Hey Cass, nice giveaway – What a coincidence – my kitchen is blue too!

Merry Christmas

Worst experience? Let’s see… I attempted to make peanut butter cookies w/ chocolate chips (recipe from Smitten Kitchen), couldn’t figure out why they didn’t turn out… eventually scrapped them only to discover about an hour later– the flour mixture was still sitting on the counter, and I’d never mixed it in! Whoops!

Stumbling.

Stumbled this site, hello.

I just started college and it was my first time being away from home. One morning at around 2 in the morning I got so restless and homesick that I decided to bake biscuits. It was the most random impulse and it made no sense, but I was set on baking biscuits. This was my first time baking in the oven at that apartment, but I figured all ovens were created equal… wrong. I had set the timer for 3 minutes before the full baking time so I could judge for myself when they were ready. I put the biscuits in the oven to cook and I go back to the living room and start stumbling some more on the computer. I start to smell the aroma of burnt biscuits and get up thinking to myself “bah, they’re burning,” when all of a sudden I hear the loudest, most terrifying sound I have ever heard in my life and almost jump out the window. It was a smoke alarm. It wasn’t any ordinary smoke alarm, it wasn’t one of those digital beeping ones that are only good for attracting mosquitoes. It was one of those old fashion, fire truck grade, steel bells 6″ in diameter with a 1000hp engine powering the buzzer. All of my focus is taken away from the biscuits, my new goal was shutting that smoke detector off. I was contemplating solutions for a second before I realized that I lived in an apartment and my neighbors complain when I sneeze too loud and I had no time to think. I run at full speed to the alarm, jump up and grab the thing, then rip it out of the wall with my bare hands. That didn’t help, it was still ringing, the wires were still connected in the back and they were strong. I guess they build those things so that a fire wouldn’t stop them from going off. Anyway, there I am throwing this thing against the floor and stomping on it trying to kill it when i hear a knock on the door. I finally shut that alarm up and then run over to the oven to shut it off and open the oven door so that the smoke clears and the charred biscuits cool off. When I opened the oven, smoke came pouring out and I started coughing uncontrollably. It was in this state that I answer the front door and am greeted by 4 of my neighbors who are in shock when they see me coming out of my apartment, smoke everywhere, coughing madly. I act quickly to calm them down and make sure they don’t call 911 since the situation is in my hands. Before I can explain the situation, I am interrupted by a 2nd fire alarm, this time coming from another room where the smoke had now reached. I made a final attempt at reassuring my neighbors, then excused myself, shut the door, sprinted towards the 2nd fire alarm, and proceeded to annihilate it.

I didn’t eat biscuits that day.

My best experience this holiday season was when a friend stayed over the night before Christmas, just to cook for myself and my roommate for Christmas day, knowing that we were just going to wing it otherwise.

Said friend is one of the managers at The Bungalow, a nice little restaurant in Tampa.

To that point, I’m still enjoying what he did with the turkey, cranberry compote, mashed potatoes and gravy, and the sweet potato casserole right now, since I packed a bento box with it today.
When I get home, I’m going to be even happier, since there’s still some sweet potato pie left over.

If I could, I’d leave recipes, but I didn’t lift a finger this Christmas. ^.^;

It wasn’t exactly a cooking disaster but it was cooking related. For teachers’ gifts this year, I made fudge and put it in large cookie cutters to give to my son’s teacher past and present. Each giant cookie cutter went into a cellophane bag that was then tied with a pretty ribbon. I put all the bags in a box and since it was so cold, I put them in my husband’s car so we could deliver them in the morning. Imagine my surprise when I got in the car and one of the bags looked chewed. My husband had MICE in his car and they ate quite a bit of the fudge. Yuck!

Hi, I just found your blog and love it! I’ve been a knitter since I was 7y. I’ll be reading through your archives.

My failed attempt at gravy:

I made roasted a chicken to have a “turkey dinner” and cooked up almost all the fixings. I wanted to have gravy since my husband loves gravy so I grabbed some organic “un-chicken” broth from the pantry and used my regular gravy recipe. It was a disaster. It tasted *terrible*. I’ve never made such horrible tasting gravy in my life.

The moral of the story is this: Use *real* broth to make your gravy, always!

Thanks for having this great contest.

Kristin

My best holiday food experience this year was our laid back non-traditional holiday dinner, all made by hubby. I didn’t have to cook anything at all. I helped with prep and dishes, but the cooking and planning was all him. We had a gorgeous roast, smashed potatoes with cheddar cheese, roasted carrots, and an interesting pan fried mixture of corn, bacon, and tomatoes.

Our kitchen is definitely in need of a bit of a makeover. We could use new dishes, utensils, etc… so this would be a good little starter to getting things looking top shape again.

I twittered the giveaway as well http://twitter.com/retta719/status/1085044839

I stumbled your post (thepinkc).

I am originally from Mississippi. It has been years since I have been “home” … one of my mom’s friends came here to visit and brought us FRESH Mississippi catfish from right down the street where I grew up. Oh, the memories! The bonus was that my two youngest brothers both ate fish for the first time in 3 years since it was “authentic”!

A wonderful holiday.

Everything was very good, so no mistakes in the actual cooking. The problem was that I prepared about twice as much as was needed.
I could definitely use those utensils mad for non-stick pans.