My First Disaster

Let's start with my very first kitchen disaster, because after all, we've all had them!  It didn't happen in my kitchen though.  Unfortunately it happened at my very first job.  Back in about 1993 I was around 17 years old and had just started working at The Hungry Pelican, a fast food spot in our local Galleria.  I had only been working as a cashier on the front line for a few days.  We kept a cauldron, similar to the one in the picture above, out in the front so that we cashiers could ladle a hot bowlful as needed.  There was a window between us and the kitchen where the orders came through, and one of the cooks passed a stainless steel pot filled with steaming clam chowder through the window and told me to put it in the pot.  So, I poured the chowder into the pot and passed the now empty stainless steel pot back through the window to the cooks.  They looked extremely puzzled and asked me did we already need more chowder.  I told them no, I just put that chowder that they gave me into the pot like they told me to.  They looked at me like I had just ruined their entire day.  I didn't understand, I just did what they told me to do.  Then my manager came to the window.  She asked me what happened.  I told her that I put the clam chowder in the pot just like the cook asked me to.  It was then that she informed me that the stainless steel pot should have been SET DOWN INTO the pot.  LMAO!!  I didn't realize that the pot was itself just a prop that acted as a warmer that had to be plugged in.  i thought it was a real iron cauldron that you could actually cook in!  Needless to say, I created quite a mess that day and my family still teases me about it to this day over 20 years later.  Thankfully, that's one mistake that I will never make again.  There are many more mistakes and stories to be told however and I will definitely be sharing more disaster stories as well as triumphs very soon!  In the meantime, it's back to the kitchen for me.  I hope you'll share with me some of your kitchen disasters!

See ya in the Kitchen!