If i catch the cookies before they get too bad my mom will eat them. She likes things darker and more done than I do. I like my cookies between crispy and chewy.

But if I really burn them....they get thrown out! Once in awhile I let the dogs have them but I don't give my dogs table food very often as it really isn't good for them.

Good to know I am not alone!!! Thanks Julie!

Oh, Rhonda and Julie, I'm kin! I always burn the last tray of cookies for some reason. Luckily Roy likes things burned. lol lol

I tried to make pear jam once. My SIL had a pear tree in her yard and she sent me pears, pears, pears. Well, I'd make jellies and jams with my mom for years starting at about 9 or 10 yo. I was tired from work and quartered the pears, seeded them, then put them in the pan with sugar, pectin, fruit fresh, etc. etc. I grew up with natural gas. Electric is NOT a good pan to have to try to make jellies and jams, especially if you're tired from 10 hours of work. Have you ever had a pan burned so badly that you couldn't chisel the crud off? :oops:

I did get a new set of pots and new drip pans the next day though. No pear jam and I never let her send me that many pears again. I gag when I see the pear jam in the stores even. :x

I also grew up making jams and jellies and butchering chickens and home canning.

I don't do any of it anymore except for my favorite sweet pickles because you can't buy them. The recipe was handed down through the family and I won't do without them if I can help it.

I figure it takes less time to buy it than to can it and for most things that is just fine with me. I got tired of all the work!! My daughter is really into home canning everything and she shares! They even make their own salsa and merinara sauce and beef stew and ...... She is reallly hung up on serving her family food without all the salt and preservatives.

I tried making my own ketchup once .. it was ok but it wasn't to my taste and I never got it to taste the way i wanted so I never kept on trying.


I'd rather be quilting than canning any day!!!!

I just talked with my sister to find out what I did wrong with the cake (it is her recipe) The cake tastes OK but it is a little dry and has the wrong texture. DH was listening in on the conversation (while eating a second helping of cake). His contribution: Oh, you mean it's not supposed to feel like a sea sponge?

What a brat.

My most famous disaster: My daughter was pregnant and we were having a small, family baby shower at my house. Lots of people I didn't know. Anyway, my MIL, who used to cater meals as well as cook in a school, gave me a recipe for punch. You used jello, fruit drinks and sherbet. Good stuff, right? Well, what she didn't tell me was that I needed to dissolve the jello FIRST. That punch was really nasty...my MIL thought it was just hilarious but at the time it wasn't a bit funny to me! :oops: :oops:

OH MY GOSH!!!! Did you ever make me bring up a secret I have only told a few close people :oops: When I was 17 first year of marriage,I didn't know anything about cooking except how to fry chicken,eggs and make mashed potatoes. I had bought a beef roast don't remember what kind but I believe it was a bottom round kinda looked like that. :lol: :lol: As best as I can remember. Anyways I ask my next door neighbor how to cook it and she said put it on the top rack of your oven and set the oven on 300 degrees baste it ever so often.
OH MY GOSH :lol: :lol: :lol: I did just that I put the roast on the top rack without putting it in a pan. :oops: :shock: :lol: It started smoking of course. I got it out, had a small fire, common sense took over even for this dumb 17 yr.old. turned oven off shut its door until it cooled. Cleaned up the mess and now the whole world knows about it. But never,never,never even told my DD's or DH. :lol: :lol:
BillsBonBon

Well, I won't tell, if you won't!! :lol: :lol: :lol:

See there!? This thread makes us all feel better because we now know everyone else has done something silly or had a bad experience! I've made a lot of mistakes. You know what I did one time? I had a brain freeze and decided to heat my water, then add eggs to boil for potato salad....UM>>>>they cracked open, boiled out, and were ruined! I guess I forgot how to boil eggs and thought they were pasta or something. Good grief!

Right before I got married in 1975 I was 18 and my future sil was 16. We decided to make gravy. I had never made it but my sil said she knew how. We made it all right it was so stiff you could stand a knife up in it and it did not fall over!! And we had no idea how to fix it!!
This is the time in my life when my bils always brought food with them as they had suffered through some of my cooking!!

My mil taught me to make gravy a few months later and she always used this huge huge wrought iron (2 1/2 ft wide)skillet because she usually fed anywhere from 10 - 20 at any given time(big family) Well as I reached over this huge skillet I managed to burn myself. Mil still teases me about when I learned to make gravy.

This might be rather lengthy, but here goes. I was about 23 or 24 and knew how to cook. One day I decided to make Gumbo. Had all the ingredients cooking away. Smelled good so far. Added the shrimp and things began to smell bad. I went ahead and cooked it, but also cooked some chicken just in case. Well, when the Gumbo had cooked the amount of time the recipe specified, it smell to high Heaven. I had a big pot of it. I put a little bit in a bowl and put it on the landing for the outside cats. One of them came up the steps, took a whiff and flew back down. None of the others would even come close. We finally decided the shrimp was bad. To this day I can not stand Gumbo.