Sunny Side Up: Moldy cheese, a garlic 'bulb' and other cooking disasters

While moving to Fred’s house after we married, my kitchen canisters somehow became “compromised.” My sugar canister was full, but it didn’t contain sugar. That’s how I ended up putting a cup of salt in each of those two pies.

Other people can also be inept in the kitchen.

My father always claimed his youngest brother, Ken, could burn water. He also mentioned that their mother (my paternal grandmother) wasn’t the best of cooks.

“One evening, Ken’s arm accidentally dropped while passing a dish across the supper table,” Dad remarked. “It landed on top of a pie,” he added.

“When that happened, Ken blurted, ‘It’s a good thing that wasn’t a two-crust pie. I would have broken my hand!’

“Ma didn’t laugh,” Dad pointed out.

Growing up, my mother made scalloped potatoes and ham quite often. Instead of making a roux [a mixture of a fat and flour to make a sauce], she simply sprinkled flour on top of the potatoes before adding several dabs of butter and milk.

One day, I decided to forgo the roux while making scalloped potatoes and sprinkled flour on top, just like Mom did. That meal would have been delicious except for one thing: I accidentally covered the potatoes with powdered sugar instead of flour.

My “hearing aid lady” recently informed me of a few of her own culinary catastrophes.

“I was making a casserole one day and accidentally poured spoiled milk on top of it. Of course, I had to toss it,” she said.

Another time, she sprinkled cheese on top of a hot dish. After taste-testing her finished creation, she realized the cheese she had used was moldy.

Several area women mentioned that when they roasted their very first Thanksgiving turkey, they ended up cooking the bag of giblets that was still inside the turkey. When I roasted my first turkey, I thought it would thaw in one day. It didn’t. I later learned that every five pounds of turkey requires 24 hours of thaw time in the fridge.

A woman who lost her sense of smell as a toddler told me she was a rather inexperienced cook as a newlywed. One day, she decide to prepare a delicious meal for her husband. She was just taking a large baking dish out of the oven when her husband entered their apartment.

He gasped and quickly announced that all he could smell was garlic.

It turned out the recipe his wife was using called for one clove of garlic. As a “newbie cook,” she thought the entire garlic bulb comprised the “one clove” the recipe called for. Her delicious concoction contained enough garlic for about 15 casseroles.

Or, at least enough to weaken several vampires.

Leanne grew up in Milton and is an author, speaker, and humor columnist. After living in Minnesota and Iowa, she and her family moved to Janesville in 1979. She remarried after 23 years of widowhood and has two children, three stepchildren, and a blended family of 11 grandkids.