BOTTOM CHEF
or
MY THIRTEEN WORST CULINARY DISASTERS
(My 39th Edition of Thursday Thirteen)

I think by now most of my readers know I don't cook.  Sometimes I like to cook, if no one is pressuring me.  When I want to, I am a very good cook, but I only want to cook maybe once a year. But - make me cook and I go nuts.  Then, I hate it.  When I want to I do better egg rolls and Chinese food than most restaurants.  I do incredible spaghetti sauce.  I cannot make Mexican food. I can make baklava.  I can make fancy filo appetizers and even baklava.  I cannot cook a steak, even on a grill!


1.  Floyd (my brother) and I put paprika in the mashed potatoes for an Easter Sunday dinner party.  The lid fell off and we had dark red mashed paprika potatoes!

2.  My sister's rat terrier, Happy, refused to eat my pancakes!  (No one else did, either - still can't make 'em).

3.  I was having a spaghetti dinner for Lindsey Graham and select supporters the night his first campaign office opened.  After thirty minutes trying to cook the pasta, I finally went out to the patio in tears.  My mother and Nancy Fedder, Lindsey's business partner's wife were hilarious.  They drove to my mother's house and cooked more pasta for me - in about 15 minutes! (I still can't fix pasta).

3.  I was hosting a dinner party and cooking Chinese (which I do very well).  The AH maintenance guy at the condos turned off the water - for a week to repair pipes.  I lost my sense of humor.  The priest thought it was hilarious. 

4.  Do you know what happens when you put a hot pan of mashed potatoes on a glass top patio table?  I do now.  Broke it.

5.  MY WORST DISASTER: Was making monkey bread last winter.  The pan dripped.  I caught the self-cleaning oven on fire.  Poof - no more oven!

6.  Trust me, I can not make minestrone soup.

7.  CHRISTMAS 1999 & THE INFAMOUS MASHED POTATOES FIGHT or never cook in the same galley kitchen on Christmas morning when you and your mother both have pneumonia.  Fr. Anna bravely threw herself between the two of us before we came to blows, and finished cooking dinner.

8.  I can't even make Jiffy Pop.

9. I cannot cook popcorn in a microwave.

10.  I cannot cook popcorn on the stove-top.  I catch it on fire.

11.  Did you know if you are popping microwave popcorn in the microwave and accidentally spray water into it, that the microwave blows up?  Believe it or not! Good thing John Vega was changing out my water heater at the time and is an electrician or .....!

12.  I call it the Pinto Beans That Engulfed Western North Carolina.  It was way back in the early 1970's and 4th of July week.  I couldn't find any pinto beans so my mother decided we would just cook dried ones.  We were having a lot of company so I poured a 5 pound bag of dried pinto beans in an appropriately sized (soup pot) and started cooking them.  And I soon divided them into a second pot, and a third pot, and a fourth pot, then threw out the original pot and dumped some from the other pots back into it.  Never Again!

13.  Hard boiled eggs.  Forget it.  I can't cook 'em.  I don't even try after so many disasters!

P. S.  For church "pot luck" I order pizza! (Seriously).