Funny food anecdotes.

[hippywife]

Aside from the seemingly ubiquitous tales of people cooking the giblets inside their turkeys, what are some of the funnier food stories or comments you've encountered?

Two come to my mind immediately. The first was a long ago conversation I was having with someone about making something with strawberries. I actually think it was daiquiris. Another coworker was listening and thought she'd try it. We told her not to forget to hull the strawberries first. The next day she complained, not understanding how we managed to hull them so easily. She had thought it meant to remove all the little seeds.

The other was from another coworker at the same place, also long ago. She was intent on starting herself a little vegetable garden. She was an older woman and had been a country gal. She was complaining that she went and found all the seeds she wanted but one. For the life of her she couldn't locate any pickle seeds.

[Warpy]

1. Well, other than the inappropriate substitution now and then

and substituting milk with a little vinegar in it for buttermilk in a buttermilk salad dressing (don't try this at home, it was horrible), I can't think of anything at quite that level.

Lemon extract is also a poor substitute for vanilla extract. Don't ask.

I do have an overly adventurous friend who tried offbeat magazine recipes out. One was for Poulet Garbage (French pronunciation). It looked harmless enough: chicken, garlic, onion, peppers, orange peel. It tasted just like garbage!

Then there was my non cook mother's mercifully brief infatuation with Gayelord Hauser. While he was one of the first to champion gourmet cooking with whole foods, my mother's addition of bran and wheat germ in everything was far less than gourmet. We ate out a lot until it was over.

I have few other food stories. My friends were either godawful literate and read instructions carefully or were complete non cooks. Those two things cut down on the unintentional humor considerably.

[pengillian101]

2. Thanksgiving turkey popcorn stuffing

4 qts. dry bread crumbs
1 cup minced onions
1 cup celery
1/2 cup raisins
1/4 cup butter substitute (ex. Shed's Spread or Canola Oil) (optional)
1/2 cup popcorn/uncooked
2 tsp salt - or salt substitute (Mrs. Dash's)
1/2 tsp pepper
2 tsp poultry seasoning
2 cup skim milk

Mix ingredients and stuff cavity of the bird until full. Place in baking
pan and bake at 325 degrees in a pre-heated oven. Turkey is done when
popcorn blows the a** off the bird. Happy Thanksgiving!

:hi:

[Tab]

3. I've been told by my mother

of Thanksgiving at my Aunt's house (I think this was before I was born). Aunt E. was roasting her first turkey to host her first Thanksgiving as a new housewife.

She apparently packed it full - nothing like a well-stuffed turkey! - and trussed it up real tight. I mean REAL tight. I mean, so tight, the gasses couldn't escape.

Well, at some point, a few hours into it, she declares she had better go in and check the turkey. The next thing everyone here's is this weird explosion.

Rushing into the kitchen shows the turkey is a-plenty. A-plenty on the ceiling, on the floor, on the counters, on the refrigerator, on the oven, on my aunt - them poor gasses had nowhere to go but out. And with the turkey, of course, juice, grease - all over. It must have taken days to clean.

I personally remember when my ex-wife left my instant-read thermometer in the chicken while it cooked - an understandable newbie mistake, but also the loss of a good thermometer and sadly not as good as the turkey story.

On the other hand, I just remembered how K, my current wife (second and hopefully last), who is not very intuitive in the cooking department, went to make sugar cookies for everyone but when we tasted them we realized that she had not used sugar, but a bag of finely-ground sea salt that I had. There was just no eating those things - no way, no how. And oh! the loss of that great sea salt! :cry:

[buzzycrumbhunger]

4. A family favorite

Have to preface by saying my youngest apparently missed a key element in her upbringing because she grew up in places where I wasn't able to have my big garden. She's always been mostly vegetarian, but I didn't realize how serious this deficit was until we were going through the supermarket and I pointed out the cucumbers, saying something about how sad it was that they keep misting the veg because it sucks the life out of that stuff and those pickles would be useless. She didn't see any pickles, just cucumbers. I asked her where she thought pickles came from. . .

To realize how mortifying her answer was, you must know she was high school age at this point. "Um. . . pickle plants?" We were both gobsmacked for hours--me because I apparently suck as a mother and her because she couldn't believe cucumbers and pickles were the same thing. Ever since, we can coax a good blush out of her by offering a jar of cucumbers or pointing out the pickles at the produce stand.

[beac]

5. Your mention of strawberry daiquiris reminded me of a long-ago disaster.

When one is young and stupid and likes being tipsy but can only stomach sugary "girly" drinks, the daiquiri is in heavy rotation. At a friend's beach house, we ran out of rum late at night and, desperate to keep the party going, reached into the WAY back of the liquor cabinet.



There's a reason you don't see "Scotch and Strawberry Daiquiri" on the menu anywhere.