Holiday disasters because misery loves company

[rthstewart]

In anticipation of a BIG WORK THING that may come out next week, I have shoved the hosting of the American gorge-fest known as Thanksgiving off on my foreign-born sister in law.  She's very excited to take the mantle from me and rightfully intimidated.  I keep saying, no, really, let other people bring vegetables, bread, desserts, liquor, appetizers, etc. etc.  Really.    Let your 12 guests help.

No, no, no, she insists.  She has, at least, realized that a frozen turkey will take a week to thaw in the refrigerator but I do wonder if she's really thought about those inevitable space issues when the turkey comes out and has to sit while you 1) make gravy 2) make mashed potatoes; 3) wait for the stuffing to hit adequate internal temperatures in the now vacated oven to cook the egg in it so you don't inadvertently make everyone sick (or used pastuerized egg product or leave egg out).  Oh sweet child of summer, you have no idea what you are in for and really you should take the help offered. 

Correllian_sugar in the December meme prompt (and spaces still open!) got all apologetic about asking for cooking successes as well as failures but, in fact, I've got a million of woops stories and I'm really excited to share them.  My personal favorite, involving a horse and an exploding sweet potato casserole, I shall save for December.  But, in the meantime, I invite you all to share in comments cooking, hosting, travel holiday disasters.  And econopodder and knitress I'm looking at you to share some as you've been at my house for plenty of these!

I'll start with a recent one, from last year's Thanksgiving when I ignored the warning voice in my head that said never, EVER use the self clean on your oven right before you are going to need it.  I have a beautifully engineered awesome double Miele oven and I made that mistake and ran the self clean --  fortunately only on the top half of the oven the weekend before Thanksgiving.  It took me over an hour before I realized nothing in the stuffed upper part of the oven was reheating.  Dinner was a bit late that year.  MORE WINE. 

Speaking of, there was the time I decide to do a lovely caramelized pear salad as a first course.  This was when I learned that I, at least, should never drink and caramelize sugar at the same time. 

And then there was the time the Labrador ate the Buche de Noel. 

When I hosted a Thanksgiving in Romania in the 1990s, we did get a turkey off a truck hijacked by Russians (could not find extra silverware, anywhere, however).  Romanian half-sized ovens only had two settings, big flame and little flame, and no window or light in the door so you can't monitor the internal temperature in the oven with the thermometer you ask for someone to pick up for you when they go to Germany for the weekend.  So I cooked a turkey with a flashlight and constant open and shutting of the oven door over 3 hours.

And then there was the time a possum got into my pot-a-feu and the racoons ate my Christmas cookies.

Next?

Comments

[sailorsol]

I think holiday cooking disasters are kind of obligatory. Especially when there is turkey involved.

When my friends and I started our annual Thanksgiving gathering (egads, ten years ago now), none of us knew more than the very basics about cooking a turkey. Half of it came out well cooked...... the other half was still a bit.... frozen... ish.... We also gave up on homemade rolls as being time consuming and messy, and have worked out a very efficient flow for food preparation, where each of us has an assigned task. I am the turkey baster extraordinaire and official masher of potatoes.

Our third year, we made the truly unfortunate mistake of getting extremely drunk Wednesday night. Which left us hung over and not wanting much to do with food during the day on Thursday. Not one of our brighter moments.

And then a non-holiday baking disaster... last spring, baking cupcakes for the raffle during the theater show, I went to put the tray of cupcakes into the oven, and dropped the tray... all over the inside/door of the oven. That was a fun one to try and clean up.

[watersword]

There is a legend in my family of the time a chicken-and-matzo-ball soup, left to simmer overnight, turned blue. Or green. Sources differ. My point is: it changed color in the middle of the night and no one knows why. (I do not think that soup was eaten. It was before my time.)

[edenfalling]

I can't remember many true disasters, but there was that time my second cousins came to visit one summer. This was shortly after we got Gigi from the local shelter, and we weren't used to having a dog around the house and the precautions that must be taken. So when everyone came in from hanging around in the yard, eager to eat lunch... we found the dog standing in the middle of the table, scarfing down everything. And then, upon realizing she'd been discovered, she promptly peed in shame. *headdesk* I think we ended up ordering pizza or something.

