Call for kitchen mishaps
The sauce boiled over. The cake burned. The eggs exploded. There was baking soda instead of corn starch in the lemon meringue pie.
Whether the mishap ended with a quick trip to the ER, flames or merely a close call, most cooks – home and professional – have experienced some sort of disaster.
The Spokesman-Review Food section put a call out asking for your stories, and the deadline is fast approaching. Contributions are due by March 1.
Meantime, here's one from a reader to get you all as excited about this project as we are at Too Many Cooks.
Divorce Diet
My menu changed dramatically after my divorce. Consumed with depression and guilt, my weight plummeted to new lows. My 17-year marriage and live-in cook were gone, as were the leftovers I found impossible to ignore. Once I discovered cheese, crackers and boxed wine could sustain a single man’s diet and budget for weeks, even months, my ambition to cook became a rarity. And when the coffers ran bare as the cupboards often did, it was interesting what I’d accept as edible fare. A man might be no worse off having never tried deep-fried eggs in Panko, but when gifted with the lost Easter eggs the kids missed next door, what else are you to do?
I discovered Spam shortly thereafter. The canned meat resurfaced as a cheap ingredient which, when grilled with jalapenos, cilantro and lime, took on an Ameri-Mex flavor that was quite tasty. That triumph resulted in beer-battered Spam bites, Spam-kabobs and honey-glazed Spam, among others. I discovered dry Top Ramen, Cheetos and peanut M&M’s made excellent trail mix using on-hand ingredients, and onion sandwiches slathered in mayo shooed away hunger pangs in a pinch. A month into my divorce, food experimentation with inexpensive products became a way of survival.
As life happens, it occasionally diverts from comfortable lines. When an old friend and his wife from New Orleans happened through town for a visit, I naturally invited them to stay for dinner. Assuming they’d expect something higher than my new Cheez Whiz Pringle Bake, I dove into the archives for something creative. I remembered I’d once made a lively salad even more so by tossing handfuls of chocolate chips among the lettuce leaves, radish slivers and cucumbers. I was single then, too, but at age 10 I was trying to help out Mom, not impress dinner guests. Inspired, I got to work infusing buttery, dark chocolate with raspberry vinaigrette to drizzle over a bed of clipped Romaine, mandarin oranges and candied pecans. While the idea remains solid, hindsight suggests the melted chocolate may have been a poor choice. Whereas, the chocolate chips from 35 years prior simply tumbled to the bottom of the bowl and could be easily separated from the rest of the ingredients, my vinaigrette turned a salmon-colored, Mississippi brown with the consistency of delta silt. The result resembled a burst sewage line – the floating oranges punctuated the graphic visual. My visitors were kind, but obviously appalled. I offered onion finger sandwiches to hold them over until the grill rendered the gelatin off the marinated Spam steaks (I call them Spakes), but they suddenly remembered that they had to be at the airport early to check in and had forgot about the two-hour time difference and had to leave immediately and you know how it is.
I understood. Life sometimes throws a curveball, and you have to adjust. It didn’t dawn on me until they were halfway down the street that I should’ve used white chocolate.
Matt Liere of Spokane