a multi-tiered warming oven. Never bursting with self-confidence or coordination, I was very freaked about making up a supper tray, and spilled the pan of pickled beets when I pulled it out of the warming oven. The smell of those burned-on pickled beets haunts me to this day. Just seeing a certain dark crimson color or smelling hot vinegar can set off a panic attack. After fessing up to the supervisor, I cleaned the oven, kept my job, and became a mostly competent member of society, much to my continuing surprise.

9. As newlyweds we lived in a one-bedroom apartment at 1822 H St. in Lincoln, Nebraska. We had nary a dime despite being the managers of the eight-plex. The apartment had Cornhusker red shag carpet, and the kitchen took up one corner of the living/dining room. In a moment of festive insanity I blew all our discretionary income on a Halloween pumpkin, and placed it on top of the kitchen cabinets. Do not ever doubt that heat rises! Arriving home from my library peon job on a surprisingly warm October evening, I opened the door to an incredible stench. My overactive mystery-reader imagination led me to believe a corpse had been wedged next to the water heater in the utility closet. I was too scared to open the door until my law student spouse arrived home. No corpse. In a scene from a crime/thriller movie we began opening doors and cabinets. Imagine my horror at finding gelatinous goo dripping into the cabinet that contained the Corel plates and bowls! Yes, the overheated pumpkin had slimed, oozed, and dripped in a cross between “Ghostbusters” and “Seven”.

8. In 1980 we moved, still dimeless, to Omaha. Once there, my spouse began returning to vegetarianism by way of a seafood /alcohol diet. AND he began hanging out in parking lots to buy his fix from “Fresh Seafood” panel trucks. I used to be pretty fond of shrimp, scallops, rainbow trout, lobster, and friendly fish sticks. One experience with squid was to change all that. But even that was nothing to compare with the Night of the Giant Satanic Fish. Cliff brought home some sort of fish that would require an 18x12” sheet of paper to trace. He began to slit, cut, bone, and hack the evil thing apart. No matter what he did the thing got bigger and scalier. In a moment of enormous disgust and surrender he scraped the whole mess into the sink and turned on the garbage disposal. Grr-skrit--CRUNK. The disposal died with the stinking beast lodged . Unable to afford a plumber’s service call, we struggled for days to dislodge and remove the damn thing. Cliff escaped to his job each day, while I was stuck in the reeking house…Okay, when people refer to throwing the kitchen sink into disagreements, they may have a scaly disposal episode in mind.

7. One son later I had another attack of holiday madness, and made Rice Krispy treats for the holidays. While I was adding red food coloring to the melting marshmallows I failed to notice that the rubber spatula was coming apart in chunks. Fabulous! I distributed plates of the festive pink Rice Krispy treats to everyone on our gift list. Remember, we were still dimeless. It’s been twenty years, and people still insist that I don’t need to bring any food to their pot-luck dinner or party! There will be asterisks in future family trees about the woman who melted the spatula into the Rice Krispy treats, just like the ancestors with six toes.

6. Another son later we were living in the house where I expected to spend the rest of my life. We had made it to the big time of suburban Omaha. We had a split-level on a cu-de-sac with a walk-out basement on the green belt, earth-tone wallpaper, skylights, and a double garage. I had a dream-come-true laundry/mudroom inhabited by Harriet, the Hamster That Would Not Die. What more could anyone want? And then came that fateful day when I let Mike lick the beaters. He somehow got the beater hooked under his chin and over his bottom teeth. I managed to extricate him so he would not grow up to be the Man in the Eggbeater Mask, but the details are a blur. In flashbacks there is batter petrified onto all the cabinet doors. Mike grew up mostly normal, but may have to deal with suppressed memories in expensive therapy one of these days.

5. In the late ‘80s we moved to Edmond, Oklahoma. Our rental house had many of the desirable features of that era--a ”great room”, cul-de-sac with poison ivy and jogging trail address, wet bar, deck, fake redwood paneling, skylights, rodent infestations, and built-in microwave. Just months before the big move I had allowed a microwave into my kitchen, ignoring all my convictions that it would cause brain damage and birth defects while communicating with evil galaxies. So I now had two scary microwaves. Too stressed with three boys under the age of six, I kept using the portable microwave that I had begun to understand back in Omaha. Cliff, ever the intrepid kitchen adventurer, chose to nuke broccoli in cheese sauce in the unfamiliar built-in microwave, but then failed to remove and eat it. Weeks went by as I dealt with a new kindergarten and schoolbus routine, unpacking boxes, flea bombs, and Fundmentalist neighbors praying for our souls. When the smell started to attract our harried attention, we attributed it to Steven’s diapers, chicken pox, or a decaying relationship. Some say that when a window closes a door opens. Check your microwave!!

4. My family calls Chex Mix by the name “Kris Kringle Krunch”. Arriving in the DFW standard metropolitan statistical census area, we took up residence in Plano, Texas. I had yet another dream house where I planned to live the rest of my life. I had three sons between age three and third grade. My spouse lived in the greater metropolitan area, and my territory had shrunk to four square miles. It included the elementary school, the aquatic center, grocery store, post office, ice cream store, gas station, public library, and t-ball field. My only escape from this limited range was the spouse-sanctioned jog on the high school track. To complicate this imploding life-style, a young girl was kidnapped and murdered. Life consisted of getting kids to and from school safely. On the upside, we were enjoying being in a major league sports city. The Texas Rangers and Dallas Cowboys competed with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Legos for our affection. Cowboys games required Krunch. One day I left roaster pans of Chex Mix in the oven with instructions to my spouse to turn the oven OFF when the timer rang. Instead he turned the oven dial the opposite direction past BROIL before he left home. I got back with the boys, unlocked the door, and was hit with a cloud of black smoke. Opened the door and fought through the smoke to turn the oven off, then amused the boys in the yard until we could enter the house. Have you thought much about cremation? My dear friend wants to be cremated and then have her ashes made into maracas. I was getting mighty close to making my spouse into a percussion instrument!

3. Tie between the crayon-resist microwave fire and the RIT dye exhaust fan episode. Art and kitchens are not a good combo. Forget the apron and get a haz-mat suit.

2. These days we are paralyzed by the switch from buying coffee in metal cans to plastic canisters. As if we didn’t have enough to worry about with Cheney, Ashcroft, and Rumsfeld opening Pandora’s box and letting slip the dogs of war, we now have to wonder what to do with the bacon grease. Post-divorce, I had a job requiring “grown-up clothes” while still feeding ravenous boys. One morning I donned my new chocolate brown knit Lands’ End dress, tights, and shoes, and went forth to spill the hot contents of the grease can all down my front. Who knew that hot grease could bleach the color out of clothes? Back to the shower….

1. Six month’s back I bought a groovy, skinny, wheeled storage cart to hold cans of soda and beer in the wasted space between the refrigerator and the laundry room. This afternoon I rolled the cart out into the kitchen to restock, but it was top-heavy and tipped to the floor. Punctured soda cans sprayed the kitchen and laundry room with Dr. Pepper, Diet Coke, and 7-Up. My hair is fixed in a Cindy Lauper spiked look due to dried soda mist. Clean clothes have to be rewashed, and mopping the kitchen floor isn’t optional. Out of the frying pan and into the frequent fire? Where's Mr. Clean when you need him?