Time for an embarrassing story about myself! Grab the popcorn and plop down…this one is a doozy!
A few years ago when we lived in Memphis, we had an apple tree in our front yard. It was an adorable little thing, and it made quite a few apples in the fall of 2009. At the time, Darah was just 2 months old, or so. I saw those apples and thought, “Oh my gosh! I can make and freeze some organic apple sauce for my daughter…and for FREE!!!” I put on my Betty Crocker/Martha Stewart/Crunchy Granola Mama crown and sash and marched out to that front yard with my bowl, returning inside with quite the harvest. I was about to ROCK THIS DIY SO HARD.
I found a recipe online…it looked simple enough, and I gathered all my ingredients. Darah observed from her bouncer, fascinated, I’m sure, to see her mom making something from scratch. I followed all of the steps and before long, I had something in my large pot the very strongly resembled apple sauce. And there was a ton of it. Oh man, I was going to enough apple sauce to last Darah for several months! So exciting!
As I continued along with the process, I got to the step where I needed to add some vinegar. I added it in, and immediately thought, “Eww, vinegar stinks even more than I thought it did. Hmm…well, whatever, I’m sure the smell will dissipate soon.” And about 2 minutes later it still smelled TERRIBLE. I gave it a couple of big sniffs and thought, “I don’t know…something’s a bit….off.”
Now remember, I had a 2 month old. I was a first time mom. I was running on baby grins and games of pat a cake, and was DEFINITELY sleep-deprived. So my old noggin’ wasn’t exactly in its sharpest state.
Finally, after inhaling this noxious odor for several minutes, it occured to me to review my ingredients on the counter.
And that’s when I realized that I put AMMONIA in my huge vat of organic apple sauce. Yeah I did. I added poison to my child’s food. And then I sniffed it. And sniffed it again. It’s a miracle I didn’t eat it, myself. If I had been more sleep-deprived, I may have just kept on cooking and freezed it. Who knows?
I totally cried when I realized that I ruined every single apple I had been waiting a few months to pick. And then I laughed so hard that I cried again.
Thank goodness this isn’t the only way to get organic apple sauce! I skip making it myself now (I just can’t be trusted, friends!) and rely on the quality and goodness of Earth’s Best Organic Apple Sauce. It only has ingredients I know and trust, and it comes in the perfect size containers for Darah’s snack time, or as part of her lunch. I have gladly relinquished my ill-fitting crown as chief cooking DIY diva and given Earth’s Best the title. It’s quality I can count on!
Win it!: One lucky Stuff Parents Need reader is going to win Tiffany’s homemade apple sauce! Just kidding! You will win an Organic Apple Sauce prize pack from Earth’s Best!
Be sure to enter my other current giveaways, found on the sidebar of my page.
Disclosure: I am a blog ambassador for Earth’s Best, and as such, I have received complimentary products as a thank you for my time. All thoughts and opinions expressed here are strictly my own.
One time I baked a cake and forgot to put any eggs in it….Talk about horrible disaster…Now, I always double check my recipes! 🙂
For some reason whenever I make cookies, they turn out really hard like hockey pucks. I dont have issues with store-bought cookie dough…only the ones from scratch
I was making homemade cole slaw and instead of putting in apple cider vinegar I grabbed the wrong bottle and put in apple juice yuk lol
I baked brownies and forgot to use a non stick pan and on top of that forgot to use butter or oil to moisten the pan. My brownies would not come out! It was so embarrassing.
I cooked a ham with the paper still on AND served it to my company before I noticed!!
I lit our grill on fire 🙁 Burned chicken…
The first time I made pumpkin pie from scratch I really goofed up. We used the stringy stuff from the inside of the pumpkin rather than the soft parts you are supposed to use. It was so nasty!!!! We all had a good laugh at it though!
no mishaps so far
I have never messed up on cooking anything lol, I know that sounds weird but I don’t have any crazy mishaps. :/ ty for the giveaway!
When I was a teenager, I thought a clove of garlic was a bulb, so I had a French soup recipe that called for 40 cloves of garlic…..I got tired of peeling garlic at about 12 bulbs. I’m pretty sure it had enough garlic in it!!
