Great Moments in Cooking, Vol. 1

Great Moments in Cooking

Moment #1

I was making matza meal rolls from my mother-in-law's recipe. First you boil water with a little oil in it, then you add matza meal and eggs. It says "let cool" and "form into balls," but I was in a hurry, and not thinking, so I stupidly ignored the “let cool” part and stuck both my hands into the mixture and it was HOT! I yanked them out instantly but one little piece of dough stuck to my finger and now it's burned.

Moment #2

I took a roast out of the oven, and a half-hour or so later I took it downstairs to put it in the chest freezer. I opened the top and started to put the pan in—and the pan tipped and the gravy spilled all over the inside of the freezer and all over the other food. I had to take everything out, set it down on the basement floor (if we didn't have bugs down there before, we will now!), and wipe out the inside of the freezer with a sponge and a roll of paper towels.

By the time I had found a sponge and some paper towels, the gravy that had dripped onto the bottom and sides of the freezer had frozen into, basically, beef-flavored slush. So I had to use an ice scraper. The freezer is about 2-1/2 feet tall, and I had to lean in really far and my toes were barely touching the floor, and I almost fell into the beef-flavored slush trying to reach the bottom.

Moment #3

While I was busy scraping the beef-flavored slush, I forgot that I had had left other things cooking in the oven, and I only remembered when something dripped onto the floor of the oven and burned, and the smoke alarm went off, and when I ran upstairs, the kitchen was full of smoke and I had to put on the fan and open the windows, even though it was only 55 degrees outside.

Moment #4

So the chicken that was in the oven is now slightly burned; there’s no gravy for the roast; but I could serve beef sherbet for dessert!