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When I was first married in the seventies we both worked full time and I tried to be organised. One morning after making toast under the grill (no toaster) I prepared that night's dinner. I left potatoes peeled and in water in a pot on top of the cooker. Next to that a pot with mince which I had browned and put gravy in all ready to be cooked when we got home from work. Imagine our surprise when we came home to a house full of black smoke. We could hardly see in front of us. My hubby was saying," I thought you were cooking the food when we got home you've nearly burnt the house down. " I swore I hadn't put the rings on under the pots and thought I was going mad. Once we fought our way through the smoke haze in the kitchen we discovered it was the grill that had been left on and we were lucky as a tea towel was very near it and could have went up in flames.
There is a happy ending to this story and that is,as the grill was below the rings the pots were on the mince and potatoes were cooked to perfection. We didn't have to wait for dinner that night but did have to wait until we had opened all the windows and the smoke had gone.

In my teens I made a Christmas cake. All went will with the first stages. The cake baked beautifully and the marzipan went on smoothly. I iced it just before Christmas with icing formed in peaks all over the sides and top. I left it in the kitchen on one of the upper shelves - big mistake. I don't know whether Mum was doing a week's worth of laundry or what but the kitchen was filled with steam and, in consequence, the icing slowly melted and dribbled down the cake and all over the board on which it was resting, as well as the shelf it was on - and some of those beneath!

I was cooking a stew in a pressure cooker and forgot about it. When I remembered, it had completely boiled dry and the pressure cooker, instead of having a flat bottom, had a rounded concave one. Needless to say the stew was completely ruined and the pressure cooker never again sat flat on the hob.

Trying to impress a young man, I followed coq au vin with syllabub which I'd practised previously. In the 1980s I thought this would be exotic and new to him. Since it takes a very short time I left him with a glass of wine and hastened to the kitchen to whip up the syllabub. Keen to rejoin and impress him I quickly put the electric whisk into the bowl. I sprayed myself, the wall and the ceiling with syllabub. As my friend tasted what was left he said approvingly 'Yes, very similar to the one my mother makes!' Aaagh!

On the 28th of July 1963, I made my first dinner ever, I went to the butchers to buy steak, I had never had steak before, the butcher asked me " what kind of steak"? so me, being a really grown up married woman at 18 said "just steak" he gave me fillet, when I got home I realised I wouldn't have enough money to last the week because of the price of the steak
We were having steak and chips, I had never made chips before or seen them made as we used to have a chip shop in the next street, which were 3p a bag. I melted the lard in my new pan, not a chip pan, no basket, put the steak in, the lard was only just melted, I turned it up to get it bubbling, it bubbled over, on to my new cooker, i got the meat out with a fork, it did look brown so it must of been done, I did not want the lard to bubble over again so I turned it down very low to put the chipped potatoes in, I then proceeded to stir the chips, after about half an hour in the warm lard they started to break up, by now it looked more like tapioca, so I scooped it out with a metal tea strainer (a wedding present) so all in all my second day of being married was not a great success.

The most embarressing but not totally my fault was our first dinner party when first married. I was cooking, my husband was shopping. We were doing coq au vin with rice. He came home with a tin of ambrosia creamed rice!!!!! The meal was served with mashed potatoes!
Another time we had foreign students so I planned a casserole. The phone rang, and I came back into the kitchen and my son, aged 2, was adding salt to my mixture. That had to be thrown and menu recipe changed.
I have also cooked a turkey with the giblets and the plastic bag inside!
Another disaster, changing from a normal oven to a fan oven and cooking pizza. Put them in for the time suggested, and they came out nearly black!!
Making homemade wine in the spare bedroom and seeing a red stain come through the white ceiling!
I have learnt various lessons over the years - perhaps the most important - never do a new recipe for a dinner party. Try it first. Then you can tweet any problems.

I'll never forget cooking my first chicken,how hard could it be?wrap in tin foil and push into the oven,pull back the tin foil for the last 20 minutes of cooking and yea all done, it looked really good until my new hubby started to carve it,what was all this horrible yucky sticky black mess inside my beautiful chicken! you guessed it,I had left the plastic bag with the giblets inside the chicken,

Dropped a lovely quiche on the kitchen floor as I was removing it from the oven many years ago. I had spent an age making it and wasn't about to waste it, so I scooped it up, pieced it together an served it to my husband and children. I'm embarrassed just typing this now. I've never told anyone.

My other half once said he'd cook us a traditional Maltese rice dish. He boiled a pan of water...and poured in a 2 kilo pack of Long Grain, (for 2 of us). I was cleaning up the boiled-over mess for days. He doesn't even offer to make me a sandwich these days!