I never really screwed up a recipe, however I have been known to forget I have something in the oven until I smell something burning…lost more good cookies that way!
burned mac and cheese. yuck
Oh my, your applesauce story is hilarious! I can’t think of anything like that which I have done… but one time I made dinner from what we had in the pantry and let me tell you… do not ever mix spaghetti with canned chili it’s gross!
I once used baking soda instead of powder. Did not turn out well.
Apple pie…I assumed sugar cubes in the crust would dissolve…
I made cinnamon buns and the inside ended up drying up really bad.
I went through a phase where I made homemade apple sauce. No ammonia though. *LOL* My big cooking mishap was having something in the oven and taking it out but forgetting that the oven rack was hot. Oops and ouch. And a few years ago I was taking a raspberry cheesecake (made from scratch!!) out of the oven and I dropped it. Huge mess! It went all over the floor, stove and even cabinet drawers. It was for a Christmas party. Sigh. kristiedonelson(at)gmail(dot)com Thank you.
i have mixed up salt and sugar
I made a sugar free pumpkin pie (which I don’t even like) and brought it to my parents for Thanksgiving. It was like custard, and probably gross. I wouldn’t eat it. My whole family reminds me of it every year. Now I buy my pies.
Just the other day I dropped ALL of my dinner that I had just spent 30 minutes making! If that’s not a disaster, I don’t know what is… I almost cried…
I remember I had to make corn friiters as part of getting a girl scout badge. I thought tsp stood for tablespoon. Gag, talk about salty fritters.
Mine is applesauce related too! Once I read that you can replace the butter or oil in a recipe with applesauce to cut calories. So I made my favorite brownies with applesauce instead of all of that rich delicious butter that makes them so yummy! I ended up with little brown bricks that not even the dog would eat! No more silly cutting corners for me!
coriwestphal at msn dot com
This is more of a “pot disaster” than a recipe disaster. I was cooking collard greens in the pressure cooker ( its how my parents always cooked them). I found out later that you are not supposed to cook greens in a pressure cooker, according to the manual. Anyway, the pressure safety valve blew off the top of the cooker, and spewed collards out like a pressure washer all over my kitchen, especially the ceiling. My kids got a huge kick out of that. We kept finding collards in spots on the ceiling for months. They still remember it to this day!
I tried converting my old tuna noodle hotdish recipe to be gluten free for me since I was diagnosed 6 years ago with Celiac disease. I had to use ready to serve cream of mushroom soup as thats all I could find available gluten free…and needless to say…it turned out a mess and was almost like soup! UGH
I baked chicken Parmesan once and we all got sick
I burnt boxed hash browns years ago and will never use them again.
Well, I have had MANY disasters! One of my first was cherry cobbler that I made when I was a kid. My mom told me if I “wanted it to look pretty” I could add a few drops of food coloring and that would enhance the color so to speak. Well, I picked BLUE, she failed to mention that I needed to use red! LOL So I had a lovely purple cherry cobbler!
I forget what I was making, but I know I forgot to add the eggs and they were essential to the recipe, unfortunaletly I happen to forget an ingredient in my recipes pretty often.
Had a mushy watermelone decided to go to food.com and look for a recipe. Found watermelon pudding. OMG it was beyond nasty. The kids to this day will bring up watermelon pudding whenever I start talking about new recipes.
Since the babies, I’ve burned a few things. I swear I never did that before! Almost never 🙂
i tried making red velvet layered cake from scratch and it was horrible!!! completely unedible and looked worse
too many to name. I’m not a good cook.
I tried to make a dutch dish once called stoofvlees or something and it had molasses and sounded like it would be sweet and delish… well, it wasn’t!
and… I’m glad you didn’t serve that to her. 😀
The standard… using salt instead of sugar in a recipe (or cereal… that’s the worst 🙁 )
Ugh! I was making a creamy pasta and veggie dish and something went horrendously wrong so the sauce would not thicken. It ended up tasting like I poured milk over a bowl of spaghetti and veggies. Blah!!
My first thanksgiving we had a raw turkey!
I tried to replace all the oil with applesauce in pancakes. It didn’t work.
Lack of sleep can do crazy things. Glad you didn’t eat it!
well, I had no eggs to make fried chicken .. so I used butter. wasn’t great.. wasn’t awful either!
