Here are the official rules for the Kosher By Design Teens and 20-Somethings cookbook giveaway. (If you missed my cookbook review, it's available HERE)
There are TWO (and a half) ways to win. Each individual may enter either or both ways. If you enter both ways, you receive TWO chances to win.
Please follow the rules carefully.
Remember, this is a "yekkish" blog :P
- The first way to enter is to leave a comment on this post with your most embarrassing/funny/interesting food or cooking related story. C'mon, we've all had mishaps in the kitchen. Just read my recent Food Photo Friday, and you get the idea.
- The second way to enter is to take a photo of yourself, or someone in your household preparing any dish from any Kosher By Design Cookbook. Alternately, you can send in a photo of the finished product. Email me the photo to guesswhoscoming2dinner@gmail.com. All photos become the property of Guess Who's Coming To Dinner and may appear in future Food Photo Fridays (unless you specify otherwise, in which case your anonymity/privacy is safe with me... I'm such a pushover... sigh.....). After emailing me the photo, leave a comment to this post telling me that you sent me a photo and describing what it is.
- The "extra half" way of entering (Joey's idea ... he felt very strongly that there should be a competitive aspect to this contest), is that the person whose comment/photo entertains me/makes me laugh the most, will be granted a bonus entry. I will leave a comment before the final drawing stating who the winner of the bonus entry is.
The winner will be chosen by random drawing and will be overseen by several pushy and annoying members of my household (who, surprisingly, are arguing AGAINST a random number generator program, in favor of the old fashioned "numbers in the hat" method...).
Entrants from all over the globe are eligible, so if you live in Timbuktu you're not off the hook.
You may post under a pseudonym (or your real name) without a Google Account, but please email me so that I can associate your email address with your pseudonym. This is to prevent people from entering more than once with a variety of pseudonyms (you know who you are, you sneaky devils...). If you are a regular commenter and I already know your pseudonym(s), no need to email me. I've got you covered.
Submissions will be accepted until 9 pm (New York Time) on October 31st.
Good luck to everyone.
41 comments:
Okay, here goes! I learned an important lesson on labeling early on in my married life. We were staying home for Pesach (maybe for the first time? It's been ... a while.) So most of the food I prepared went into foil pans. I made some roasted potatoes and I also made some jello. Let me tell you jello warmed up does not make for an excellent side dish. Nor do cold potatoes a desert make.
When I was in high school, my mom was working full time. I didn't really cook, but I did what I was assigned. a) Put the Kineret challahs that my mother had tken out to rise that AM in the oven, and take them out half an hour later. b) Slice up raw carrots and cook them on the stove. (I wouldn't touch a raw chicken until right before I got married, when I saw It would probably be necessary so I should learn. Slimy!)
I was pretty busy in high school. I had an unfortunate habit of putting the challahs in the oven, forgetting they were there, and going away fro Shabbos. My parents would come home to whatever was left of them hours later.
One time, I did the same thing with the carrots. I actually remembered after an hour and a half (they took half an hour to cook). I drove home from my friend's house, and found the pot. Empty of water and blackened. And the carrots were GLOWING. Flourescent. Oops- way to almost burn the house down.
This book looks awesome! My husband already wants that sub.
One Hoshanna Rabbo, after davening, we decided to go to the local bakery - with a KAJ hashgocho of course - for the Yom Tov Challos I saw a delicious looking Strawberry Pie in the window, which I bought for Yom Tov. Problem is, they forgot to rinse the detergent off the strawberries! Not only could you taste it - I believe it was Dawn, but someone was actually foaming at the mouth (with the help of a little soda & meringue)!
I put a bag of cinnamon rolls to heat up on the top of the oven on Shabbos, far enough away from the blech that they would just be warmed in time for dessert. When I went to go get them, they feel behind the oven! Good thing I had some melon for dessert as well. ;)
Fun blog!
It was before Rosh Hashana, and as the wife of the Campus Rabbi, I had A LOT of challah to make to feed all our students. Unfortunately, I was also pretty new at making challah and I never got the yeast in the water part quite right.
Well, I decided that I had really killed my yeast, and even though the dough looked nice, it wasn't rising. So I threw out an entire batch of dough using 5 pounds of flour!!!
