Accidents, Happy and Otherwise

In keeping with Heather's post about unfinished projects, I am putting up my own post about the recipes I'd like to forget about. It happens to the best of us. We find a new recipe or have a “fantastic” idea, only to have it blow up in our faces. Well, that’s how we learn I guess. I wanted to share some of my worst and best unintended cooking results.


We begin with the Pot Pie Containment Failure. Before I got married, I had two bridal showers since I was away at college. The one that took place at school with my girlfriends was, of course, the lingerie shower. When I went home to have a shower with family, we had a pounding party. For those of you who don’t know what this is, it’s a tradition that goes way back. Basically, everyone brings a pound of something (rice, flour, beans, and other dry goods) so that the newlyweds would have food in the house when they started their new life together. Yeah, I know, it doesn’t really sound that relevant now, but, hey, free foodstuffs! Anyway, everyone also brought their favorite recipes to my pounding party.

One of these was a recipe for pot pie from my mother-in-law. Well, I made it a while back and I don’t know if I was being lazy or just what, but I really did not take the time to assemble this pie properly. This was the result. I know you can’t really see it, but the issue here was that I used a frozen, pre-tinned pie crust on both the top and bottom. I overstuffed the bottom portion and then just placed (that’s right, placed) the other frozen, pre-tinned pie crust on top. Well, as the top thawed, it submitted to the mighty power of gravity and...melted. It still got eaten that night. It was just a little messy.

Then there was the time I decided to try my hand at Polish (at least I think it was Polish) food. It didn’t go well. To make a long and unfortunate story short, the offending recipe involved onion Perogies, cabbage, sugar, and tomatoes. This is a single-dish meal, mind you, so all of these were mixed together. *Shudder* I do not waste food in my house. I simply cannot abide it, but this dish got binned real quick.

Speaking of international foods, did you know that you cannot just throw Asian ingredients

together and call it stir-fry or fried rice or anything like that? True story! As I've said before, I love Asian food, but have found that, for whatever reason, am not very good at making it. The wok on the left side of the picture is what my “stir-fry” ended up looking like. Sadly, this was another terrible dish that I was forced to throw out because it was too awful to even just choke down.

Finally (and this, at least, turned out okay), there was also the time where my sweet husband, Mike, ordered prime rib at Outback Steakhouse and then realized that he doesn’t really like prime rib. I am personally not real impressed with prime rib either. It’s just not as...sturdy...as other parts of the cow. The texture of prime rib has always seemed a little slippery to me, unless of course it’s overcooked, which makes it more like leather. Well, Mike was not a fan and really disappointed that night. Thankfully, I was able to salvage it by cutting it, along with my own leftover filet minion from Outback, and tossing it into a nice stew. Best beef stew ever!

When mistakes do happen, I always try to make the best of it and salvage what I can. Sometimes I’m successful. Other times, not so much. How about you?