Oh Petra,
I feel for you!!!! I'm looking forward, rubbing my hands in glee, to reading some others' mishaps!!!

I ALMOST forgot to take the giblet package out of the bird AGAIN, but remembered it after I put it in the oven.

Yesterday, I made a pie out of Florida Sour Oranges and ended up tossing it in the garbage - it was HORRID! I made a real lemon pie and a pumpkin pie that turned out great, though.

I think I've posted this before, but here goes:

DD's in-laws were here for Thanksgiving, and I had gone all out, of course. I had made a beautiful aspic and wanted to transfer it to a lovely serving plate. Worked over the sink, it slid beautifully, past the plate, into the murky dishwater below. So much for that aspic!

I burnt the marshmellows when I was toasting them "quickly" under the broiler on top of the sweet potato souffle..not a problem though, scraped them off and started over. That's all, THIS year
.

Oh dear, oh dear. I can't recall anything like that but I'm having a mishap right now. I decided to do something different this year and cut up the turkey before roasting. I did a rather good job of it if I must say so myself. I figured the dark me cooks slower so I put that in first and then I put the bone in breast stuffed with lemons in. I figured since it was all cut up, it would cook in about an hour. WRONG! I should have checked on line first and I would have put it in the oven accordingly, but that would have been just too smart. Instead, when it seemed to be taking a long time, I just checked. 2 - 2 1/2 hours. We will be having a very late dinner. Good thing I'm not having company tonight. Oh well, I learned something and maybe you all did too.

I forgot to add salt to the home made stuffing in the bird but I did add it to the extra. We haven't eaten yet, as the guys are still hunting but the house smells wonderful. Hope the turkey's not dry, because I don't know how to make gravy.

I ate out this year. Will be having pie at home later on if there's room so no major mishaps here. The one year though I couldn't find the giblet bag so it got cooked inside the bird. Cousin laughs about it to this day but conveniently forgets about when she cooked the Christmas (or was it Easter?) ham in the plastic! Pulling the plastic off was hilarious. Snapped back, nicely melted, resembled the texture of mozzarella cheese. But she seems to forget about that! But I dont! :D

I made the wild rice stuffing yesterday and put it in the garage frig. Yep--forgot all about it. I made Cornish game hens instead of turkey. Really BAD idea. Never again. From now on I'm sticking to my "old" Thanksgiving dinner. Desserts were great, though--banana pudding and pumpkin pie.

Wild rice is still in the stupid frig!!

Oh Phyllis, your heart would just stop! That's right up there with pouring the stock through the strainer and down the drain, and saving the garbage stuff. (My greatest fear)

Patti, and the shame of it is, you don't have any leftover turkey to have your rice stuffing with!

I made cornish hens once years ago. I don't see the excitement over them. Give me a whole chicken any day!

My in laws were coming for Thanksgiving dinner. I put the still frozen turkey out my back door to thaw. Several hours later, looked out the door and half the turkey had been eaten by an animal.I screamed, DH drove out to the store and was lucky to find one fresh (not frozen) turkey available. So we ate a little late. My BIL was cooking one year. He wanted to strain the giblets out of the gravy, ended up sending the gravy down the drain. Thank heaven for canned gravy!

Just this year? LOL

I was making cranberry sauce and spilled it all over the counter top.

The slippery turkey slid out of my hands onto the floor...twice.

I set the timer to remind me to take aluminum foil off the pie crust half-way through baking. When the timer went off, I took the aluminum foil off, put the pie back in the oven and turned the oven off instead of resetting the timer for the remainder of the baking time. Half-baked pie isn't so good.

I'm not the best cook around.

I killed the brussel sprouts. I intentionally left a stalk of them in the garden, pulled and cleaned them today. Browned the bacon, chopped the walnuts, mixed them together and added the fresh squeezed orange juice over them, and them prompty burned them.

I wish I HAD learned something from this mistake. I still don't know what I did wrong. I did everything the recipe said to do and my hollandaise still curdled. I hate it when you don't know what you did wrong but obviously did.

Boy did I ever! First the mashed potatoes, got the potatoes cooked, butter, salt and pepper in the bowl, ready to add milk and whip them up when the milk seemed a little stringy. GAG! It was ruined...and the sell by date was tomorrow! I had to dump all the potatoes down the garbage disposal. Looked and looked for a box of instant and had none. So, I asked Lauren how badly she wanted mashed potatoes. Well, she was willing to come and make them herself so she did, most of it anyway. We cut them up very small so they would cook quicker.

Second problem was the little turkey. I fried it in my turkey fryer and it came out raw inside. So, back in the fryer for more time, which only made it crispy outside and still not cooked all the way inside. I ended up cutting part of it off the bone and nuking it. I think I'm just going to make turkey soup out of what's left because I don't want to try and cut every last little piece off the bone. I ended up having to eat ham (which I shared with Emily our dog under the table). No one else wanted turkey so that was ok.

Oh, and when I rinsing off the bird, the packet of what I thought was gibblets came out. I opened it only to find a bag of half frozen gravy. No gibblets. I made my own gravy so I threw that stuff away, especially since half of it had come out of the packet into the sink. When I was making my gravy a ton of cornstarch spilled out into the pan, had to scoop about a cup into the sink! I usually spoon it out but dummy me just tipped out and made a mess.

Here's ONE recipe for mix-in-the-pan pie crust that I found on the web:

Mix-in-the-Pan Pie Crust

Ingredients For an 8 1/2 or 9 inch pie plate:

1 1/2 cups flour (you can use half all-purpose with half whole grain)
2 teaspoons granulated or confectioners sugar, or honey (if using honey add with the wet ingredients)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup oil or soft butter
2 to 3 tablespoons cold milk (start with 2 and add more if too dry)

For a 10â³ pie plate:

2 cups flour
2 1/2 teaspoons sugar
2/3 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup oil
3+ tablespoons cold milk

If I'm making a savory quiche I leave out the sugar. I can make 1 1/2 of this recipe as a base for a baked kutchen, or other type pastry, in a 9X13 inch cake pan.