Later that evening (and many batches of challah later), there was a fire in one of the dumpsters of our apartment complex. And you guessed it -- my challah dough was in that fire. People couldn't figure out why this fire smelled SOOOOO good!!!
one year i made a chocolate cake for my daughter's birthday. something i'd done many times. i took it out of the oven,let it cool a bit and then turned it out onto a wire rack. whereupon the middle of the cake, which apparently hadn't cooked properly, collapsed and dripped all over the table! i was upset at first but we all had fun dipping the fully baked bits of cake into the semi-cooked batter.
When we were first married, my wife had a migraine on a Friday so I decided to help by making egg salad for Seuda Shlishit.
Unfortunately I didn't know how long to cook the eggs for and they came out soft boiled. Not to be deterred, I mixed in mayonnaise anyway and served it the next day. There was white gloopy stuff floating in the yolk.
Needless to say, my wife was not really very impressed but it's provided many amusing re-tells over the years.
When we were newly married I was trying to make your penne w/ garlic sauce recipe and when it called for 3/4c of (prepared) consomme I put in 3/4c of consomme (powder)....lets just say FSIL was very polite and only suggested that it was possibly slightly too salty but he ate his whole bowl....and now that I shared can I PLEEEAASE take part in your giveaway??? (insert puppy dog face here)
My home used to host single young men on Shabbos nights, and often we had 5 or 6 guys around our table. I had three little kids at the time and enjoyed experimenting with unusual new recipes. Happily, they usually turned out great and were devoured. The week I tried a recipe for slivered dried apricots and garlic with linguine (can't remember what else was in it), the poor guys tried to eat it. Being mentschen, they politely ate small amounts and refused seconds--anticipating dessert, I'm sure.
After graduating university, I shared an apartment with a friend and we often invited other friends and acquaintances alike for shabbos meals at our place.
Well one shabbat in the fall, I made chulent for a big lunch meal. I'd done this many many times before and fancied myself an expert with my crockpot.
We woke up early on a warm morning to an AWFUL, HORRIBLE odor. We couldn't figure out where it was coming from but it was strongest out in our kitchen which overlooked an air shaft. And then we sniffed some more..... and it was from our place.
Brilliant me had assembled a fantastic chulent full of meat on friday morning .... and never plugged the pot in!
Of course we'd planned this to be a one pot meal so didn't really have much of anything else in our place either to offer up. We spent the morning trying to figure out what canned goods we might be able to pull out to have something more than challah and dessert to offer up to the 8 guests coming that day.
Thankfully they did have good cheer and a sense of humour so the meal wasn't a disaster in the social sense. But I do admit that the next time I invited some of the same crowd over, i got an erev shabbat call reminding me to check whether I plugged everything in :).
I have a milchig tomato soup recipe that has lots of steps and is time consuming to make but my family loves it and it's a Shavuot favorite. One erev Shavuot I labored over the soup and got near the end - the blending part - and realized too late that I had forgotten to take out the bay leaves. Need I say that crushed bay leaves in a soup are not very pleasant!
Second story while I'm at it: Before I was married and I was living at home my mother would send me to do some of the erev Shabbos shopping. One Friday I picked up a lot of stuff, including some fresh strawberry tarts that my mother had specially ordered. I put the tarts on the roof of my car so that I could look for the car keys and forgot to take them off. I heard someone's car horn and didn't think it was for me, until I turned a corner and saw (through the side-mirror) the tarts fly out into the middle of the road. By the time I could pull over there was custard and jello and mashed strawberries decorating the road!!
It was the first year I was making Pesach. I brought out the side dish I had prepared, and my husband looked at me in horror as he exclaimed "string beans are Kitniyos" Oops!
I have too many disaster stories. I could print my own disaster cookbook. But some of our favorites:
The Fizzy Chicken.
