Dear Internets: Tell me your cooking horror stories May 19, 2012

Huddle ‘round, would you, and take a moment to tell me your favorite stories where you learned the hard way how things DON’T work in the kitchen… here’s one of my favorite stories:

When I first moved to Chicago, while Miska and I were still technically dating and hadn’t moved in together yet, she was heading over for the weekend. She’d left her sun tea jar there, and had mentioned that she’d planned on making some since there was enough natural light that angled in through the window during part of the day. I, being mister helpful cleverpants decided to help by having warm water ready for her.

But what’s better than warm water? Why, hot water! And what kind of water is really hot? Why, boiling water.

It’s important to point at this part of the story that the sun tea jar was plastic. So, I poured boiling hot water right off the stove into a plastic sun tea jar that was about a foot and a half high. After the first few seconds, my brain refused to process what was happening… the sun tea jar was lowering rapidly, like a time-lapse film of a melting ice cube. But dammit, I was committed, so I just lowered the kettle and kept pouring…. Until actual cognitive function kicked the fuck in, and I realized that the water was now spilling over the top of the sun tea jar because it had now melted into a very sad looking Frisbee shape.

The funny thing is, even after it was rendered useless, and I had showed my then exasperated (and rightly so) girlfriend how I had “helpfully” melted a piece of her property, I saved it. Because I felt so bad about it, maybe I could somehow re-inflate it? I’m not exactly sure how that was going to work… but I do recall coming across it after I was packing to move and laughing my ass off.