Holiday cooking mishaps

Welcome Julia! Enjoy your stay here with all the delicious talk and sharing between helpful and generous members!

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Sounds like a job for a food processor (or maybe better yet, a meat grinder if you have one, with a very coarse plate or even just the blade and no plate at all…)

I hate filberts and with good reason. My older brother and a friend once pinned me in a closet and shoved a filbert up a nostril, sucker was tough to get out, of course I received no help.

Sorry your brother broke a tooth, ok not really.

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Oh no @jcostiones! I can understand your aversion to that nut, under the circumstances; it’s amazing we survive our sibling abuse/teasing sometimes.

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The ex once made a beautiful pecan pie, perfectly prepared and could have been on the cover of any food magazine.

It was made with salt instead of sugar. I gave her an A for effort.

She also once loaded up the garbage disposal with peelings from mashed potatoes.

I was elected to clean out the mess and with company coming over she got more and more agitated with my progress while I had to constantly remind her she didn’t marry a plumber.

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Good grief. That’s creepy @jcostiones. My baking has improved and my brother loves roasted nuts. Sorry my story conjured a bad memory for you.

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It’s not so bad, something to laugh about now.

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Not quite holiday… but my daughter, a Christmas eve baby, changed her birthday dinner request for the first time this year. No longer is it tacos, but ramen. Which is fine, and easy enough even when I fancy it up.

What I forgot was that it’s not just the three of us - and one guest doesn’t do gluten. So it went from noodle / veg pot, broth pot, eggs pot to noodle / veg pot, GF noodle / veg pot, broth pot, GF broth pot, eggs pot. More pots than burners!

I managed to juggle everything so hot food was on the table for everyone (hot broth means noodle timing isn’t so critical), but made a much much bigger mess of the kitchen than I had anticipated.

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My daughter is a Christmas eve eve baby! She was supposed to be New Year’s eve. Also lots of juggling, and not nearly as successful! Good job!

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Definitely a mishap rather than disaster: Thanksgiving 2012 or 2013 my sister-in-law and I were cooking together while the rest of the family, twelve in all, went to some local event. The range (stove and oven) had an integrated control panel with temperature controls, clock, timers and such. Turning off a beeping timer turned off the oven with the turkey in it. We didn’t notice for half an hour. sigh Saving the turkey was as simple as turning the oven back on. Deciding what the end delay would be and correct the timing for everything else was a bit of a scramble.

I bought “healthy” faux Pop-Tarts at Whole Foods once. They tasted like cardboard with library paste.

I am a sailor. Mostly I use “jeepers,” “gee whillakers,” and “Jiminy Cricket.”

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Really?? I guess I’m BAD - the words were out before I could say oh darn! BTW, do you also not whistle aboard your craft? I’ve heard some sailors are superstitious about that.

You did read that I didn’t want to besmirch the sailing profession by my comment? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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I don’t generally whistle but not because of the superstition about bringing on bad weather. I simply never developed the habit. I’m safe from the prohibition about sticking a knife in the mast as the boats I deliver have aluminum or carbon masts. If the schedule says leave port on Friday then we do. Not terribly superstitious I do have my own mantras: Never go offshore without pressing up fuel and water. Never miss a chance to eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, or charge something. Sail fast and eat well. Have one more crew member than you think you need. As skipper the only acceptable response to being woken is “I’m coming.”

I can assure you that I do not feel besmirched in any way.

That does remind me of another holiday mishap. My wife and I were in the Bahamas one year for Christmas. This was long ago and some provisions were hard to come by, especially in the Out Islands. We bought a tinned ham for Christmas dinner. It was completely inedible - slimy and wet and just bad. We fed it to the fish and added big stuffed omelets to the sides we’d made.

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Thanks for sharing the tinned ham story @Auspicious; being a West coast person, our typical island vacations are in Hawaii. The food history and scarcity of stuff fascinates me, how they were almost completely dependent on imports for most everything. (And still are for lots of stuff) Things have been changing a lot over the past two decades, but no commercial dairy on any of the islands. Might explain why my White Russian on Halloween was almost undrinkable, despite having the bartender tweak it. Probably made with shelf stable nonfat milk. Yuck!!

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I worked on sailboats in the 70s with my ex, mostly in the Windward islands. I’m sure it’s different now but your comments made me recall the odd/old dairy and cheeses that were (slow) shipped from England. Ugh. But the fruits, vegetables and fish were amazing. I remember some island peanuts sold in old heinakin bottles, unlike any I’ve had in the us. Very crispy, I loved them and I’m not a big peanut fan.

My experience in the Bahamas and Caribbean has been that mixers are more expensive than liquor so the drinks are pretty strong.

Food at the far end of a slow supply chain is interesting.

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My mom’s family is from Nevis! Husband from Jamaica. Apparently condensed milk in a can is used like in some applications…like breakfast.

That would depend in which bit of Europe. The late eating is usually a thing for the southern countries where it’s hot. For those of us in the north, “late” might often be 8pm.

I take your point! In fact, in Sweden, Norway or Finland it could well be 4-5 pm lol. My relatives living in the US Arctic, eat way early, as well as retire to sleep not long afterwards.

I can tell you, I am as far north as I would ever want to live, in fact, we are at about the same latitude I think.

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My bed time is 8.30p whenever I can manage.

The perfect bedtime, as far as I’m concerned! That was always my target when still working, and needed to be up early.