I used Panko bread crumbs on some chicken cutlets I had coated with italian dressing, forgetting that they were flavored bread crumbs. I had prepared them thursday night, which I never ever do, so when I was ready to bake them on friday I had forgotten about the italian dressing, AND that the bread crumbs were flavored, so I quickly threw on some seasoned salt and other colorful spices. the chicken was inedible and tasted fizzy, kind of bubbly, like seltzer.
and last week i made a vegetable soup with all fresh ingredients, including a bunch of dill. Then I blended it, very fine. but I don't remember removing the rubber band from the dill.
and green ketchup in chulent makes the whole chulent look like cooked brain matter, very unsavory
When my husband and I were on our honeymoon in Hawaii (almost 20 years ago) we wanted to make some macaroni in our kitchenette, but it only had a microwave. The exact details elude me now, but we bought some kind of glass bowl and decided to boil the water and the noodles in the microwave! I am cringing as I write this - but what did we know? A few minutes into this cooking adventure, we heard a big explosion in the microwave. You can imagine - glass and noodles everywhere! I think we ate pineapple for dinner that night.
One Pesach we were having vegetarian friends at our seder. We chose to host the whole thing vegetarian, including a roasted beet for the pesach. We spent days shopping and preparing food, including Feta-Leek Patties, one of our favorite Pesach dishes. The night was wonderful. We all cleaned up and went to bed.
We went through the 2nd with lots of food. It wasn't until lunch the second day that I peaked into the oven and saw Feta Leek Patties! Oy! Sheepishly we realized that we had cooked so much food we forgot dishes.
Ever since then when I make Feta Leek Patties I invariably forget to serve them. Now I just plan to have them as a snack instead of serving them with a meal.
My daughter, Leanna, is now the mother of a 2 1/2 year old daughter and a 3 month old son. I must add that they are gorgeous & clever grandchildren. When Leanna was a child I was always introducing projects to stimulate her senses and add to her experiences. After reading a recipe for Finger-painting with Chocolate Pudding, I decided we would try it. What can I say other than it was a fun, tactile, and messy experience. I do not know what became of the recipe and I wish I had taken pictures. We both ended up with chocolate pudding on our hands, faces, clothing, on the kitchen table and floor. The instructions never mentioned the clean-up time required. All I remember is that it was a lot of fun and we both had a tactile experience. I need to ask her if she remembers finger-painting with chocolate pudding. The most fun was just running your fingers through the pan of chocolate pudding.
When I was a newlywed, I made some chicken for supper and instead of putting sweet paprika on it, I mistakenly used hot red pepper. My husband was so sweet and ate it and didn't say a word!
We were married over a year, so I had a cholent routine. But maybe because I wasn't used to the new crock pot...
That time the cholent overcooked, not quite burnt but all dried up. No, mostly burnt with about one salvageable serving.
And for the first time my husband brought home a guest to join us.
So I scrambled for a more substantial appetizer... then we served the main course including the lesser-burnt portions of the cholent with a bit of an apology.
The fellow says "oooh! crispies!!!" and digs right in.
To this day I wonder whether he really meant it or was really clever. But either way he sure must have become a good husband for someone!
found my missing rubber band in tonight's supper
I was in a hurry once and mis-read a cookbook instruction. Instead of boiling the meat in question for two hours I saw "broil" and broiled that meat for two hours. Ever see what chicken tenders look like when they've been broiled to death? Sort of like hockey pucks with flavoring, only not as appetizing.
I was having my in laws for Shabbos when I was fairly newly married and being efficient, I had many desserts and kugels in the freezer ready to be popped into the oven erev shabbos. Suffice to say we were one kugel short with warm, mushy ice cream!!
It was about a month after our wedding, and we were invited to friends for a meal. The host told an amusing story about how his wife kept burning the food when they were first married
I was feeling rather smug, because until that point, I hadn't burnt anything.
Needless to say, just a few days later, when I was making lukshen kugel for the first time, I ended up forgetting about it and leaving it in the oven for well over twice the recommended baking time...
:-)
Shavua tov!
I have 2 funny stories, both around gefilte fish. My mother has been making gefilte fish for years, and I have been assisting her for the past 10. One year a friend of mine was supposed to come for Pesach but couldn't make it at the last minute. She was most disappointed about missing my mom's fish. So, my mom put a piece of fish in an empty cottage cheese container and brought it to my friend. Imagine my friend's disappointment when she opened up the container and found cottage cheese!
The other incident occured while making the fish. It's a family joke that the fish ALWAYS needs more salt if you should taste it while making it. One time my mom was mixing the fish and said "it LOOKS like it needs more salt!" This has become a favorite family expression.
