O/S disasters.... let us share...

Fruball

When I was about 15, I was impatient trying to squeeze some sticky raspberry ice cream syrup out of the squeezy tube so I twisted it hard hoping it would come out faster. The syrup exploded out of the other end of the tube and flew all over me, the cupboard above and the work top. I was not popular

Eenymeeny

Macca83 wrote: »

I love tuna in sunflower oil but in all the years of eating it I have yet to master draining it without spurting tuna juice everywhere. It's one of life's little mysteries.

Thanks for admitting your disasters everyone. They've given me a couple of giggles. I'm sure that I can remember some of mine given a day or two. Meanwhile, can I just pass on the tip of using an old-fashioned can piercer for anything that needs to be drained? They were always used in our house for making 2 triangular holes opposite each other to enable evaporated milk to be poured out easily. I'm sure that I'll still have one at the back of the drawer....
(I think that they were for opening crown topped bottles too)

Cottage_Economy

I'm howling with laughter over some of these.

I took a pair of floor length curtains up by eye and a pair of sharp scissors, only to realise I had forgotten to leave a seam allowance to turn them up and had cut them exactly to the windowsill. I turned the air blue.

Dropped a Sunday roast on the floor getting it out of the oven, quick wash off, back in the oven for a few minutes to dry it off and kill off any lurking bugs. Got it out of the oven, burnt myself on a shelf and dropped it on the floor again.

Used a bowl that was too shallow to make angel delight in using a hand held electric whisk for the first time that my MIL gave me. Cue strawberry angel delight mix over everything in a two foot radius from the bowl. Worse, because I had only just added it to water it was just watery pink solid granules. I found dried on pink granules for weeks afterwards on things you wouldn't think they could have reached.

Just remember one more, but this was my mother's while I was growing up. For around 5 days we could smell something strangely fart-like in the kitchen, which started off as mildly unpleasant and progressed to nauseating by the following weekend. Drains were scrubbed and flushed through, the washing machine washed through several times at high temperature, cupboards turfed out, you name it, mum and dad did everything to find this smell to no avail. Come Sunday, dinner was served as usual at the table with the meat on a platter and the veggies in tureens, although because of the smell my parents agreed we could eat in the living room. Mum took down the tureens from the shelf where they lived at the far end of the kitchen, took off the lid to find the source of the smell - last week's leftover cabbage and brussels. My sister had been asked to put the tureens back on the shelf after dinner the previous week, but my mother hadn't yet cleaned them out but as they had lids on my sister did as she was told none the wiser.

Sethisis

:rotfl: Oh these are fantastic!

I've had many disasters, but the one I'm most sore about is the honeycomb one. I added the ingredients and tried to heat it up on the hob, but had the hob too hot, so it really started foaming over the edges and burning onto the hobs. Instead of just turning the heat down, I stood there for ages taking the pot off, holding it then putting it back on and repeating until I felt satisfied. The result was a transparent orange block of glass like material. I'd tried pouring it into a glass container before it set, then once it did I couldn't get it out. I ended up slamming a knife in and shattering the container.

This was supposed to be a surprise for my boyfriend, and he laughed his !!!! off when he saw me cleaning up a pile of shattered glass and sugar.

rosalie-lavender

When my eldest went to Uni I had a text asking how much powder ginger to use in a cake in place of 4 oz of fresh ginger. Unfortunately I didn't see the text until after the cake was made. Turns out they put the whole jar of ginger powder in the cake. Luckily they only had one jar or they would have put more in. Apparently it was very strong:eek: but they did eat it.

On the phone to my elderly MIL one day she asked about garlic. Apparently she had bought two heads of garlic at the supermarket, having never used it before. "It smells a bit strong," she said, "How much do you normally use?" Oh one or two cloves I answered. It went very quiet and desperately trying not to laugh I asked how much she had used. She had put the whole head of garlic in a casserole for 1 person. She ate it though but my DH went to see her three days later and said the house stunk and so did she.

I have done a lot of the things already mentioned on here, exploded eggs, dropped cakes and nearly set the house alight more than once. I nearly caught a pan of beetroot alight one day when I forgot it. My DH was sat the in the room next door completely oblivious to the stink of smoke.

terra_ferma

culpepper wrote: »

I forgot to put the paddle in the breadmaker and when the time up beeper went off there was a horrible mess and no bread.

I managed to forget various bits, the paddle several times, but even the water a few times. Cooked dry flour wasn't very appealing..
Just last week I was baking some really lovely seeded bread, luckily now I always check the bread just in case, and there was the flour being spinned around and no water, luckily it had just started so I added the water and started all over again (using rapid bake, normal programme with resting time would have not worked as the yeast was mixed with water too soon).

MoneyMission

When we were little, my brother shook the bottle of tomato ketchup without the lid on. It went everywhere: floor, table, ceiling and even on the underside of the table! I tell my children about it now and it's one of their favorite stories!

malamay

Hello, I'm malamay, and I burn potatoes. I'm too stingy when covering them with water, and probably once a month am greeted with a nasty mess. I normally salvage the middles of the potatoes, but not any veg that might be steaming on top... My pan always comes up clean - I carefully boil washing up liquid and water in it afterwards before it gets a good scrub

MrsAtobe

Too many to mention them all, but here are a few highlights:

The earliest one I can remember is being asked by my mum to wrap some potatoes in foil and pop them in the top oven, this was about 30 years ago, I wasn't very old. How was I to know that foil has two sides? I'd wrapped the potatoes with the foil shiny side out, so that they looked like Christmas presents, but they took an age to cook. My mum was furious with me.:o

Trying to steam a Chinese moon cake in the pressure cooker without putting the lid on, I couldn't understand why it was taking so long to cook. :rotfl:

I've given up trying to make sponge cake, they come out as biscuits instead.

I've ironed my arm so many times while watching TV, that I've given up ironing as well, but not watching TV:T

Cottage_Economy

Just remembered one more after MrsAtobe's adventures with tatties and foil.

In true moneysaving style I decided to wrap up some potatoes in foil and cook them in the hot embers underneath our fireplace when the fire was lit. I figured if it worked on bonfire night why not any night?

I made a nice chillli that evening, went to the grate to check my potatoes only to find they had gone. I carefully poked through all the ash trying to find them, nothing. Except that is for a tiny scrap of foil. Hubby was wetting himself.

I hadn't realised that the difference between a bonfire outside and our fire inside is hubby puts on solid fuel as well as wood onto our fire, so it burns much hotter and heats the room better. It burnt so hot it incinerated the potatoes and the foil.