There is this wildly popular thing on social media called “Throwback Thursday”. Since today is Thursday, I thought I’d share a funny cooking disaster story from when I was in the 5th grade. I’ve had many kitchen foibles over the years, as any experienced cook has. The time I cooked meat in corn syrup is the very first cooking disaster I ever remember having. As far as how this relates to living inspired- I’d put it in the category of being bold and trying new things you’ve never done – all by yourself (like a big kid -HA!). Of course trying new things you aren’t sure you can do is always inspiring-even if you fail. Failure means you tried it so that is a GOOD thing!
I grew up in a family with mostly old fashioned values (minus the fact Mom worked outside of the home and was an independent woman). My dad never cooked. That was mom’s job. I grew up learning all of the homemaker skills a proper lady should have. Dad worked a night shift and was home with us in the day and Mom worked in the day and was home with us at night. The Summer that I was in the fifth grade is the first summer I really remember cooking all by myself. I mean poor dad was helpless! Everyone knows men can’t cook and so I thought I better take care of my daddy while mom was at work or else how would he eat lunch? Maybe he’d starve. I don’t know why I never thought of this before the 5th grade, but that was around the time I decided that I would do the cooking for Dad when Mom was at work. (Totally using sarcastic humor in this paragraph, so no hate mail on the men can’t cook thing 😉 )
Feeling all grown up and wanting to be the lady of the house like Mama, I decided I was going to cook him up some meat (I figured meat was what a man would like best). I didn’t ask for help- I was just going to do what I saw Mama do. I remembered her getting some oil out of the cupboard and putting a little in the pan whenever she was cooking meat. So I got out her skillet, and some oil and I fried us up some bacon. It seemed like that oil had a weird effect in the pan. It made the bacon kinda stringy. I didn’t question it though. I’d seen mama get out this bottle of oil many times and so I just served the bacon up.
Daddy didn’t say anything about that bacon, so I assumed I did good. All proud of myself I thought next time I would try my hand at some hamburgers. I repeated the same process. Got out that skillet, that oil , and started forming the raw meat into patties. Slapped those babies on the skillet and the meat started sizzling like it was supposed to. Or not.
This time it was worse! There was all this stringy stuff coming up from the meat patties. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why they looked so odd. Was this some kind of sick meat? What was wrong with this meat that it got all these stringy things coming up off it when I went to flip the patties? I didn’t know what was going on, but I made sure to cook those burgers until they were done. Then I served them up to Daddy.
He says, “These burgers are awfully sweet and sticky. They taste like candy”. I told him about the strings I saw. I said I don’t know what went wrong. He said, “Well how did you cook them?” I said “With that oil in the pan like Mama does”. He came out the kitchen to see that bottle of oil and ooooooh boy. We had a laugh out of what we discovered. Daddy said, “This isn’t oil. This is corn syrup”. “What’s the difference?”, I say. “Corn oil, corn syrup, the bottles and the liquid in them look pretty similar. ”
Then I realized I had cooked those burgers (and the bacon previously) in sugar. So THAT’S why that meat was stringy. It was the sugar cooking and getting all sticky. Daddy was so gracious about it all though. He thanked me for making dinner and if I remember right he ate them anyway and didn’t complain. And THAT was my first grown up “woman” kitchen mishap. I can’t believe I did it twice! Do you think Burgers cooked in Karo syrup will be the next big thing? Maybe someone out there will read this and perfect this idea. (It probably tasted better with the bacon since you can buy honey ham and things of that sort).
If you ever come across a corn syrup burger, you will know that I made it famous 😀 .
Most of my old childhood photos are in storage right now, but I do have this picture of my Dad and I to share with today’s story:
Do you remember your very first cooking story? What about the first time you cooked for a parent? Share your stories and comments at weliveinspired.com. I always read and reply to your comments.
Tomorrow is Five Minute (or Poetic Friday). See you then! ~Rebekah
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I’ve had many cooking mishaps over the years, but the one that stands out the most would be the first time I made yeast bread. I mistook tbls for tsp so my bread had one third the yeast it needed. That bread took hours to raise!!!
Funny Kendra! A pain in the rear too I bet. Yeast breads can be tricky anyway. I’ve had super dense bread where I couldn’t get dough to rise when I was a beginner ;). Thanks for sharing!
Loved this one, Bekah! I grew up in a single-parent home. My mother had no time to teach (or practice) domestic skills. So the first time I used fresh garlic was after I married. I was preparing a roast chicken for friends. I had no idea a clove was only part of a bulb. My first garlic chicken was a 40-cloves version. Fortunately, everyone liked garlic, and it was actually quite good.
WOW!!! A 40 clove garlic chicken! (giggle). Garlic tastes so good in dishes though, that I can see how it turned out good still. Thanks for sharing your funny story here. It made me smile 🙂
This is a sweet, funny story. Your father was a very kind Dad. And, you know, I am kind of surprised that “sweet burgers” have never emerged anywhere as a culinary sensation.
A sweet story literally haha. With the way sugar is put in everything we eat I am surprised it isn’t a big “thing” too! Thanks for commenting <3
What a funny story, Bekah! Reminds me of an incident my mother would tell us about when we were growing up. When she was a girl her own mother one time filled up the salt container with icing sugar by accident, so the family had sugar in their mashed potatoes. My grandfather was very stoic and ate it all up, but the next night she forgot to replace the sugar, so they were confronted by another serving of icing-sugared mashed potato! This time they all threw it out instead of braving it…
I have had heaps of food-related mishaps!! One time when I was three I decided that my parents had been sleeping in too long and that my baby sisters would be starving by now, so I decided to feed them the only thing I knew how to access – tinned cat food! I remember so clearly how each time the spoon would approach a tiny mouth the head would turn away, and the food would land on the bubba’s cheek – very frustrating! I guess it didn’t occur to me that if I didn’t fancy eating the cat food myself that they may not like the smell of it either! Really I should have just fed the cat, who I am sure would have been infinitely more grateful! xx
Oh my goodness. The sugar mashed potatoes is so funny and what makes these things even more funny is when people can remain stoic and eat them anyway! HAHA- your poor sisters. I can picture the faces they would make! I can’t imagine eating canned cat food. Ew!! Thanks for sharing your fun food mishaps. I love these kind of funny stories 🙂