It won't be a regular feature, but it's something I thought would be fun. So many of my readers found the post on Fiestaware interesting and really loved the pieces.
While I was at Tamarack on Saturday, I picked up one piece for myself and one piece for the lucky winner of this contest:
It's a Fiestaware spoon rest in the Peacock color. This color is so festive and bright, it just makes me smile. Plus which, I figured even if you owned no other pieces of Fiestaware, one little spoon rest on your stove wouldn't seem out of place - and plus, plus which it's a very practical item, too!
Spoons and their resting spots are important to me.
I purchased something different for me, because I already have a spoon rest, in Cinnabar.
And, as an aside for some of you rabid collectors out there, Fiesta is apparently discontinuing Heather - The shop at Tamarack had some pieces of that for 20% off and I saw a bowl I thought I must have, but I was so loaded down with stuff (everyone's coats, my own handbag, etc.), I couldn't pick it up and I couldn't get the Evil Twin's attention amidst the chaos with the kids and the chatting and all the love with my aunts, uncles and cousin in the mix. Oh well... I saved money there! (by not spending anymore).
So, here's how we're gonna work this deal. Leave a comment detailing some funny or tragic kitchen/cooking experience you've had. That will get you an entry (one entry per person - I want to be fair). If you don't cook, just make something up. Keep in mind that if you win, you will need to email me your name and mailing address to eviltwinswife(at)gmail(dot)com. I'm not a crazy stalker - I don't have TIME for it!
The contest will end Wednesday (12/10) at 6AM. All names will be put in a bowl and the Evil Twin will draw. I'll announce it on Thursday's blog and hopefully, the spoon rest will be on its merry way shortly thereafter (as soon as I get the winning address and can bribe the Evil Twin into hitting the post office).
Feel free to tell your friends. Twitter it! Or, whatever. I just want this to be FUN.
So you want one of my funny kitchen stories. You may have my Meatloaf story then and it is true. I decided I was to cook a meatloaf one day. I mixed up most of the ingredients and discovered I had no bread crumbs so I used crackers instead, not to bad so far, right? Well then it said I needed eggs. Hmmm... no eggs. So me being the creative sort start looking to find an egg substitute. Lets see it's basically for moisture to hold it all together... I end up settling on Italian dressing. I cook that baby up and it looks sort of normal, but tastes like an Italian ass. Oh well it was edible, that's all I can really say about it.
ReplyDeleteCanning tomatoes...
ReplyDeleteWith the wife at the sink dutifully peeling the blanched Marglobes I, in manly fasion, loaded yet another wire basket of tomato yumminess and set it into the giant pot boiling water on the stove. After a couple of minutes they were ready, the skin started to split and with keen, manly intellect I knew that they were ready to be delivered to the lovely and talented peeler. As I lifted the basket the handle disconnected from the basket and it fell with a big splash back into the huge pot sending hot 50 million degree water splashing onto my leg. My mind instantly raced with pictures of par-boiled flesh dripping from my leg. I lifted my leg and hopped backward across the kitchen, fell and sat down on the open dishwasher door, breaking the hinges. As it turns out the water was not that hot...in fact I didn't get any burn at all. I consider myself fortunate...that I didn't scream like a girl when it happened.
It happened on Thanksgiving....I swore i'd never let it happen again. I did a complete "cavity search" on that bird I swear! I told my husband! "Well why is the damn bird taking so long to cook?" he asks..."I dunno, for the life of me, all that was in there was a neck and tail"...."ok, well maybe it was still frozen".
ReplyDeleteWell I was wondering why the Hell everytime I basted that sucker, I kept seeing more "red juice" inside the "opening"..."Are you sure you did a complete search of that bird"..."Yes officer, I mean dear...yes, that bird was not concealing any hidden contraband I swear on my life"..."I picked him up, shook him upside down, questioned him, pleaded with him, told him he'd get more cooking time if he was lying"....
So....finally after 7 hourse that thermometer read 180*. Phew...
"So dear, will you carve the bird like you always do"....
and low and behold what does the Officer find?
"See! I told you this bird was concealing!"...and he pulls out a white, steamy, plastic bag from the depths of this bird who told me he was not carryin'....filled with livers, gizzards, and whatever the Hell these birds conceal! I was so embarrassed!
I did this once in my life and I swear i'd never do it again!
"The bird lied to me" I gasped!
It was trickery! I was decieved!
He lying the whole damn time!
See...you can never trust these "turkeys"....
"Honey,next time you are doin' the cavity search....since that is what you are trained to do, and yeah, you are pretty good sometimes"....
don't do it. The spoon rest is a MIND CONTROL device from Stepford!!!!
