The intersection of cooking and fiction

Always a fun topic for those of us who are into both fantasy and cooking, right?

Here’s a post by Patricia McKillip over at tor.com: Gingerbread Bricks, Cherry-Eating Cats, and Other Culinary Disasters

My most vivid cooking memory, even after so many years, is setting my brother on fire with my Cherries Jubilee.

Yes, we’ve all been there, I’m sure.

My favorite “disaster” in McKillip’s post is the cherry-eating cat, and let me say, what odd tastes that creature had. I would have handled the problem in precisely the same way McKillip did, I’m sure.

My own most memorable cooking disaster . . . this was many many years ago and yet we still remember it . . . was putting a tablespoon of salt in pancake batter rather than a teaspoon. Oops! After that I was very clear about which was which. I suppose I must have been about eight or something. My family ate pancakes for breakfast for quite a while after adding enough of the rest of the ingredients to triple the recipe and bring the salt down to tolerable levels.

The first time I made yeast bread by myself, I didn’t realize you’re supposed to let it rise twice. Wow, was that loaf heavy. Dense as a neutron star, practically.

The first time I made white bean chili, I had NO IDEA how much chili you would wind up with if you started with a full pound of dry white beans. Let me tell you, that is enough chili to last all winter. Not a disaster, but still.

How about the rest of you? What’s your favorite memory of a kitchen mishap?

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