I've burnt quite a few pans over the years.

I've had eggs explode like that too, on the ceiling. Not fun!

Our traditional Christmas dinner is Beef Wellington. The recipe calls for some Madeira wine. One year my sister was in the kitchen with me to assist with said Wellington. She poured herself a glass of Madeira. Then another. She took "just another little sip" Heaven knows how many times. By the time dinner rolled around, she was giggling like a kid. Not a kitchen mishap, but if you'd been there, you would have been laughing, too. Sis normally drinks no more than about a thimbleful of wine...

Years ago, just after graduating from university and living with a roommate both of us flat broke, we were having as we often did, Kraft dinner with tuna for dinner. My roommate was shaking down the little package of powdered pretend-cheese on the edge of the counter when the package exploded and we had powdered pretend-cheese everywhere! It was in every cupboard and nook and cranny of our kitchen. It was a very orangey mess.

I have a set of 11 glass mixing bowls ranging in size from 1 Tbsp to 6 quarts. I lifted the top 9 bowls to get to the second largest, and as Iifted that one it exploded into about 1000 pieces scattering pieces all over the cabinet, the counter and even hitting me in the face with a few fragments. scary.

Not long after graduating from high school, I was making divinity using a portable hand mixer. Checking the progress, I turned off the mixer and lifted it a bit with my left hand, while leaning over to see if more mixing was needed. Determining a bit more mixing time was in order, I started to drop the beaters back into to the bowl, while pushing the button to turn the machine on. Just then, the lock of hair that had been tucked behind my right ear fell forward. In an instant the beaters were painfully plastered against my skull, and my hair was a gooey sticky mess wrapped around the beaters.

And that is why scrunches became a kitchen utensil.

Not too long ago, I put on hummingbird food, which is sugar and water- basically simple syrup.

Then, DH and I took our 2 dogs out for a quick walk, except we strolled quite a bit longer because we both totally forgot that sugar was on the stove!

We came home to a house full of smoke and I swear, the only reason our house is standing is because of our heavy All Clad pot.

The sugar looked like a black mushroom cloud and our Vent A Hood withstood the punishing heat without any damage whatsoever.

DH and I took turns cleaning the copper All Clad pot because I think without it, we would have at least had major damage, a fire, or lost our home.

Now, when the simple syrup goes on the burner, I immediately set my large and LOUD timer!

Enough of you have given unwatched pot stories that I remembered I had one of my own. I was young and living abroad, cooking with propane rather than the electric I'd always had. I was making something that needed to simmer for a long time. Legumes or beans or something, and put it on a very slow simmer and went out on a date. It would have been fine on electric. When I told my date (after dinner), he insisted we go back! Sure enough, there was a miasma of what looked like smoke, but smelled like soup, wafting around the kitchen and living room (small flat). The gunk in the bottom was solid, but hadn't actually burnt, yet (i.e., wasn't carbonized), and the pot was salvageable. The guy didn't last, but the advice not to do that again did. :)

Years ago I was making a casserole in my 9x13 pyrex dish.

I pulled it out of the oven, set it on the stove top and it immediately exploded!

Thankfully no one was injured but my tiny apartment kitchen had glass shards, chicken, beans, peppers and tomatoes everywhere!!

DH was notorious for putting the tea kettle on to boil, returning to his computer, and burning the daylights out of my kettle. He went through 3 in about 4 weeks, and so received an electric one from our son for his birthday that shortly followed the mishaps. Son liked the ones he used at work, so he knew this was the answer for us. No more ruined teakettles!

This seemed like a kitchen mishap at the time. My parents were coming to dinner when I was a young bride. I had cooked a 2 or 3 pound pot roast to perfection (that incidentally cost my entire grocery budget for the week) and had 'plated' it with the potatoes and carrots around the edges, it was lovely and I was so proud. The folks arrived and we ran out to greet them. When we returned to the house a few moments later, our 15 pound Pekingese dog was finishing off the last of the roast :-) We were kind of surprised that he didn't just explode! We had grilled cheese for dinner that night instead!

You have a kind and generous heart, Marilyn.

One winter afternoon, mother was cooking navy beans in a pressure cooker for our supper. The cooker was merrily bubbling away on the wood burning kitchen stove when its safety plug blew! My sister and I arrived home from school moments after the disaster. We stepped though the kitchen doorway to find a distraught Mom and beans dripping from the ceiling.