ReplyDeleteI shall respectfully bow out because SURPRISE, I have a Fiesta spoonrest. In Tangerine.
ReplyDeleteI never liked Heather all that much and had predicted that it would be the next retired. I'm betting on Cinnibar after that, as much as I love it.
Also, I cannot think of an embarassing cooking story!
We have a smooth top stove. The burner switches are backwards, in my opinion. They go front, back, back, front. It seems to me they should go front back front back. Anyway, I accidentally turned on the wrong burner, and melted my rubbermaid butter dish. I ruined the dish, made a terrible mess on the stove top, and a horrible smell to boot.
ReplyDeleteThat spoon rest is beautiful! I love spoon rests. I used to have a cat one, but it broke. We currently have a penguin one.
How to burn a pop-tart and the kithen cabinet? In September of 1992 I was lying in the hospital having contractions with my one and only daughter (thought for sure she was going to enter the world that day). My now ex husband showed up finally at the hospital and I of course was furious wondering what had taken him so long and then he tells me, well, I put a pop tart in the toaster, went to the driveway to head to the hospital and looked up and happened to see smoke coming out the kitchen window. Well honey I went back inside and the pop tart caught on fire and I had the toaster setting underneath the cabinet! Needless to say the contractions didn't get any better! Hope I win the spoon rest for that one and if I do it will go to my mother who collects Fiesta Ware!
ReplyDeleteThis is my first time commenting on your blog, but I LOVE that spoon rest and peacock is my favorite fiesta color. In fact, I have the dishes on my wishlist this year. =) So, here goes... I starting cooking in my early teens, just the easy stuff. My sister still teases me about the first time I ever made macaroni and cheese. She was watching TV in ou parents' room, we were home alone. I took her a bowl of the mac n' cheese that I was so proud of and she said, "did you add enough milk and butter?" I said, "milk and butter?" Obviously I had NOT read the directions.
ReplyDeleteRon - I have a lousy meatloaf story too, but not as bad as yours. LOL.
ReplyDeleteSkully - That's funny (in hindsight for you, I'm sure). Did you have to replace the dishwasher or could the door be fixed?
SWC - and this is the prime example of why I will never cook a bird! LOL.
JA - no, it's the pic of me. I'm trying to hip-mo-tize y'all!
Blair - Awwww, I like the Heather. But, I like Tangerine and Cinnabar more!
3C - my next stove will have a smooth top. I hope I don't melt anything on it! Eeek!
SALeAnn - those pop tarts are eeeeviiiil.
Jess - I'm sure it was a little "gritty", huh? Ick! LOL.
We have a smooth glass top stove and my mom loves it. I remember when I was a kid and we got our first microwave oven, my dad and I attempted to make this microwaveable streusel bundt cake. We cooked it for the time indicated on the packaging but it just didn't look done. So we zapped it some more, then some more. By the time we got done with that thing it was as hard as rock. We didn't realize that it wasn't going to turn golden brown in the microwave. Oops! That was the first and last time we did a microwaveable cake.
ReplyDeleteooh, the peacock is a beautiful color!
ReplyDeleteI'm sure there are some recent gaffs, but they slip my mind. Here's one or two from my waaaaay distant past.
First, one Christmas when I was in highschool, my parents left me and my brother in charge of making the swedish meatballs while they drove to NYC to pick up my grandmother. Several things went very, very wrong. First, my brother woke my up at 9 AM with a tall glass of vodka in my nose. he was NO help with the meatballs (which were supposed to be HIS job). Then, sometime in the day, he and his dipshit friend tried to make popcorn - this was before microwave popcorn so it involved hot oil. Burning hot oil. I tried to save his sorry ass and prevent the house from burning down, and I still have the scar on my foot from the burning oil as a reminder.
The other funny story involves a roast, a stove top and a tall husky. :-)
October 2007.
ReplyDeleteI was at school. I was in the middle of teaching a novel unit on The Holocaust. I had my phone turned on vibrate as I always do when teaching. However, my google chat was on and the speakers on my computer were blaring. A friend of mine was blowing up my chat feature. Apparently, the apartment building was on fire-specifically the apartment right above mine.
My neighbor had fallen asleep while cooking sometime in the middle of the night. The grease from the stove top caught on fire and sent the trashcan into a blaze. The blaze went from the kitchen to the diningroom to the livingroom to the sunroom. Luckily the fire department was able to rouse the neighbor from bed and he was save, as were both of his cats. However, one of the kitties did leap for safety from the third floor window.
I rushed home to find the fire department in my kitchen and diningroom attempting to clean ash colored water from the walls, the caved in ceiling, and the personal items that I had in each room.
