Chingal0

Where are you going to school at chef001 ?

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"Eventually I became too sexy for my gym membership fee."

slant eyes

sadatx: good thread, and might i add, good use of humor.

setting: college dormitory with electric hot coils in place of gas burners. hungry college students wanting to make something quick to eat at 1am.

to make sure i was capable of caring for myself, my loving mother made flats of won ton for me to bring back to my dorm in the event i got hungry, i could make them. she showed me how. quite easy might i add. take a pot of water, add some oil to prevent won ton stickage, bring to a boil, place won tons in, 7 minutes and instant meal.

being the novice that i was, i filled the pot with too much water. poured in some oil and brought to a boil. then added the won tons, which made the oily water spill over onto the electric coils. now when this oily water hit the coils, it immediately caught fire. leaving a huge burn mark on the wall of the kitchen. it took us some time to put it out, but when we did, we were so pumped full of adrenaline that we decided to walk to in-n-out instead.

later that week, we wanted to make some steaks. some pan friend steaks. well, little did we know that you needed some sort of oil or spam to keep the steaks from burning on the pan. so there we were, the 3 of us, happily frying our steaks and complimenting each other on how good they smelled. and mind you, this was at around 12:30 am. the steaks began to burn badly, and smoke was everywhere. before we could open the hall doors for ventilation, the fire alarm went off. OMG! we took the pan off the stove and tried to cover the alarm. but there were 3 of us, and 6 alarms on the 3 floors.

the hall was evacuated and many angry college students were forced to stand out in the cold, even some girl who had been taking a shower. i think ever since that second event, we were no longer allowed in the kitchen

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no man or woman is worth your tears - and the one who is, won't make you cry

question authority, don't ask why, just do it!

chef001_2003

At the New England Culinary Institute

Averett

My older sister had a bake sale at school and she wanted to make cookies. Well, my mom was working nights at the time so she had my dad help out. They got the Toll House bag but for some reason decided not to follow the directions on the back. They call up Grandma for her recipe. My dad writes it down. They make the cookies.

The cookies come out of the oven in one huge sheet cookie. Very very flat. And impossible to cut. They could not figure out what had happened.

Next morning my mom sees the cookie sheet on the table and asks my dad what he did. "I called mom for her recipe!" He shows it to my mom. He wrote down "3 3/4 cups of sugar" instead of 3/4 cup of sugar. So the added 3 3/4 of sugar, white and brown..... Needless to say those were some sweet cookies!

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Absence is to love what wind is to fire. It extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great.

irseg

I was kind of drunk and wanted something to help with my high-protein diet, so I made a cheese sauce, then added various spices, Worchestershire sauce, cottage cheese, a bunch of eggs, and a package of chopped ham (a very small step up from Spam). Then I poured the gloppy concoction over toast. I think it was the most vomit-like substance to ever be created. Add a splash of more W. sauce to make it tangier and it would be totally indistinguishable. Probably had a good 60+ grams of protein, though!

Dibbler

Trying to impress a new girlfriend, I decided to grill some shrimp on the grill. I put the shrimp on some tin foil and added lots of butter and garlic. The shrimp were sticking to the tin foil and when I pulled on one the tin foil tore and butter started dripping into the fire. The butter caught fire and the shrimp burned to a crisp. She just sat back and laughed while I was ready to throw the grill into the street. We ended up going out to eat. What a mess!

suviko

The stupidest disaster was last year's Midsummer Night's Eve parties at our place when I thought about making an oven pancake too late to go to the grocery across the street, it had already shut for the holiday evening. "Well", thought I. "I think this is enough flour anyhow I got left in the bag". Erm, I go check on it and turns out it wasn't enough so I acted like nothing and some people were kinda looking at me like "are you gonna give it to us? we saw you putting it in the oven.." Nobody actually mentioned it anyways so I gave people plain icecream.

hlprmnky

Two stories, one simliar to an earlier post:

1) My friends and I have been out drinking and carousing, and as we return to the dorm we realize that we are quite hungry. I decide that it's a mac and cheese kind of night, so I fire up the electric range in the dorm kitchen, add water, oil, and macaroni to an aluminum stock pot I have (from a camp cookery set - all I had available). Range on 'hi', pot on burner. Excellent, now all I have to do is wait for it to boil.