Not my kitchen mishap, but my daughter had one and it involved a fan also. She had a pot of spaghetti sauce on the stove. Her dog, a rambunctious beagle, came running through the kitchen and into my daughter knocking her off balance. Her flailing arm caught the handle of the pot of sauce knocking it to the floor and spilling the contents on it's way down and into a floor fan which of course was on high speed. She said the whole kitchen was covered in red dots and smears. For months they kept finding little red spots they had missed.

Our cousin gave our family one of her beautiful farm-raised capons for Thanksgiving. Mom left it out on the table in the roasting pan to prepare it for stuffing, but was distracted by a new sibling who was 3-weeks old, who needed a feeding and diaper change in another room. Our much-beloved German Shepherd thought he'd get a head start on the festivities. He snatched the raw capon out of the pan and hid under a bed and devoured most of the bird by the time mom came back to the kitchen. I identified completely with the family in the "Christmas Story".

I have a Thanksgiving turkey and German Shepherd story too, only our turkey was cooked. :-)

Trying to soften a block of margarine in the microwave but used full power instead of 1% power. Returned to a waterfall of liquid oil running out of the microwave, onto the counter, over the edge, down the front of the cabinet and across the floor. Messy!

A year or two ago, I set an open jug of maple syrup on the counter but was not paying attention and missed the counter. It hit the floor flat on the bottom and I never knew that maple syrup, thick and gooey, could travel so far - on the cabinets, the ceiling, etc. etc. I was still find little dried bits of syrup on stuff 6 months later. I'm very careful where I sit things today.

We had a much smaller dog so our dog-related kitchen mishap was much smaller scale as well.

At a Christmas party, one person brought a tray of cold cuts, and because the serving table was pretty full, had to put the cold cut tray on the very corner of the table, hanging over the edge by a couple of inches. At some point near the end of the party I went into the kitchen to find my Jack Russell standing on his hind legs, neatly biting off the the half-inch or so of the meat that was hanging over the edge of the cold cut tray. If I hadn't seen him doing it I likely never would have noticed.

I also have a Christmas story involving our family's Samoyed/lab cross and a whole salmon.

jemdandy - My worst nightmare when using my pressure cooker!

We just rescued a yellow lab mix and she's prone to "counter surfing", so although we're being very careful, I'm sure we'll have some disaster story to tell at some point.

Right now, I'm very careful to not leave pots unattended and I'm moving things to the rear of the counter.

not kitchen, but food anyway.

Years ago my doctor told me that one Fourth of July his beautiful Weimaraner jumped the fence & returned with a whole brisket.

Back in the 1940's, my country-girl aunt graduated from high school & moved to Houston, where she rented an apartment in an old house.

When canned biscuits were invented, she was ecstatic;

she could have a quick breakfast at home every morning!

One Friday she set out the can of biscuits & then got distracted, forgot about them, went to work, went directly from work to the bus station to go "home" for the week-end.

It was summer.

in Houston.

She returned Sunday evening to find bits of biscuit dough all over the kitchen-ceiling, walls, cabinets, appliances, table, everything.

Years ago I was carrying a five liter jar of pickled beets the jar slipped and purple juice was all over me the floor the fridge everywhere. My aunt had a dog who ate an entire birthday cake, a pound of butter, and a turkey not all at the same time. I was cooking something in the oven but didn't notice a knife with a plastic handle had fallen into the oven, the plastic melted and black smoke and film coated the oven stove top and fume hood.

Gosh, nobody has a water related story? A few years ago, when we had a device that 'purified' our drinking/cooking water, I left the faucet running into the device and went back to the office completely forgetting it. Maybe and hour or so later I returned to find an inch...at least, of water throughout the kitchen, under the cabinets and appliances.... 3 ft into the family room in one direction, several inches into the dining room and into the hallway. Kitchen floor is real wood flooring, and carpeting everywhere else. We managed to get a lot of the water up, but I had to admit defeat and call a restoration service (happened on a Sunday, of course) to come help us out. They brought all kinds of equipment like fans and dehumidifiers and cut away some of the carpet padding and it took 3 days to dry it out. Our wood floor was cupped and was like walking on cobblestones.... I was sure it would need to be replaced, but somehow it flattened back into shape and the carpet was saved with just some padding being replaced. I am more careful now!

I had put out a nice display of tuna salad, salmon salad, rolls and a whole, large smoked whitefish. Back turned, my chocolate lab Chip grabbed and swallowed the entire whitefish...luckily it went down head first, otherwise those scales would have seriously hurt.

My German Shorthair Chester ate the entire top off my whipped cream covered birthday cake. He also grabbed a whole cooked chicken. The best time was when he stole a bag of a dozen bagels, ate 9 of them and then tucked the leftovers, with the bag, under my sofa cushions, for later. I only noticed a tiny edge of the bag peeking out from the cushion, he had hidden it that well.

