Thanksgiving Disasters

[AppleBiter]

*raises hand* Oooh, ooh!! I have a Thanksgiving disaster to share!! It was my first year making Thanksgiving dinner and I decided to make deviled eggs for the first time ever. I didn't know how long to boil the eggs for, but I thought it was about 10 minutes/egg. I had 10 eggs.

You guessed it. I thought I should boil the eggs for about, ohhh, a HUNDRED minutes. I put them in the pot and sat down to watch a movie. (I figured it would be a while). After about a half hour/45 minutes, I heard this popping sound coming from the kitchen. I went in to discover that all of the water had evaporated and the eggs were literally exploding in the pan. I've not attempted deviled eggs since.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Here's a super-fast cheater version of chicken and dumplings that works well.

--Package of boned chicken thighs/ breasts (breast meat is good, but kind of dry, so we prefer thighs. You can use regular unboned too, but then you have to cook the chicken, let it cool, and then pull it off the bones, so use boneless if you're in a hurry) (as much chicken as you like)
--Package of frozen mixed vegetables (Optional, but we try to throw in vegetables whenever we can though.) (corn/peas/carrots) (1 lb, I guess)
--Can of cream of celery soup (yep. Canned Campbell's soup. Sorry.)
--Can of cream of mushroom soup
--Bisquick and milk for dumplings

Simmer the chicken till done, about 20-30 minutes or whatever. Remove from water and chop into bite size chunks. Throw the vegetables into the water after the chicken comes out and cook till done. Drain.

Add the condensed soup to a pot, but add only one can of water. Heat and stir to dissolve.

Add the chicken and the cooked vegetables. Bring to a simmer and then turn down the heat. The mix is very thick and easy to burn if the heat's too high.

Make the dumplings (directions on Bisquick box) (2 C Bisquick, 1/3 cup milk as I recall) and drop into the mix (if you use two tablespoons and dip them into the mixture, the dough won't stick to the spoons. A wonderful trick) Cook 10 minutes uncovered, 10 minutes covered (don't peek.) Like Coudy says, don't stir, don't touch.

Done.

Whole thing can be done in about 40 minutes, and it's pretty good. The dumplings are very doughy and not what you'd call fluffy at all, but doughy has its place.

 

[carsonshepherd]

Whole thing can be done in about 40 minutes, and it's pretty good.

It does sound good, but cream of chicken soup might be good instead of cream of mushroom.

 

[Guest]

 

[dr_mabeuse]

That's how we make 'em. Forgett the chicken I just eat the dumplings.

I've noticed this about women, the way they love bland, starchy, doughy stuff: noodles and dumplings and matzoh balls and even uncooked dough.

Doesn't say anything about their taste in men, does it?

 

[AppleBiter]

I've noticed this about women, the way they love bland, starchy, doughy stuff: noodles and dumplings and matzoh balls and even uncooked dough.

Doesn't say anything about their taste in men, does it?

Hey, I've never once eaten a bland, starchy, doughy man.

 

[BlackShanglan]

AppleBiter, your egg story had me laughing so hard that the cats ran out of the room. Loved it. Especially the exploding eggs.

 

[SeaCat]

I copied the recipes and will be trying them. (Mucho Thanks by the way.)

Some of what has been said about disasters has had both me and the wife rolling. Great stuff.

I'll have to find the letter my father wrote to me about a friend of his who got shot with a biscuit. If I find it I'll post the story, it's enough to make you hurt yourself laughing. (If your sense of humor is as warped as mine.)

Cat

 

[Boxlicker101]

This is a very unpleasant recollection and you might want to skip it.

To get back to the original topic, eight years ago, my wife and I had been visiting her relatives for almost a month, and I had been bothered by serious heartburn all the time. We returned in late November and I was going to cook Thanksgiving dinner. On the day before, I was trying to do some preliminary things but I was in such pain I could hardly move. They hauled me to the hospital and I had an upper GI series. It was discovered I had blockage at the end of the small intestine, and nothing could pass through. Everything that I ate backed up, causing heartburn and vomiting.

Surgery was performed and I turned out to have cancer of the colon, and it had started at the very start of the colon and grown into the smnall intestine and blocked it. The bowel resection took out the end of the small intestine and the beginning of the large, and the two ends were sewn together.

That was, I am sure, the worst Thanksgiving I have ever had, bar none.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Well, it was close enough to Thanksgiving that I think this qualifies. In fact, I was on my way back to Chicago for Thanksgiving and driving through Wyoming: beef country. Everywhere there were signs for beef and steak places and I'd just read some James Michener book that had a great scene with Colorado cattlemen sitting around eating big, thick, rare, aged steaks and fried potatoes and I thought we should stop and get us some nice, fresh, prime, beef.

We didn't look too much like city slickers, no, no way. Me with with my curly hair and beard ("Jewy Jewison" Jon Daley would have called me) and my van with Illinois plates. We found some little roadside place perched on a hill that claimed to have the best steaks around (and of course, they wouldn't lie, would they?) and went in.

It was one of those places that had lamps made out of pistols and lariats and dead animal heads on the wall--too tacky to even be camp. I should have suspected trouble when the waiter called the cook out to look at us. He seemed to have a glss eye and looked like the kind of chef who's called "Cookie," as in "Cookie, these beans need more damned lard!"

