I love my mother, but she is the definition of "Funniest Cooking Disasters".

The way to a man's heart is through his stomach. Since she could not cook she had her landlady do it for her, and passed it off as her own. She got her man, and thank goodness Dad had the sense not to let his maid Rosa go.

Growing up, Rosa would cook extra and leave it for Mom to reheat. After melting so many pots to the stove top and catching the kitchen cabinets on fire, it was time for a new stove. Mom was so happy with her new stove, but when Dad came home from work and saw it, he had the store pick it back up - in its place a duplicate stove with one of those new expensive see through doors. Dad told everyone he wanted Mom to "see" the food she was burning - he had his revenge.

Mom asked for help from the local high school, but instead of signing her up for home economics classes, they made her the teacher - a small misunderstanding.

She learned to cook some while teaching the course (but Dad still held on to Rosa - thanks Dad!). And she learned to be really economical too, with 5 boys she needed to be. One of her more frugal efforts was to turn a cake pan upside down, decorate it with icing and freeze it. As each son's birthday would come around, she would present the same iced cake pan as our birthday cake, and the cycle would repeat itself.

On Mom and Dad's 50th anniversary, in a very nice restaurant packed with friends, Mom cut a big chunk out of a very expensive cake pan, especially prepared for her - us boy's revenge.

Mom's too old to cook now, Dad could not be happier, and Rosa taught me how to make her spaghetti sauce and biscuits before passing - life is good!

I posted this in another section a long time ago, but recently my friend was visiting and asked me if I still made these!

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Meatball jello squares
Years ago, the first time I made sweet & sour cocktail meatballs, I noticed the sauce wasn't thickening very quickly, so I added some more cornstarch, then put the meatballs & sauce in a casserole dish in the oven to keep warm.

I then joined our guests for a glass of wine, and rather lost track of the time. When I took the dish out of the over (45 minutes later!) the sauce had congealed into a solid, gelatinous mass with the meatballs suspended in it.

I would have been far more embarrassed if one fellow hadn't cut himself a square, ate it, asked for seconds (!) and remarked "Wow, this is great! I've never seen meatball jello before!"

He even requested the "recipe" before leaving! I guess there's no accounting for taste.

Kaye - your story had me laughing and nearly in tears at the end! Thank you for sharing it!. There IS so much to be grateful for and I appreciate you and your family's attitude that year - even after a handful of mishaps!
My short story is about my brother-in-law and his wife. They are great friends of ours (my husband and I) and they wanted to make dinner for us one evening. My husband's brother was making Emeril's famous Philly cheese steak sandwhiches, so of course we thought these had to be good. Unfortunately, my husband's brother is not so much of a cook, or his wife for that matter, and when dinner was served, we ended up biting into really dry, bland cheese steak sandwhiches. We grined and "mmm-ed" while forcefully finishing them. After we went home that night, my husband and I were GRATEFUL that WE DID know how to cook, and or follow a recipe! At least they tried and we still appreciated the invite over for dinner

It's me again...my husband just reminded me about the "Chain Saw Meatloaf." I always cook my meatloaf in the microwave, 20 minutes covered on med/high, 10 minutes uncovered, doused with sauce, on high. My husband and our son had gone to a soccer game, and I was enjoying some "alone time." I got my meatloaf going, put on some nice music, and took a long leisurly bath. I shaved my legs, painted my toenails, etc. The guys got home, starving. I said the meatloaf just needed 10 more minute, then we'd let it stand while I nuked the baked potatoes and heated up a can of green beans. When I got the meatloaf out to put the sauce on, it was VERY small and black. I had set the microwave for two HOURS instead of 20 minutes. Thinking he could salvage it anyway, my husband began carving...TRYING to carve the burnt part off. Finally, he suggested we try carving it with the chain saw. We ate grilled cheese sandwiches that night.