Or the time I had put out cocktail franks for company, and while Chester had allowed the guests to scratch his back, his front was busy eating the cocktail franks from the coffee table.

Quite the character.

I posted this at the time it happened so some might remember. About 5 years ago at Christmas, we were carving a leg of lamb that had a pop up timer in. The timer fell on the floor and my miniature poodle Dusty was there waiting for something to fall. I saw this happened, grabbed him by the back of the neck and stuck my fingers into his mouth to grab the timer, feeling it sliding down his little gullet. Long story short, he needed surgery to remove the timer after it failed to pass. He was just fine afterwords, still is a little pig.

A small kitchen disaster that caused a lot of hilarity. My DM was visiting my older sister and had made some donuts. Younger sister was helping with the deep frying, and when the first batch was done, she used a mesh screen strainer to lift the donuts out. Only she hadn't noticed that the mesh was plastic and when she lifted the strainer, the mesh was completely gone. My DM and older sister laughed so hard and sisters still talk about it.

I was 10 when I learned to unplug the mixer when inserting or removing the beaters. Ouch!

My story is not one of me doing anything mistakenly. I had a cat (small- 7 pounds) and one day I came home to find the refrigerator door open (no, I had not left the door open) and half a 5 pound cooked ham on the floor, almost completely gone. My cat had apparently spent the day working on prying the door open and then having a ham feast! (the frig was old and the seal wasn't all that strong apparently!). My deceased husband was with me when we left and when we came home. She was a smart and determined kitty! She would open cabinet doors also and drag out food often. We weren't mad, but actually rather impressed. Miss my baby Faith!

As much as I've cooked and enjoyed eating, I can't think of anything! Hm. Worst offense is putting in a 1/4 cup of salt instead of a 1/4 tsp in the oatmeal.

Kellie, you made me think the huge grey cat in this upcoming movie!

The Secret Life of Pets

When I was a small girl, my mother made a birthday cake for my Uncle Sterling, who had returned from WWII...not the same.

He had been the responsible older brother when he left, & when he returned, he just couldn't cope, so lived with his parents, my grandparents, & worked construction.

Their house was a drafty old thing, so my mother set the cake on the kitchen table & closed the door between kitchen & living room, & she & I visited with Granny in the living room (where the Dearborn heater was!) until Sterling got home from work.

He came in the back door, went through the kitchen, & came into the living room & closed the door behind him.

He looked at my mother & said...

"The cats & I thank you for the birthday cake!"

They had wiggled in through the drafty floor of the canning porch & hopped onto the table & eaten a giant crater into the top of that cake.

I was cooking a cheesecake in the oven. I opened the oven door to rotate the pan for even cooking, when my hand slipped and ALL the still liqiuid cheesecake batter fell down the front of the stove, pooling under the oven. I wiped up as much as I could but found myself cleaning dryed bits of batter for months aftterward!

Years and years ago when my boys where around 8 and 6 I put a pot of beans on to cook and left the house with the burner on low. Yes cooking. I was out longer than I planned and came home to a house full of smoke. Burnt beans, burnt pan. I wouldn't let the boys in the house until I inspected the house to make sure nothing was burning. Pan ruined. I think I scrubbed it for months. when I am cooking anything on the stove today I always set a timer for 15 minutes so I am reminded to check on whatever is cooking. My husband who cooks also always walks out of the room and I have to remind him that something is cooking.

Let's see once I was going to put water in a pot to boil for pasta. I went to swing the faucet towards the pot and when I did the copper pipe snapped where the faucet connects from under the sink. I had water flying up like a fountain and draining out of my cabinet like a waterfall. I had to call my husband to ask where the water shut off was because I had no clue.

He rushed home to look at the damage. I had been wanting one of those new Delta touch faucets which he went out and got to replace the faucet I just broke but told me next time I want a new faucet to please not break the old one, just ask him to replace it.. lol

The next 2 involve my husband who got into smoking meat and making his own super special rub for meats. He had a bowl with a lid and had put all of his ingredients in. He grabbed the bowl and before I could make sure that lid is on tight he shook the bowl and the lid popped off and rub went everywhere. All over his face, in his ears, hair the floor, counters. It took everything I had not to laugh and run over and help him.

Then one time he went to grab something out of a cabinet and I had a glass bottle of Olive oil in there. Well he hit it, it fell and landed on our granite counter top bottle exploded and olive oil went everywhere!!! I don't know how many times I had to mop my floor to keep from sliding everytime I went in there. No matter how many times or what I used to clean it up, it took forever to get the slickness off the floor.

