Holiday Cooking Mishaps?

[CanMan]

The same one that forgets to turn on the oven.

[Cook Chatty Cathy]

Wow- many great stories, all!

Having cooked in commercial kitchens for years- I can tell a few good stories too- however, we in the culinary union are sworn to secrecy and prohibited from ever sharing bad secrets that might turn folks' stomachs so badly that they never eat out ever again! Ha!

I never took that oath...chuckle chuckle!
So there was a guy that I once knew and he relayed this story to me, he worked at a milk bottling company, his job was at the vats of buttermilk and he had to make sure the paddles stirred the stuff constantly and did not hang or quit churning. Well he smoked cigars and kept them in his shirt pocket. Lo and behold one night the paddles quit turning properly he had to lean over the vat and get those darned paddles going again. Now he got it done and decided to go have his customary good cigar break when he was done. Went outside & reached for his cigars and they were gone, vanished, and it slowly dawned on him...THE BUTTERMILK VAT He ran back in and lo & behold there was tobacco churning away with that big old vat of Buttermilk! He got scarred and found a big net and started scooping tobacco out and finally got all of it out! Next the delima hit him, what to do next tell or not to tell...well in the South and no UNION protection for Dairy Factory workers and for fear of loosing his job...he never uttered a word. And that buttermilk shipped as any normal batch would. And nary a soul was wise to his misdeed>>>>except me And now 20 some odd years after the fact now everyone at SpicePlace knows!!!

[Cook Chatty Cathy]

The same one that forgets to turn on the oven.

LMAO!!! Darn............

[CanMan]

......and lo & behold there was tobacco churning away with that big old vat of Buttermilk!

I never took that oath either and your story reminds me of my early days in the Navy having mess duty very early in the morning after a long night of typical sailor behavior. Three of us are sitting around a huge vat cracking eggs in to it for the morning's scrambled eggs. It's bad enough when cigarette ash drops in, and occasionally a cigarette that was hanging loosely from hung over lips, or the already forming embryo, but this one morning the guy next to me suddenly empties his whole stomach from the night before in to the eggs. There was too many eggs to toss out, so we quickly swirled the mess into the eggs and kept our silence.

And that is one of my 'nicer' stories. Anybody that has been in the service knows.

For the rest of my Navy career I refused to eat scrambled eggs.

[Mama Mangia]

Can Man -

all I can say is OMG!

I've seen my fair share in restaurants - I dont' even want to go there.

[Cook Chatty Cathy]

CanMan Oh how terrible>>>GROSS!!! Poor guys that ate that CRAP! I would have had to toss them no matter how many dozen there were!

I can honsetly say when people eat at a restaurant they are totally having to put faith in that cook. Gosh another reason I do not like eat out that often.

At Longhorn Steak House when I worked there our ramekins were always greasy and I hated the fact we served anyone out of those damned things! They reaked of grease and yuck!

Should we not in fact figure out safe foods to eat out:

Baked Potatoes Uncut I will cut it and prepare it to be eaten &
Baked Sweet Potatoes.
French Fries served in a bag (grease is so hot it kills all known pathogens) and the paper bag is hopefully clean as it comes out of it's pkg.
Japanese Steak House where you watch your food being prepared in front of your eyes Yeah!!! my #1


Can anyone else add to these?

[jglass]

Stories like these make you never want to step foot inside a restaurant ever again. They kinda make you wonder about even eating at someone elses house lol. I have a real thing about cooks sticking their fingers in dishes to taste them. They do that tons on the FN. My motto is I cook my food no matter who it is for the way I would want it prepared for me. When I check the seasoning on my dishes I use a spoon and a different spoon each time. That whole finger in the food is so unsanitary.
When we have the Christmas dinner at my fil's the kids are so bad to go in there where the food is on the table and stick their fingers into the dishes or just touch everything and they always have colds or worse. Makes you wonder if they have ever been taught any manners. These are children 8 and over who are old enough to know better.
I recently got a fondue pot and would love to make a chocolate fondue for the holiday dinner but I can already imagine the nightmare it would cause. If I spend money on igredients for a chocolate fondue Im gonna tick off some parents cause if I see one finger going in Im gonna say something.

[jglass]

Yuck as I type this Paula Deen is laughing on the FN about loosing a fake fingernail in a batch of dressing at her restaurant. She sifted though the dressing found the fake nail and I assume fed it to customers. Otherwise she would have just thrown it out.

[scubalaydee]

I attempted for the first time chocolate covered pretzels, and used the wrong chocolate, you can imagine what happened to my disaster. I got better with time and my chocolate research

[jglass]

Are they good? I was thinking of making some. I love salty and sweet together.