My wife and I were visiting my parents for the first time a few months after getting married. My wife asked my mother if she could help make anything for Shabbat and knowing that my mother's cooking repetoire is --- shall we say --- limited, I encouraged my wife to make a yerushalmi kugel (her mother's specialty). Unfortunetly, the sugar carmelized before the noodles were ready and began to burn. Not knowing where to pour the scalding caramel, my mother told my wife to pour it down the toilet --- in the bathroom my parents had just redone. the next thing we know a cup of now cooled caramel was stuck to the inside of a brand new toilet. It took me and my wife an hour+ of chipping away with a chidel to get all the caramel off. At least we all had a good laugh.
We hadn't been married long - maybe 6 months. It was one of the first times we were having a bunch of couples for a shabbat meal. Having been a vegetarian for many years, I was still a novice at cooking meat. Serve up the chicken and all the sides dishes along with a vegetarian cholent. Proud of my big cooking achievement. Lo and behold, one of the two chickens were mostly raw. I was so embarassed.
A couple of years when i was still single i was helping out my mother before pesach with baking, so i was just finished making potato kugel i put in the oven and my mother asks me why is there Pine-Sol bottle on the counter? Oops i put in pine-sol instead of oil, that was the end for me of baking for that Yom Tov.
Coming from a Good Yekkishe home, My challah preference is Water, while my wife prefers the Egg "cakey-type" recipes. When i want water challah it is my job to make it myself. Since it was the first time, we decided that we would split a 5lb bag making half my way and half her way.
This posed the OBVIOUS Sh'aloh of "Can we be mafrish Challah from 2 separate recipes?" I called the Rav who told me to cover both with a towel and then make the barachah and be mafrish; but not before chiding me that one of these days I would have to invite him over and show him how to make Challah.
I also sent pictures of Delicious Fettucini Alfredo from Kosher by Design Short on Time.
E-mailed a picture of Hot Pretzels 2 Ways from Kids in the Kitchen. Made by my little brother who is 14 and an excellent baker!
I usually make at least one over-the-top and very rich cheesecake for Shavuos, and one more traditional cheesecake. One year for the over-the-top category, I made a triple chocolate cheesecake (I believe it from "The Joy of Cooking"). This was several years before I started my KBD collection...
The cheesecake looked fantastic, and the batter tasted good too :). I had a full house of family members staying at my house for Yom Tov. When my mother went to the refrigerator to serve dessert, she pulled out the cheesecake by the springform pan's rim...and the bottom promptly fell out. Triple chocolate cheesecake in pieces on the kitchen floor.
My mother gasped and my sister and I ran over to see what happened. We gave each other a significant look, scooped up the pieces, and served them with berries, with no explanation.
It was delicious.
the second time i cooked shabbos, i remembered how my mother told me she leaves her chicken soup on the flame all day because the longer it cooks, the better it tastes. well i didn't think that my mother was cooking for seven people and i was cooking for two. so i left a smallish-sized pot of cooking chicken soup (on a low flame) on the fire and left the house.
later that day when i walked into my building, i remember thinking "ooh somebody burned their food!" as i walked up the stairs, it slowly dawned on me that I was the one who'd left something on the stove. when i got into my apartment i could barely see through all the smoke. and where i had left a pot of chicken soup was now a blackened pot with a few charred lumps that had been chicken and some vegetables.
it took three weeks to get the smell of smoke out of all my clothing, my shaitels, and the curtains and furniture
Hi, When i was first married i made my husband meatloaf. He claimed it was one of his favorites so i proudly made it for him. To some this is an easy task but i was raised by Hippie granola carob anti-meat parents who never taught me the basics in cooking, and honestly i have never really seen meatloaf in real life. Needless to say it was more of a slurry when done and not a loaf, but i had no idea and i served it with pride, and my faithful husband actually choked down a few bites before giving in and explaining my error. OOOps.
so last Shavous I decided to try and attempt to make this amazing looking cheesecake
http://www.goldenpineappleblog.com/?p=953
I am a good cook but i never have patience to follow recipes especially when it comes to baking and apparently i needed the instructions for this recipe!