When my son was about 6 he spilled a large container of apple juice on the floor. Talk about sticky!. Soap wouldn't get the stickiness off of the floor, nor would any floor washing liquid. I used all sorts of stuff and the only thing that would get it off was Bon Ami which fortunately didn't strip the floor.

I grew up with two stoves in our kitchen. One woodstove for helping heat the mainfloor of the house, but we also cooked all winter on it. We had the electric range for summer. Anyways above the cooking/woodburning surface of the woodstove was a white enameled shelf, for warming bread, or storing the extra oven mitts/drying winter gloves, and apparently not meant for storing the salt and pepper or any other spice that may slide off when the front door slams! Picture the slow slide of a can of ground pepper, as it tumbles off the shelf onto the roaring hot wood stove below. Can you say pepper spray? The crash of the tin was enough to make my mom grab the can, hence flinging it across the hot stove. We were cold that week. It took days to cool down and clean that stove. Every time we thought it was cleaned and relit..more pepper spray. It took nearly a year to repaint the kitchen where if you wiped the wall, the oily pepper smoke gagged you again. Oh,..don't think we learned the hard way..we did the same thing with a box of matches! Not nearly as bad, but look! Fireworks in the kitchen.

An Aunt put beets through the pressure release valve of a pressure cooker..I've never touched one since. There was a 4" hole in the ceiling where the rocker blew through the drop ceiling..purple purple purple..everywhere!

Another family member had the frying pan with the handle that would spin if you tried to carry the pan anywhere, but being a Le Crueset, they didn't stop using it, just adapted to directing the pan on the burner, but never actually picking it up, until a visiting friend made spaghetti sauce in said pan, forgetting the spinner handle spun the entire hot pan of sauce across the tile floor, bouncing it off cabinets, under the fridge, and into the hallway..in her hurry to clean it up..slid across the sauce/tile floor and plopped in a sobbing heap of wailing.."But the mushrooms..save the mushrooms".. apparently there were some rather expensive mushrooms in the sauce..oh..and perhaps some wine :)

When I was in HS we had milk delivered to the door in glass, gallon jugs. One morning my mother went out to get the milk. She had a gallon jug in each hand and somehow they accidentally bumped into each other. 2 gallons of milk spilled on the carpeted floor. She started crying. Daddy came in the room and just had to say, "Don't cry over spilt milk"! Made her cry even harder.

Another time I had baked a cake and frosted it and left it on the kitchen counter. A little while later my brother walked into the kitchen and said, "Linda, you cake is falling on the...floor! He said floor just as it hit the floor. I don't know why he didn't try to stop it instead of just reporting it.

This one wasn't a disaster but a pretty funny mistake. My first husband and I hadn't been married very long and I had to work one Saturday. When I got home he had cooked dinner. I don't remember what it was but it was good and I was impressed. He had made brownies for dessert (from a mix). I was saying how good they were when he said he had a question about making them. He said, "How do you get it off your hands?" I said, "Get what off your hands." "The batter." I asked, "Why did you have batter on your hands?" WAIT FOR IT.... "The instructions said, 'Mix by hand.'" That happened in 1969 and it still makes me laugh today!

He said, "How do you get it off your hands?" I said, "Get what off your hands." "The batter." I asked, "Why did you have batter on your hands?" WAIT FOR IT.... "The instructions said, 'Mix by hand.'" That happened in 1969 and it still makes me laugh today!

*******

Absolutely precious!

Thanks for the laughs!

I should mention that the instructions were later changed to, "Mix with a spoon"!

We still laugh over the time years ago I turned the oven on to preheat, forgetting that I was storing inside a large Costco styrofoam pan of chocolate chip cookies, all still snuggly covered in their plastic wrap -- O the smell, and likely toxins, that filled the house, and the melted mess stuck on the oven racks....

Not exactly a kitchen disaster, but close....I used to make wine; a favorite was with wild blackberries. A friend and I picked for hours - enough for 10 gallons. I had the 'must' in two 5 gallon glass carboys and had racked them several times (that's siphoning the clearer liquid off all the dregs the yeast had digested) which is a big, messy, heavy job. After the most recent racking, I was moving them back into the closet in the utility room off the kitchen and accidentally clunked them together. A perfect hit that cracked them both and sent 10 gallons of what was basically blackberry juice all over the floor, back into the closet, under the hot water tank, the washer, the dryer, etc. I must have exclaimed loudly and with distress because my husband came rushing in from the garage and saw all the red liquid everywhere, assumed I'd sliced an artery and nearly fainted. That was my last wine making attempt (and I'd turned out some great wine before that).