To make a devastatingly long story short. I was without my kitchen from October 2007 until February 2008, waiting on my landlord to fix the damage that had occurred! It sucked.
Ok, here's mine...... My very first Thanksgiving that I cooked I was 19 years old and thinking I was Betty Crocker. I put the turkey in, set the table, everything looked so beautiful. I checked that little popper on the turkey but anxiously waiting for it to pop. The minute it popped I yanked it from the oven, and when I say yank, it flew across the floor. See I had purchased cheap pot holders at the flea market and they did not hold the heat well. Since no one saw the turkey fling across the floor, I rushed over to it, slipped and fell in the spilled gravey, while I hear are you OKs from the living I hurried up and just rinsed it off. I presented my dinner in such a beautiful fashion. I began to cut the turkey which was so raw we couldn't eat it, the corn was still partially frozen, I burned the rolls, and spilled my wine in the mashed potatoes while reaching for the salt. Needless to say this dinner was hopeless. I cried and cried and he laughed and laughed, we wound up at Bo's Wok for dinner that night, I had Shrimp and Lobster sauce that year.
ReplyDeleteThe dishwasher door is still functional but, you have to put a 6 or 7 inch tall mug or something on the floor when loading or unloading. Otherwise the door opens too far and the bottom rack will roll downhill at a rapid rate.
ReplyDeleteIt appears that the "stops" are just bent, I have this on my "todo" list.
No need for a spoon rest here but I must admit I like where the spoon is resting in your picture. I do love some of the stories detailed above. For whatever reason, I've had pretty good luck in the kitchen--so far.
ReplyDeleteI don't really have a disaster, per se, but I swear, every time I cook something that's been a family recipe (i.e. Mammaw's spaghetti sauce, homemade banana pudding, etc.) if my mother tries it, she always has SOMETHING passive-aggressive to say about it. No matter that everyone else is RAVING about how delicious whatever it is IS, she will ask something along the lines of, "well, did you add such and such? Did you do this or that?" To which I can only say, "HOW RUDE!"
ReplyDeleteI am a really crappy cook so a million stories should be jumping to mind, but I'm totally blanking...I really want that spoon rest though cuz that Peacock color is my accent color in the kitchen (with chocolate brown).
ReplyDeleteThe family I babysat for as a teenager had a teenage son a year older than me. He would come over w/ his friends and I would try and "cook" for them to make myself girly and attractive, like a little homemaker or something.
I offered to make them all Top Ramen (or Oodles of Noodles as this side of the country refers to them) So I fed them and one of his friends started puking a couple hours later. That was embarassing and they teased me about it forever after that.
Its our wedding anniversary, Dec. 19. I'm on my way home from work and when I get to the house, the windows and doors are open (winter time). I come into the kitchen and see lots and lots of smoke and my wife in her sexy dress, apron, and waving a dish towel to get the smoke out.
ReplyDeleteHer story was that she was making
our anniversary dinner, fried oysters, left the stove to fix her hair, and came back to find the kitcher on fire...ON FIRE!
She managed to put the fire out. But there was plenty of fire damage, smoke damage, and dinner was ruined.
I told her that if she wanted a new kitchen, all she had to do was ask and not burn the house down.
I got so involve in my story, I forgo to sign my story....
ReplyDelete...Al....
This is kind of up a different alley, but a year or so ago when I had a house full of teenagers I was also working WAY too much & totally burning the candle at both ends. Seems like the combination of all of that gave me a bit of a temporary problem with sleepwalking. One weekend night I woke up to find myself standing in my driveway. The only way to get to my driveway is by going through the kitchen. Fortunately the kids (including my sons' 18-year old girlfriend) were hanging out playing a board game on the kitchen table so they were able to let me back inside.
ReplyDeleteUNFORTUNATELY, I sleep nekkid and obviously didn't think to put on anything before my jaunt through the house.
Yeah, that kinda sucked. Looking back I see the humor in it, but my gawd was I embarrassed at the time.
I'm not entering the contest, but I sure did have fun reading other people's funny stories!
ReplyDeleteHacksaw - no browning action in the microwave, tee hee!
ReplyDeleteK - Okay, I don't think I'll ever leave my kids alone!
Chez - that most certainly does suck. Lots of fast food?
The Girl - I'm sure it was devastating at the time, but it makes a gut-bustingly funny story now!
Skully - if I was Mrs. Skully, I think I'd angle for a new dishwasher. ;-)
Dave - I'm loving these kitchen tales.
Ginger - That HAS to be frustrating!
Vinomom - I'm sure it wasn't your cooking. Those Top Ramen are nasty sometimes. (other times, oddly delicious...)
Al - Whew...I'm glad you remembered to leave your calling card. :-)
SoLow - that is hilarious!!
