Kids' Kitchen Disasters
Kids' Kitchen Disasters
Do your kids help out in the kitchen -- with occasionally disastrous results?
By Toby Reiter
You might be a fabulous mom and a top-notch chef, but all bets are off once kids enter the kitchen. We asked parents from the AOL and CafeMom.com communities to share stories of their own kids jumping in to "help" them cook. Read on for a taste of the delicious disarray kids can cause, and post your kiddie culinary calamities in the comments below.
Kids Kitchen Disasters
"My 2- and 3-year-old daughters decided they wanted to surprise me and make a cake. They went into the kitchen and proceeded to make a cake in the middle of the kitchen floor. They cracked eggs, put flour in the eggs, and poured milk over into the flour and eggs. They started stirring it all together right there in the middle of the kitchen floor. No bowls used at all...just the kitchen floor! Needless to say it was a pure mess."
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"I'm a stickler for stickiness, so this story is ironic! One day when I was feeding the kids, I gave my oldest the duty of pouring the juice. Why?! She poured herself some juice, spilled it, cleaned that up and then poured her brother some juice. He spilled his and we cleaned that up too. I poured myself some juice, and we all just burst out laughing -- it was so funny, because we knew it was going to spill. As soon as I put the apple juice down…bam! There it went on the floor, my cup and the apple juice container. We were laughing so hard for a good 10 minutes. The table and the floor were so sticky -- ew, I hate that -- but it was funny."
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"Two nights ago, my 12-year-old son decided to make "real" hot chocolate by heating milk and adding cocoa and sugar. He got the pan out, put milk in it, turned the burner on and left the kitchen. I smelled something odd, so I questioned him and he remarked that he'd spilled milk on the burner. Not a minute later, the kitchen filled with acrid smoke. Turns out he'd set the timer and put it on the back burner behind the milk pan, and then turned the back burner on HIGH by accident! My poor timer suffered death by melting."
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"My son and I were decorating mini cakes and cookies for a holiday, and I had one of those tubs of sprinkles. At one point, I told him to turn around and grab it since we needed more. His little elbow bumped it and they went everywhere! Those little sprinkles just flew, I swear. To make matters worse, they were the chocolate ones…so when people came over, if they saw some sprinkles we may have missed, they thought they were bugs. One day my son's grandma was stepping on one furiously until I told her it was a darn sprinkle! But they really did look like bugs…I got chills bending over and putting them into a dust pan."
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"When my son was about 4, he made us breakfast at about 4:00 am. Against the wall of our kitchen. With a dozen eggs, ketchup, mustard, Parmesan cheese and mayo. You could see he had started cracking the eggs in a pan, but found the wall was much more fun. The ketchup and mustard stains on the wall could never be completely removed. He was so proud of himself!"
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"So I decided to make potato leek soup last Thanksgiving. I had transferred the soup into the blender, but was looking in the cabinet for the cover to the blender when my son Josh came over and pushed the "blend" button -- bam! Soup ALL over the kitchen...it made its way up to the ceiling fan blades! We were finding splatter marks months later in the oddest of places! Thankfully, the soup didn't splatter on Josh -- he knew to run away once he had done it!"
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"I thought I had taught my daughter all about measurements, so I didn't watch her put the salt into the pie crust. When the family sat down at dinner to eat the absolutely beautiful blueberry pie, we dug in with gusto. But pretty soon we were all chewing in slow motion, as we tried to get beyond the crust that was so salty it made your teeth gritty. There was no way to be polite…it was awful. Later, I asked my daughter if she knew what the small "t" meant in a recipe. "Tablespoon?" she asked suspiciously. Mystery solved. Pie discarded. Lesson learned...maybe."
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"We always stressed to our two young daughters how important it was never to play with the knobs on the stove, but apparently we should have had that chat with our dog, Venus, as well. One day our cat Mercury (we have a celestial theme going in our home) was playing on the countertops beyond the dog's reach, leaving her whining in frustrated impotence. (Venus, a 50-pound Border Collie mix, is forbidden to jump onto the counteres.) When the gloating cat leapt onto the stove, though, the chase got the better of Venus, who jumped up to follow the cat, inadvertently turning a knob and lighting one of the auto-ignitions. "Mom, Venus set the cat on fire," we heard our horrified kids yell, as the smell of singed cat hair wafted out of the kitchen. Sure enough, seconds later a smoldering ball of flames went streaking by. Fortunately the flames extinguished themselves almost immediately with no injury to the very disgruntled cat, but to this day he doesn't go near the stove -- and I'm sure Venus thinks back with satisfaction on the day she got the last laugh on her tormentor."
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"Not exactly a disaster…more about us being over-indulgent parents. When my son Aaron was 3 or 4, he loved to make the salad dressing, and we let him make it with olive oil and whatever he wanted from the spice cabinet -- peppermint extract, cinnamon, curry powder, etc. Then when he wasn't looking, we'd toss his version, make our own and pretend it was his -- oohing and aahing over it. Did I mention we were over-indulgent?"
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"My son Charlie is 6, and loves to be in the kitchen. But being an enterprising young fellow, he doesn't like to follow recipes, but rather to invent them, or at least put his own spin on them. A cookbook author friend was coming to dinner. My two boys decided to make dishes from his cookbook to surprise him, and while Jack - age 9 - basically followed a recipe for a shrimp dish (with my help), Charlie decided to use my friend's recipe for blueberry muffins as a springboard for his own muffin recipe. He traded in the blueberries for chocolate chips, but also decided to switch the proportions for baking powder and flour. It's hard to say what was worse, the texture or the flavor, but we all smiled and choked down a few bites. He did notice that these weren't the best muffins he had ever made, but was still pleased with his 'invention.'"