YOU WANNA HEAR SOMETHING FUNNY ,ABOUT 14 YEARS AGO WHEN I HAD JUST GIVEN BIRTH TO MY CHILD MY HUSBAND DECIDED TO COOK FOR ME SINCE I WAS A BIT WEAK, WELL HE DECIDED TO FIX SOME CHICKEN SOUP (IN THE MIDDLE OF A TEXAS SUMMER)
AND BISCUITS FOR ME ...THE SOUP WAS GREAT EXCEPT FOR ONE THING ,HE FORGOT TO PUT IN THE CHICKEN....I NEVER HAD A CHANCE TO EAT THE BISCUITS SINCE HE TAUGHT YOU WHERE SUPPOSE TO FRY THEM IN THE SKILLET...HE SAID THE DIDN'T LOOK RIGHT SO HE DECIDED TO PUT SOME ALREADY MADE BISCUITS IN THE MICROWAVE AND SOMEHOW THEY TURNED TO STONE....GOTTA LUV HIM BECAUSE AT LEAST HE TRIED

Hi!
My name is Jessica Adams. I had so much fun reading about funny cooking disasters and I had a couple of my own to pass along.
When I first moved in with my fiance (now my hubby of almost 6 years) I was only 19 and my cooking abilities were very limited. We pretty much lived on canned soup, scrambled eggs, and hamburger helpers! My husband wanted pinto beans one day, and asked if I knew how to fix them. I didn't want him to think I couldn't cook, so I said yes. But I didn't have a clue! My mama had fixed them often, but I worked in high school, and didn't really do much cooking at home, and I hadn't learned how to fix very much. So I called mama as soon as my husband left for work, and asked her how to fix beans and other things like homemade soup and chili, things like that. I kept the instructions in a notebook hidden from my husband so he wouldn't learn my secret!
And a year or so later when we were married, I had learned to cook a little better. And after our very small wedding, we just had a get together at a little park nearby. We had already lived together, and it just wasn't necessary or financially practical for us to have a big reception. So we had a barbecue. I had boiled eggs that morning to make some potato salad. But when we got home after everything was over, I remembered I hadn't even gotten to make the salad, and I had left the eggs on! They were scorched and smelled HORRID!!! It was a wonder I didn't burn the house down!!
One more really embarassing story is something that happened just recently. A couple months ago, my 8 year old son had to do a diorama of bats in their habitat. So we were going to make a cave for the project. The only thing I could think of to make it with was clay dough. We didn't have any store bought dough, and we only had a few days, so I found a recipe for homemade dough. It called for flour, salt and water. It said to let it dry by setting it out at room temp. for a few days. Well, we needed a cave shape, so I formed it around the end of a soda bottle. After a couple days, it was still doughy and had slid down the bottle. I knew you were supposed to be able to bake some kinds of homemade clay dough, so I thought I would try that. But didn't want to fool with the oven because I wanted to get it done. So I pulled off a little piece of the dough and put it on a plate in the microwave for a minute to see what it would do! I stepped into another room for a second, and my kids started yelling for me. I ran in to see black smoke billowing out of my microwave! Turns out, it was charred into a crusty black ball of gunk! You can't cook play dough! I felt really dumb about this because I have really made very good progress in my cooking! But my granny always says you live and learn! The best part was we were able to come up with a piece of plastic for the cave, and my microwave only stank for a few days!!!

When I was a teen, I did a lot of baking from scratch. My mother kept a huge tin with the flour in it. She would put a bay leaf in the flour to keep the bugs out. Once when making chocolate chip cookies, I accidently sifted the bay leaf with the flour and didn't eve know it. The cookies were baked to perfection then we tasted them. OMG! Talk about awful! All of them landed in the garbage and to this day my siblings kid me about those cookies.

Hi, first time on this site and had to chuckle at the funny stories. When I was younger my mother was working and we were having a spaghetti dinner. I decided to make garlic bread. I slit the loaf and carefully inserted the garlic butter and placed the loaf in the oven to bake...or was it broil...ha ha. We started out baking it. Well that took too long and decided Mom must have broiled her garlic bread. Flames!? Needless to say I learned my lesson and to this day we commonly refer to the "yule log" everytime I make garlic bread.