My brownies always turn out hard as a brick!
I made Banana Bread once that tasted SO salty! It was unedible!
I baked peanut butter cookies that turned to soup last week :/
I read an article about how you can make a frozen steak in the oven. Well, a smoke filled house that had us choking, a fire in the oven and a ruined pan proved that it did not work for me!
Ok, this wasn’t a disaster, but it is epic lol. My daughter and her friend were making zucchini bread about 2 years ago so they were like 15 and 13 at the time. It turned out REALLY good and tasted like cake. The next time I went to make it she was like ummm we used 4 cups of sugar (maybe even 6 I forget), but it only called for 2! They honestly thought it called for the amount they used. No wonder it was so good!
We used powdered sugar instead of flour in cookies once. Didn’t work at all!
My first time making chocolate chip cookies from scratch (at 10 years old) I used tablespoons of salt instead of teaspoons… very very salty cookies.
Cooking the chicken with the plastic wrap still on, in the oven
I can never make pecan praline
no disasters here
i haven’t had any crazy mishaps. yet.
I burned two turkeys in one day
My sister and I tried to make potato candy once–only once–it turned into this white, starchy hard mess that someone could have used to grout tile with….
One time I forgot to turn the oven on -_-
I’ve confused a 1/2 c butter for a 1/4 c when baking…WAY too much butter!
I have recipe disasters all the time! Last time I tried a greek yogurt pasta and it was nasty! the yogurt was super clumpy and tasted disgusting!
MANY recipe disasters over the years, recently had a pizza crust melt in the oven instead of rising – what a mess!
I was making an elaborate cake for my boyfriend at the time and apparently, the baking soda was old, because the cake was dense and tasted gross.
I once baked a recipe into a pie!
The first time I decided to potato salad on my own. I undercooked the potatoes. I had potato peels on the floor, counters, in my hair. I used every bowl in the kitchen. I finished mixing it up. Tripped and splattered potato salad all over the walls and kitchen. It looked like a potato salad massacre
I always have a hard time with gravy and it turns out lumpy!
Baking a certain cake my husband wanted in a bunt pan. The center never got done and the edges were burnt!
I usually don’t mess up the recipe. Using a recipe is the only way I attempt to cook. I am not a very good cook, but I burn quite a few things.
Worst I’ve ever had was using peanut oil in brownies.
I mixed up the baking soda and baking powder and ruined my muffins! They were dense as rocks!
I made an attempt to make meatballs & left them in the oven for way too long. They were completely burnt !
I screw up recipes all the time… Must be the rushing to get everything done or being too ambitious! It’s always the worst when you forget ONE little ingredient and it messes up the whole thing!
i’m good for a burnt-bottom dessert every now and then! 🙁
I tried baking a caramel cake. The cake part turned out fine, but the caramel icing was as hard as a brick! It was horrible! We thought we would try to eat it anyways, and we broke the handle off the knife just trying to cut a piece! After that we just threw it away. I haven’t attempted it since.
I put salt instead of sugar in the cookies I served (for a very short amount of time) at my daughter’s 1st birhtday party…now I taste before I share
I was trying to make iced coffee and it was soo bad!
I tried to make baked zuchinni, it can out mushy.
candyo0217@hotmail.com
I once added 4 tbsp of salt to a mashed potato recipe that called for 4 tsp. It was when I was really young, and bless my parents, they didn’t say a thing until I tasted it. So funny!!
Christy
christy at coypond – net
My uncle used powdered sugar to make gravy once! He was a hero trying to help out while my aunt was doing chemo, though, so we cut him a lot of slack!! They didn’t figure it out until they started eating it!
I just made fudge and I didnt cook it long enough, it was grainy. We still ate it though
Recipe disasters is my first name right now but the most recent being granola, i mean who messes up the easier thing to make? I blame it on having a new baby and being too tired to think straight 🙂
It hasn’t happened since I was married. But my sibiling love to tell how I was cooking lunch for them and burned a pot of water. I got so distracted that I forgot I have put the water on to boil and all of the water boiled away and I scorched the pan.
I’m sorry, I’ve never screwed up a recipe. But your story was really funny!