We ordered steak and were all set to dig into some prime, fresh-off-the-steer beef and so didn't pay much attention to the fact that the fat on the meat was kind of yellowish ("They're aged" I told my girl) and the meat itself had a kind of rainbow sheen. They didn't taste all that good either, but that must have been because we just weren't used to really fresh meat. I was sure they had to be grade A choice otherwise why would they have cost so damned much?

We were about thirty miles away when the nausea kicked in and our bodies went into Violent Protracted Purge mode, the kind where you can just see the yellow light flashing in your eyes and hear the klaxon horns going off in your stomach like when a submarine crash dives in the movies. We just made it to Smitty's High Plains Inn before the eruptions occurred, and we spent a pleasant night moaning at each other to get the hell out of the bathroom already.

We staggered out in the morning and were dedicated vegans for the rest of the trip. Word must have gotten around on the sagebrush grapevine too, because the cattle we passed seemed to look at is with expressions of grim satisfaction as we drove by.

It just proved to me that you don't have to go to the big city to get ripped off big time.

 

[Guest]

 

[shereads]

The first Thanksgiving disaster: accepting that dinner invitation from the PIlgrims.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Jammies, that's a great one from your friend. It gave me a wonderful feel for the family, and I loved his poor dear mother for trying to defend his gluepotatoes. Best to you both -

Shanglan

 

[Guest]

 

[Just_John1]

Two concepts which don't mix, Flour dust and gas stove. (My sisters first try at cooking a Turkey Dinner at her place. I never laughed so hard in my life.)

Cat

Now that made me laugh!

 

[Unsung Muse]

My Brother-in-Law's Mother went through a "crafts phase" a couple of years ago. She had custom decorated a large glass platter for the holidays and sent it with him, loaded with homemade cookies, as a kind family-to-family token to our Thanksgiving dinner. It was quite lovely, as far as such handcrafted things go -- tripped out in cellophane and tied up tight with a festive bow.

It made a five-hour trek by car and then sat in the middle of the table as the centerpiece, until after dinner the following day.

At the tail-end of the gluttony, as the coffee brewed and pies were sliced and circulated, the large glass platter was unwrapped to reveal heaps of big soft homemade oatmeal cookies. Stuffed or not, everyone dug in!

Within few short minutes we had all gone white-faced -- exchanging silent strained and confused looks at first (trying not to offend the absentee gift-giver), but soon giving in to open grimaces and moans -- holding our heads and tummies. Admitting to the abrupt onset of pounding headaches and queasiness, we all began inspecting the half-eaten cookies in our hands. The strange scene soon spawned uncontrollable laughter, as we – woozy and lightheaded -- squeezed our eyes shut and rubbed our temples… tried to focus blurred vision and concentration. It was an intense, but wildly unpleasant ‘high’. My Brother-in-Law was sniffing at the large remaining pile of cookies on the plate in the center of the table and making odd faces, trying to access a memory.

"I know that smell", he kept repeating aloud to himself, searching his brain. A couple others around the table were nodding, trying to place it too...

"Airplane Glue? Model Airplane Glue!"
Triumph. Recognition. Collective concurrence.

As it turned out, the crafty adornment of the glass platter had involved of adhering layers of colored tissue paper to the underside of the glass... in wrapping up the plate (obviously, far too soon), the cellophane created a seal -- trapping the strong glue fumes in with the cookies, where they were evidently absorbed.

Sadly, we were too late to prevent the delivery of the six other decorative toxic cookie platters that holiday weekend, but the incident did spawn a brand new running in-law-joke (the kind someone just has to bring up at each and every occasion regardless of how many times everyone in the room has heard it before). It’s become a real family favorite for razzing the Brother-in-Law: “That time your mom tried to poison us…”

 

[SlickTony]

Two concepts which don't mix, Flour dust and gas stove. (My sisters first try at cooking a Turkey Dinner at her place. I never laughed so hard in my life.)

Cat

Yes, grain dust is highly flammable, as this site indicates. I was looking for the story of the Goodpasture explosion of 1976, because it's the one I remember. I didn't witness it, but I was in the front yard when I heard thunder. What was remarkable about that was that there were no storms in the area. I later found out that this was when the Goodpasture grain elevator exploded. 9 people were killed.

 

[SlickTony]

I don't suppose, Cloudy, that one might talk you into posting a recipe for your chicken and dumplings? I have a terrible weakness for that dish - terrible because no one in my family or friends knows how to cook it. I've thought about trying cookbooks, but not knowing even generally how dumplings are made, I don't know what distinguishes a good recipe.

Shanglan

What further complicates this issue is that there seems to be two kinds of dumpling. There is a fluffy cloudy kind of dumpling that sits on the top of the chicken broth, and that is the kind I knew about.

I came up in Houston, TX but was raised by northerners.

Most of the time I was in school, my mother packed me a lunch rather than give me money for lunch at the school cafeteria, but I took an occasional meal there. One time the menu featured chicken and dumplngs. Well, I liked chicken and dumplings, and I was expecting something I was familiar with. Imagine my shock when I found these heavy, lumpy, paste-like things in with the chicken and gravy. Needless to say they did not float. I figured that something disastrous had happened in the kitchen, like the baking powder had been left out, but then I found out that this kind of dumpling is made on purpose.