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Recent Comments
Asterlekar 08:02:12 PM Oct 19 2009
CLAP YOUR HANDS THREE TIMES AND SAY THE NAME OF THE PERSON YOU WANT TO BE WITH FOREVER....AND THIS MONDAY THAT PERSON WILL SUDDENLY REALIZE HOW MUCH YOU MEAN TO THEM!!! DONT DO THIS ON A PERSON WHO WILL THINK THE OPPOSITE AND WILL NEVER WANT TO SEE YOU AGAIN!!! IT WORKED FOR ME!!! JUST TRY IT!!!
Meanjeanne8 04:35:09 PM Sep 27 2009
Years of cooking and baking have taught me to respect food and handle all preparations with utmost care. Children should be taught that at the first lesson! I do not trust any food prepared by children without proper suprivision.Meanjeanne8@aol.com
J3nny2hot4u2envy 04:26:49 PM Sep 22 2009
hi again my email address is jennyernest24@yahoo.comthank you
J3nny2hot4u2envy 04:26:22 PM Sep 22 2009
hi my name is jenny ernest and i am not a good cook but i am dying to learn i am 18 years old and i want to be a professional before i turn 20 yrs old
Dreamseeker72 02:02:09 AM Sep 16 2009
I remember in the early days of our marriage, my hubby was going to cook supper so I wouldn't have to trouble myself. He and I both like Hamburger Helper well enough, so he started heating a skillet to cook the ground beef. Because the seasoning mix was never spicy enough, he thought he'd add some cayenne to the recipe. No one told him you can't add pure cayenne pepper to a scalding-hot skillet (He has turned the burner to HIGH, his usual setting.). We instantly had vaporized cayenne in that small kitchen and felt like we had been pepper sprayed! I ended up crawling out on the roof of the porch, clutching our dog in my arms, crying and laughing, while he was left to open any other window he could get to and fan out the noxious odor.
Maza 01:15:07 AM Sep 16 2009
He'd been helping me cook since he was 2. Being the wonderful mother I am, I certainly didn't want to do anything to stifle his creative meanderings in the kitchen - after all, his favorite television show was the 'Frugal Gourmet", so with trepidation and encouragement from the angelic, smiling face of my (at the time) 7 year old son, I tried his latest concoction - Grilled Garlic Oranges. They were, without a doubt, the most disgusting and foul tasting things I've ever tried, but - remember - wonderful mother here - I grimaced and told him, "good effort, but let's think about something else" He's now a fantastic chef and comes up with great meals for me. Every once in a while I remind him of how my "wonderful motherfulness" led to his success, LOL.
FANJG24FAN 12:16:16 AM Sep 16 2009
One night when I was 16 I cooked dinner for my 2 brothers and I, but 1 of them stayed at a friends house a little longer then usual so wasn't home at dinner time. Knowing it wouldn't be too much longer after dinner I had put the food into tupperware so the leftovers could be put in the fridge after he ate but had put them in the oven (to this day not sure why I put it in the oven) til he got home. He got home served himself dinner and instead of putting them in the frige put them back in the oven. We found this out when mom preheated the oven the next night when she was fixing dinner. It took years for the plastic to melt away and quit smelling.
anthunter911 11:36:36 PM Sep 15 2009
CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE (This story is 100% true)It was the summer of 5th grade and my best friend and I decided to make cookies. We went through all of the right steps, mixing this and spraying that. Everything was going great until my friend had to go shopping with her mom, which left me with the mess to clean up. The last thing to be put away was a can of non-stick spray that my friend left on a burner (that she didn't turn all of the way off from lunch earlier). I picked up the can and dropped it immediately because it was hot. It hit the open oven door and started to roll down toward the ground. I don't know why I ran, but I did. The next thing I heard was a loud BANG! and everything went black. Needless to say, on impacting the floor the can shot off like a rocket, riccoched off of my ankle, hit the fridge door (which left a dent) and put a hole in the ceiling! One trip to the ER, 3 mos. on crutches, a scar on my ankle the size of a baseball and ONE HELL OF A KITCHEN STORY!!
anthunter911 11:21:29 PM Sep 15 2009
CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE!!! (This incident is 100% true!)It was the summer of 5th grade and my best friend and I decided to make cookies. We went through all of the steps, mixing this and spraying that and everything was going well until my friend left to go shopping, which left me with the mess to clean up. The last thing I had to put away was a can of non-stick spray that my friend left on the burner she didn't turn off all of the way from lunch earlier. Needless to say the can was hot and burned my hand immediately. I dropped it and it rolled down the open oven door. I don't know why I ran but I did. The next thing I heard was a loud BANG! and everything went black. The thing shot off like a rocket! As it turned out, the can exploded on impact, riccocheted off of my ankle, hit the fridge door (leaving a big dent there) and put a whole in the ceiling. A trip to the ER, 3 mos. on crutches, a permanent scar from being seared by a hot can... AND ONE HELL OF A STORY!!!
Brat46131 09:49:16 PM Sep 15 2009
Last Thanksgiving my sister-in-law decided to make banana bread and let my then 2 yr old help. She turned her back for one minute and the measuring cup had been moved. Later when the bread was done we all had a slice and it tasted horrible and was very chewy and heavy. As it turns out my 2 yr old had put an extra cup of flour into the mixture. LOL