I have also doubled this recipe and rolled it out between 2 layers of plastic wrap (with no flour). Remove the top layer of plastic, and flip the crust into the pie plate. Carefully press into the plate, and then remove the top layer. Repeat for the top crust, seal, and flute. This makes a very thin crust for a 2 crust pie, which saves a lot of calories.

Directions

In a pie plate, place the flour, sweetener, and salt and combine well with a fork. Add the fat and milk, and continue to combine until you can pick it up and form into a ball. Do not knead. Flatten the ball, in the bottom of the pie plate, and press outward to fill the pie plate. You can flute the top edge of the crust with three fingers, as you would with a rolled pie crust.

For a filled pie crust, fill and bake as per your recipe time and temperature.

For a pre-baked crust, prick well with a fork and bake at 400-degrees for 12 to 15 minutes. Check it as it bakes and pop any bubbles that form with the tines of the fork, and press flat with the fork. Keep an eye that it doesn't get too brown. Let cool and fill with a cool filling.

Oh shoot, I stumbled upon mishap #3 after reading all the replies, haha. I realized I forgot to pull out the giblets, looked for them, and there they were, still in the turkey. Oh well, at least I am not the only one.

Cynic, I've heard of people baking frozen pizza in the plastic wrapper, but never a ham. :o) Was it even edible?

Kath, I had the problem with milk spoiling before the exp. date a while back, it turned out to be a fridge defect. You might consider checking the temp with a thermometer if it keeps happening.

Oh, re. mashed potatoes, I don't use milk any more, I either use chive cream cheese or cheddar cheese and a little broth. Very tasty, just about everyone loves them.

Today's dinner went off without a hitch. Even the 10 lb bird came out nice and moist. I remember back in the 50's when I was going to host the family for Thanksgiving, I mis-read what they said as the thermometer temp for the oven temp, so when my sis-in-law arrived (thankfully earlier than the other guests) she checked the bird and it was still quite white and just warm. No problem, she said, and cranked up the oven temp much higher and we had the bird ready just a little late, and quite dried out.

I've posted about this before, but it is so funny. It was Hubs youngest sister's time to do the dinner.Hubs comes from a big family so she bought a huge, over 20 lb bird, which she lovingly basted often while it roasted. She took the roaster out of the oven so the bird could rest before carving. One of her brothers got her out of the kitchen by some pretense, and while she was in the other room, one of her other brothers, removed the big, beautiful roasted turkey, and put a roasted Cornish hen in its place, then replaced the cover. When she came in to carve her turkey, she almost fainted when she removed the roaster cover and there was that tiny hen.

Dotmom, I just read the turkey switch to hubby and son, and they are still laughing. :o)

I forgot to mail all the invitations,,so Jan & I had to pig out by ourselves....and lots left for the midnight fairies tooo......LOL

Well it was a bad day to begin with since we were greving over the loss of my son who died on monday. The turkey just didn't taste good, the veggies were hard yet, had no surgar for the canned corn and after the meal was over we found out that son-in-in didn't know how to make gravy and so the turkey broth didn't have any flour in it. The only thing that was good was the chocolate pie! Never will let men do the cooking.

I remember a mishap at our house. It was early in our marriage and we were struggling. That particular Thanskgiving day, things did not go well and we had a spat. Dinner was over and it was time to move the turkey out of the oven to a storage bag. The pan was boiling hot and we could not hold the big bird with our hands. I said, "I've got an idea. I'll hold the bag. You take the pan, tip it up and dump it in the bag. It'll work!" The wife wearing oven mits dutifully dumped the bird into the bag even though she had questioned the whole operation.

The turkey slipped out of the pan and plunked into the bag along with a quart of hot broth. The bag held for 2 seconds and then the bottom melted and dumped the whole mess on the floor! At that point, we could do nothing more than to laught at ourselves for being such idots and then clean up the mess. Since it was my idea, I got the job of swabbing the floor.

One thing about cooking mishaps is that they are funny to share afterward, maybe because we can identify so easily with them. Thanks for the chuckles this post has brought.

Well, I had another one last night. Got a snack out of the fridge and promptly knocked the whole pan of yeast rolls into the floor. I have another one in the freezer but am not going to bake it right now. My kids are going to their father's today so I don't want to waste them.

I have double ovens. The turkey was in the bottom, the pies in the top. I turned off the oven and left the pies in there to set up while the convection fan ran to exhaust the heat. An hour later I realized I'd turned off the wrong oven!!!! The pies were in there for almost 2 hours!!!

But.....amazingly...they tasted great!

Hi kathsgrdn,

Sort of glad that the dog didn't get hold on those half-risen rolls ... as I recall the long story that someone told here the other day of the troubles that her dog endured after having taken several of such rolls on board ... which she and family shared (the troubles, that is - not the rolls: the dog had eaten way too many of them).

ole joyful

Just letting you know that you all have given us so much joy tonight, ROTFL! I'm sitting here reading these to my family and we are roaring with laughter! ::Wiping tears:: Ah, the joys of chaotic cooking!

Blessings and thank you!
Haley

petra you sound like me. On Wednesday I was making caramel rolls at the restaurant and I put pumpkin pie spice in the caramel instead of cinnamon. My husband was the only one who ate one and he said it tasted like pumpkin pie. WE have about 15 spiced on a little shelf and I grabbed the wrong one.