[branchandroot]

Thankfully, my mother is still the Turkey Day Cook, and actually enjoys using two big gas grills plus her huge oven to make a truly ridiculous amount of food, usually including two different birds and three different stuffings. Me? I got some pre-sliced Honeybaked ham and will make my personal cheesy potatoes and call it good.

More Wine does seem to be one of the better approaches to these things, though.

[cofax7]

Wow, those are awesome stories. We've been fairly lucky, aside from the obligatory dog-having stories where the golden retriever takes the top layer off the pumpkin pie, or the labrachow is discovered head-first in the garbage with the turkey carcass.

But we know never to let my oldest brother cook a holiday dinner again. He's a restauranteur. The last time it happened, Christmas dinner was three hours late, and every. single. pot. in the kitchen had to be cleaned. Everything was very tasty, but by the time we ate, it could have been day-old pizza for all I cared.

My sister & I have it all pretty much wired, now; we've been joint-hosting for about seventeen years. We don't experiment (except with breads or desserts which are prepared in advance), we count backwards from when we want the turkey out, and we always cook some stuffing in the turkey (but without egg). That stuffing is always gone by the end of the meal, because it's the best.

[redsnake05]

I feel almost bad for saying that I rarely have cooking disasters, but perhaps it helps that I don't do any holiday entertaining. I am sure I would have disasters if I, say, cooked a christmas dinner for actual people. I must say, though, that reading these comments makes me think that Thanksgiving is even more mammoth than I had assumed.

[transposable_element]

I can't think of any real diaasters, but one year I glanced at the dining table a few minutes before we all sat down and saw our cat perched in the center of the table daintily licking the butter. If I hadn't caught her at it, we might never have known.

When I was very small I gave my dad a bag of chocolate covered cherries, which we foolishly left unattended while we went for a walk. We came home to find little sticky lumps all over the house. The dog had gotten into the bag, but he licked off the chocolate and spit out the cherries, ptui! I know chocolate is supposedly bad for dogs, but they love the stuff, and I have seen dogs eat massive amounts of it without getting sick.

[lady_songsmith]

Gosh, I can't really think of any cooking disaster I've been part of, unless that defective wine bottle a few Christmases ago counts.

There was the time my dad was making pumpkin pie from scratch. I think I was about 7 or 8, and kinda fascinated by the process. So he's got the pumkin baking in the oven -- whole pumpkin, not quaters on a baking tray. This is important. Why? Because when he took it out of the oven, he lifted it in his potholder-sheathed hands for the three steps to the counter.

On step two, the well-baked pumpkin skinned itself, dropping all of its guts on the floor with a mighty SPLAT!

And that was the last time dad ever made pumpkin pie from scratch.

Pet stories, we don't have much for cooking, really. Found the turkey carcass on the floor the next morning more than once, but other than that... the only holiday disaster story told about pets is the year our dog spent the entire night licking a hole in the back of the chocolate bunny in my Easter basket. (You could not prove chocolate being bad for dogs by any dog my family has ever owned.) I was a tiny tot at the time, and it wasn't until I was nearly a teen that my parents fessed up to this, thereby explaining why "all my life" my baskets had been covered in saran wrap.

[st_aurafina]

Ugh, I am deep in cooking disasters, because the oven in the new house is dreadful. So frustrating! I'm quite a decent cook, and now I'm burning biscuits and undercooking cakes. Gah.

Still, it's an excuse to keep on baking - I need the practice!

[brownbetty]

My grandfather, a man who strategically deploys his deafness, was visiting one Thanksgiving, and decided to "help" by rebuilding all of our kitchen cupboards. He began this at noon, on Thanksgiving. My mother banished him from the house until the meal was done cooking.

[starpaint]

There was that one Rosh Hashanah that my dad was cooking a turkey and set his pants on fire when he went to take it out. He didn't notice until I started hitting him with a towel.

He's still a better cook than my mother, who may or may not have figured out how to use the microwave by now.