Instead of looking like the beautiful picture above mine looked like a mudslide. literally. it was such a disaster that i ended up transferring it to a new pan, making a pretty looking glaze and prayed that it would taste good when we served it.
when the time came it looked ugly but tasted really really good! I still don't get how the author managed to slice every ladyfinger in half lengthwise and make them stand in a circle without toppling over!
i think next year i'll stick to a simple looking cheesecake!
One fine evening in our coop,
Mama decided to make fresh chicken soup.
Now this was not a first by no means,
But this time she was using a new method to contain the not-to-be-eaten greens.
You see- some people in the "know",
Informed her to use STOCKINGS-with or without reinforced toe.
So into the hose went the kholrabi, turnips, and dill
And with the rest of the greens-the hose she did fill.
Now you'll forgive me for the pun,
But after simmering we discovered that the hose color had 'run'!
And lo and behold,
The soup was no longer yellowish gold.
Rather the soup took on a hue,
The likes of the color greenish blue!
To Mama's dismay,
She had to throw the soup and chickens away.
For who was going to call
The Rabbi and ask if stocking are kosher at all?!
But instead of turning to sorrow and dismay,
The story became the laughing 'stock' of the day.
One of the most important mental disciplines for a married man to develop is a selective memory. A somewhat unfortunate side effect of my having honed this fine art is that I no longer remember any of my early cooking mishaps. Fortunately for you, however, The Lovely Wife(tm), as she has done for the last decade, has cheerfully made up for my flaw by reminding me of the the following tale:
For our 1 year anniversary, I prepared a surprise 5-course dinner at home, featuring an opener of braised hearts-of-palm salad (I believe it was this one, sans cilantro). For some reason, I felt the need to tie the hearts of palm together during the braising. Not having kitchen twine, I improvised with a blue rubber band.
The Lovely Wife(tm) came home that evening to a beautifully set dinner table, with our fine linen, china, and individually baked focaccia breads at each place setting. Her husband, ever the dramatic one, brought out the covered dishes of the first course and lifted the lids to reveal a neon-blue salad which had the oh-so-desireable "straight from three-mile-island" appearance...
That she has remained married to me and allowed me to continue cooking since then is testament to her continued poor judgement and my good fortune.
While cooking chicken for shabbat on Thursday night, I have had a tendancy to fall asleep and fail to hear the kitchen timer. There were two weeks in a row where my husband woke up at his usual 5 in the morning, and had to throw out three packages worth of charred chicken, and making us start from scratch on Friday afternoon (in my defense: this was during a preganancy year when my memory was shot anyways).
There is a reason I am no longer allowed to cook in the kitchen past 11pm on a Thursday night.
star, I loved your prose. next time use skin colored knee hi's to contain bones in chicken soup. but if you use turkey necks in chulent, and put them in a stockinged knee hi so it doesn't fall apart like I do, make sure your children remove it from the chulent bowl before bringing to the table. otherwise a clueless guest might scream in fright when he sees a severed leg in his shabbos food
This is not one incident, but a serial of kitchen mishaps. Before I was married, or actually in high school, I burned my mother's fish pot because I forgot about to turn it off in time, of course I never lived down that story and my family never let me forget it, and when I got engaged, they promptly told my chosson that I can't cook fish (never mind the at least 5 years having past in which I didn't burn anything). But I find life is a self fulfilling prophecy.
After I got married, our first shabbos home, yes, I burned the fish pot (my apt reeked!) the pot was out of commision; I couldn't get the burn residue off; I kept it in my storage closet with a towel covering it for weeks until I sent it to my mother to see if he could salvalge the pot - she did. And when she returned it - the next week, using a different pot, I burned the fish again...so my loverly mother saved my next pot (I finally figured out what I was doing wrong after burning th efish again - this time I scraped my own pot)
...but if I ever thought I could live down my original burning fish story - it has just become legacy no matter how darn good a cook I am.
Emailed a picture of Pumpkin Cranberry Muffins from Kosher by Design Short on Time.
when I was in college my deserts consisted mostly of Duncan Hines. One time I was in a rush and didn't realize that the eggs did not mix in well. That night when we sliced in to the cake we found a whole solid cooked yolk (like a hardboiled egg). It was gross, and it has taken me 30 years and I still haven't lived it down. i always use a mixer now.
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