FantasticDisFamily
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- Joined
- Jul 26, 2002
- Messages
- 3,061
Ok, we ALL have one of these - that story about a cooking disaster usually, although I have heard some about decorating too! That one that gets told EVERY Thanksgiving - the lore of your family. Let's share! And I'll start.
My mom was NOT a cook - she had many wonderful talents but cooking was definitely not a strength. However, when she was healthy enough to do so she would open the house to whomever wanted, needed a place to be. My aunts (and I as soon as I was big enough to learn what to do) new early on that pitching in made for a better meal! Mom never did master a turkey and so she usually had responsibility for the location (their house could hold dozens depending on how we set it up) and something easy - like mashed potatoes.
Now mashed potatoes are impossible to screw up right? Not so! This was probably 20-25 years ago now and one of those years when there were probably 25-30 people as my brother and I were in college and we dragged along a bunch of our friends who were too far away to go home. On Wednesday night my dad, brother, me, and the friends started setting up the tables and getting all of that done. Little did we realize (the kitchen was in a different part of the house) mom was peeling about 20 pounds of potatoes into a HUGE pot - to save time in the morning. The next morning while about a dozen people are running around trying to get through the showers for church she took the pot out of the refrigerator, set it on the stove and turned on the burner. It came to a nice boil and just before leaving for church she checked the potatoes, decided they were "nearly done" and turned off the stove with the idea that they would finish cooking in the hot water.
After church the group that stayed at the house tumbles back in along with numerous other aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. In the midst of all this WONDERFUL chaos three of us ended up around mom's big double stove (right cooking is NOT her specialty but she had a great, huge stove). One aunt is carving the turkey, another is making gravy and ME - I'm charged with mashing this mountain of spuds.
Well they were rapidly turning into something that resembled WALLPAPER PASTE! Yes, I did drain the water. Apparently as it turned out Mom had heard that if you peel potatoes ahead of time and store them in salted water in the refirgerator you can cook them later. But what she didn't do was DRAIN off the water and cook them in fresh and the idea of letting the sit in the hot and rapidly cooling water to "finish cooking" was the death knell - ALL the starch pulled out so it was just this watery goo left.
We did put a bowl of this on the table more for giggles and grins than because we expected anyone to eat it, and naturally with all those aunts pitching in and knowing there was a big group of college students (my family is of the Dutch heritage) there was MORE than enough to eat and this is one of our favorite holiday tales.
Next?
Deb
My mom was NOT a cook - she had many wonderful talents but cooking was definitely not a strength. However, when she was healthy enough to do so she would open the house to whomever wanted, needed a place to be. My aunts (and I as soon as I was big enough to learn what to do) new early on that pitching in made for a better meal! Mom never did master a turkey and so she usually had responsibility for the location (their house could hold dozens depending on how we set it up) and something easy - like mashed potatoes.
Now mashed potatoes are impossible to screw up right? Not so! This was probably 20-25 years ago now and one of those years when there were probably 25-30 people as my brother and I were in college and we dragged along a bunch of our friends who were too far away to go home. On Wednesday night my dad, brother, me, and the friends started setting up the tables and getting all of that done. Little did we realize (the kitchen was in a different part of the house) mom was peeling about 20 pounds of potatoes into a HUGE pot - to save time in the morning. The next morning while about a dozen people are running around trying to get through the showers for church she took the pot out of the refrigerator, set it on the stove and turned on the burner. It came to a nice boil and just before leaving for church she checked the potatoes, decided they were "nearly done" and turned off the stove with the idea that they would finish cooking in the hot water.
After church the group that stayed at the house tumbles back in along with numerous other aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. In the midst of all this WONDERFUL chaos three of us ended up around mom's big double stove (right cooking is NOT her specialty but she had a great, huge stove). One aunt is carving the turkey, another is making gravy and ME - I'm charged with mashing this mountain of spuds.
Well they were rapidly turning into something that resembled WALLPAPER PASTE! Yes, I did drain the water. Apparently as it turned out Mom had heard that if you peel potatoes ahead of time and store them in salted water in the refirgerator you can cook them later. But what she didn't do was DRAIN off the water and cook them in fresh and the idea of letting the sit in the hot and rapidly cooling water to "finish cooking" was the death knell - ALL the starch pulled out so it was just this watery goo left.We did put a bowl of this on the table more for giggles and grins than because we expected anyone to eat it, and naturally with all those aunts pitching in and knowing there was a big group of college students (my family is of the Dutch heritage) there was MORE than enough to eat and this is one of our favorite holiday tales.
Next?
Deb
At that point my sister couldn't contain herself anymore & started yelling "Do you like it Daddy? Do you? Do you? I helped!" while my father was 
This was the first of many times that my mother saved one of us from being "killed" by our father. 
It was always hard for Dad to punish us when my mother was literally 
(Yes, I found a keeper)
She doe snot use a recipe of course. Next morning she calls and is making her crusts, so she measured everything and gave us as close as she could to a recipe. I then gave the info to dh.