Hmm...

(did I mention that we had all been drinking? And that sitting in a flourescent-lit, nearly-silent kitchen is *boring* when you're drunk?)

...

"I think I'll nip over to my room and grab something to read while I wait.", I said to myself. Yes, that's it. To read.

(Did I further mention that this episode began well after bar closing time, and that I had been awake for something like 20 hours when the pot hit the burner?)

(and that I had been drinking?)

(can you see where this is going?)

The next morning comes along. I sit up, stretch. Memories of the night before come streaming back. The good times with friends. That pretty girl who smiled at me at the bar. The- OH HOLY SHIT THE MAC AND CHEESE!

I throw on some clothes and run upstairs to the kitchen, throwing the door wide and expecting to find a glowing-hot puddle of aluminum on the range, but there's nothing. I look around the room carefully. No pot. No scorch marks on the walls. Nothing. Was it all a dream? Suddenly, I am aware of another person in the kitchen, whom I recognize as one of the floor residents. He doesn't seem too happy.

"Looking for something, asshole?", he asks. Taken aback by his tone, I foolishly begin to nod before I realize the significance of his anger.

"It's out on the fire escape. You are never, ever to use this kitchen again."

I open the fire escape door. Immediately, even though I'm OUTSIDE, I am assailed by a bitter, ashen stench. There, in the corner of the platform, is my stock pot. The interior is filled with an oily black solid. Experimentally, I poke at it.

It is not macaroni.

It is, or appears to be, foamed, burnt aluminum. I turn to go inside, and the resident stops me.

"It took us three hours to air this place out this morning. That stays outside."

I carry my ruined pot down the fire escape steps and heave it into an outside waste container. In hindsight, I consider myself lucky to not have burned down the dorm.

Moral: If you have been drinking and it is late enough that you are hungry, do not use fire without a spotter. If the group of us had stayed together for a quick bite to eat, that never would have happened.

hlprmnky

Second story:

I am at a friend's off-campus house, helping to prepare dinner. The residents of said house are vegans, which means no meat, no eggs, no cheese, etc. So, as was *very* *often* the case, the main couse was tofu. Cooking this up was my responsibility. Recently I had had some tofu at a local restaurant that was fried golden brown on the outside and 'melted' inside - very tasty! I decided to pursue this effect myself.

I was also interested in making the tofu spicy, because I like spicy foods, and so did the other people who were going to eat. So, I diced a habanero pepper and threw it in the pan along with the oil, the plan being that the oils from the pepper would mix with the vegetable oil and soak into the tofu.

Unfortunately, what happened instead was that the habanero pieces burned in the heat, but *only* in the area where they were being pressed against the pan by the tofu. So, until I turned the tofu the fisrt time, everything seemed fine. In fact, for me, standing right next to the pan and therefore somewhat out of the main convection path of the smoke, it seemed like only a minor problem; like garlic or onion put in the oil a little too soon, the pepper had burned. Big deal! It would add a...charming, carmelized taste, right?

Well, that's not what the rest of the house thought. Not thirty seconds after I turned the tofu pieces, someone who had been studying in a room across the house from the kitchen came in, blinking rapidly and covering her mouth.

"What the FUCK are you DOING in here!?!", she asked.

I began to realize that perhaps something was amiss. The smoke from the peppers was *thin*, but it spread *quickly*, and for the people in other rooms of the house, it was like having a mist of habanero pepper sprayed in their faces!

We ended up having to not only abandon the meal, but put fans blowing out in the windows of the kitchen and seal it off from the rest of the house for about forty-five minutes, until the evil spirits had been dispersed.

I was frequently welcomed back to eat, and to cook, but I seem to recall a lot of washing and chopping and other, non-heat-related activities being assigned to me from then on.