I'm battling another round of kidney stones right now, so forgive my lack of details.
ReplyDeleteBefore I was married I did very little baking. I've always liked to cook, but I've never found baking particularly rewarding. Anyway, several years ago I got the itch to make some banana bread. The recipe called for cloves, and I only found one kind of that particular spice in my mother's pantry. When the bread was finished baking, it looked pretty darn good. I was proud of myself. I sliced it up, spread butter on it while it was still warm, and served it to my family. Everyone took their first bite and were seemingly impressed with the tastiness. A few seconds later, however, there were loud cries of "AHHHHHH!!! and "EWWWWWWWW!!!" Yes, I had added WHOLE cloves to the batter.
This one just happened a couple weeks ago. I'm laid up with a broken ankle so husband has been doing all the cooking. Friends brought over rigatoni and garlic bread. Left over garlic bread went into ziploc bag...Our one cat LOVES to chew ziploc bags so my hubby stuck it in the oven just to get it out of the way(why he didn't put in fridge, I don't know). You know where this is going, right!!?? Couple days later he preheats oven. Hmm...smells like garlic. The ziploc bag had melted all over my new oven - bread was burning...I tell him to wait till it cools and we can scrape it off. No, he has to try to clean it with dry paper towels. Now we have paper towel-plastic all over the oven. He finally gave up and we scrapped most of it off when it cooled. I had to run through self-cleaning cycle (man, that stinks) this weekend. Oven looks brand new again! Bless his heart, he tried!
ReplyDeleteBeing from the semi-south, I am a fried chicken queen... as shown in my hips.
ReplyDeleteAnyhoos. I was in the throws of cooking up 15 pounds of freshly battered fried chicken tenders.
All was going well. I drop the chicken in the secret flour mix, close the lid to the bowl.
Shake, shake, shake... remove to egg wash and back to the flour mixture for more shaking...
Well, I went to shake that chicken in the bowl...
and the lid wasn't all the way on...
and so flour and chicken went flyin...
all over me...
I screamed...
Hubby came to see what happened...
"Get me a towel" I cried.
He disappeared, and came back with the camera... (I'll scan the picture some time this week)...
then he gave me a towel to wipe off my face. (What an ass).
Anyway, I hope this story teaches everyone a lesson.
Make sure the lid is snapped before you shake what ya got.
I'm sure that I have quite a few horror stories, but this is one of my favorites:
ReplyDeleteWhen Chachi was a teenager, he asked his mum (an awesome baker) if he could make 'her' chocolate chip cookies. She agreed.
He misread the directions, and added only 1/4 cup of flour to the mix, rather than the 1 1/4 cups it called for.
According to his family, it was the first time they had ever had...chocolate chip CRACKERS.
There's that picture I love of you again! LOL.
ReplyDeleteGeez, I don't have any dramatic disasters like the above, but I can sure foul up a recipe. I'm probably the only Southern girl who can't fry worth a dang. Everything turns black and the kitchen is always full of smoke -- no matter what I do.
I did have a dessert mishap the other day. I had some tofu that needed to be used up so I searched the web for a chocolate tofu pudding recipe. I hardly ever have good luck with web recipes, but glutton for punishment that I am, I tried it.
Of course, I wasted a good cup of cocoa powder, some perfectly good confectioners sugar and tofu on a thick , sweet blob of uccckkkkk.
It just stuck to the roof of your mouth like thick bean-y glue. The amigos couldn't even gag down a second bite. Horrible, just horrible!
BTW, I love Fiesta and have none. I opted to collect Johnson Bros (before scrapping the whole idea), but I have some odd pieces of Homer Laughlin white Ironstone. I loooove old dishes, especially odds and ends that I use to set a table when entertaining.
Which is never.
I don't have a story... might be able to come up with one, but you should publish some of these! Hysterical!
ReplyDeleteLots of dinners out. I'm very lucky to have the BoyFriend and Redneck Muppet. They both are very good cooks and took pity.
ReplyDeleteLaureneer - I'm sure that took a bite! Whew.
ReplyDeleteJR - I'm so glad the self clean worked. I would have been beside myself if that had happened here. :-) But, it is funny!
Catscratch - LOL! That's why I use the extra big "Ziploc" bags, but I always make sure they are *sealed* before shaking! Hahaha.
Renn - Ummmmm. I'm sure they were....eh... crunchy.
MsPulp - join the club. If you all moved here (or closer), we'd be happy to let you entertain us or vice versa. Our kids would love the company too!
JFab - I'm just the conduit, baby. :-D
Chez - I'm glad you had some back-up. Still stinks to be w/o your KITCHEN for that long. Hope you are enjoying it now! :-)