I was making a stir fry and thought that it would be good to jazz it up a bit. So I added a dollop of thai red curry sauce to it. Wow! It was so hot it made my ears pop. Unfortunately my husband has a much lower tolerance for spicy food than me. He couldn't eat it and ended up raiding the fridge for anything else that he could have for dinner.

I was staying in Paris with a French friend who was hosting a dinner party for some smart friends. She asked me if I would like to make an English dessert so I agreed to make a trifle. It was all assembled when I decided that perhaps I should have sweetened the whipped cream: I reached for a tall canister of icing sugar to sprinkle a little on top. To my amazement the cream turned blue: I had picked up a very similarly packaged canister of Vim, a powdered abrasive for cleaning sinks. The guests were waiting in anticipation so I scraped off the blue tinged cream and served it up. The guests didn't seem very impressed, and how could it have compared to the marvellous French desserts they were accustomed to? I didn't tell my friend what I had done until several months later, when she cackled and said she wouldn't have minded if it had made one person in particular ill!

When newly married I made a rice pudding in the oven. I took it out about 2 hours later for our evening meal only to find I had not put in any rice!

When I was newly married I made my first Christmas cake, I was really proud of it, covered it with marzipan and iced it to look like a snow scene with little figures on it. I proudly presented it and cut into it only to find it was still uncooked in the centre. I didn't know about testing with a skewer then and had just followed the instructions in the recipe. It was the last christmas cake I ever made.

Only a couple of weeks after we had married, Ex OH answered the phone, then came to me looking a bit worried. It was ex Mil - she had invited herself and FiL over for afternoon tea the following Saturday afternoon. I was not impressed. (Nor was he - he was in a band and usually slept all afternoon first.) I knew she wasn't going to be happy with Mr. Kipling. I had made quite a few cakes so was no novice, but thought I had better make an especially good cake, and make everything look nice and slowly slacken off my standards after that. I decided on a fruit cake.

The cake looked amazing, it had risen massively and there wasn't a burnt bit in sight. We had cucumber sandwiches, cream cheese and chive sandwiches, butterfly cake and the fruit cake.

I gave the knife to Mil to cut herself a slice - and she gasped. The inside of the cake was completely missing! I had more than doubled the amount of baking powder in the recipe, to make sure it rose, and it certainly had. The centre looked as if it had been baked around a large grapefruit! The cake slowly sunk, looking as deflated as I felt.

After that disaster, they got traybakes if they were lucky, Mr. Kipling if not.

Many years ago I made a quiche for the village show. It came out of the over looking lovely and I left it on the side to cool down. When I returned the cat had eaten a large hole in the middle of it! What to do? The shops were shut, I hadn't got enough ingredients to start again and I needed it first thing in the morning. I beat up acouple of eggs with some cheese and herbs, poured them into the hole and stuck the quiche under the grill to brown. The quiche got first prize at the show, with a little note from the judge complimenting me on the lovely flavour

I used to work in the kitchen at a theatre. One night we were providing food for a big party and were warming dozens of baguettes in the oven. As the meal drew to a close our manager (a woman who took no prisoners) turned off the oven and started us clearing up. By the time we were ready to go home a couple of hours later there was a distinct smell of burning. Unable to find the source our manager flung open the oven door to find that instead of turning it off she had turned it full on! There had been half a dozen baguettes left in there - there were now six sticks of charcoal Of course if one of us had done it we would have been dead!

We also once found an elderly incinerated quiche that had been forgotten at the back of the oven and re baked many times!

I can recall making tablet at school. It turned out fine, so as usual myself and my pal ate our cookery effort on the way home. My Mum used to make tablet which was delicious and it was also white. I tried her recipe only to be unsuccessful, as it did not set.

I can recall when at school, in the cookery class one of our classmates asked the teacher for assistance with working the cooker. As was usual at school teacher said yes she would in a minute or so. On assisting the classmate on turning on the cookers oven, unfortunately the teachers hair was singed. The class and teacher were stunned, the classmate apologised to the teacher. Staing she had never used a gas cooker before ( she had left gas turned on, but had been unable to light the oven herself). Classmate duly sent to HeadMaster. She had told the truth as a few weeks earlier a different teacher had moved her ( as a punishment for talking to nearby classmate) from one side of class to the other ( one side electric cookers, the other gas). Accidents do happen. Probably cookers and school policies are improved since then due to Health and Safety. Teacher luckily was not burned, nor was any pupil. Truly a learning experience for us all.

One my earliest cooking-disaster related memories is when I spent ages preparing an exquisite potato waffle filled chef's special .... into the cooker it went, gas mark whatever it was .... however, I was then interrupted by guests who had travelled from afar to visit ... left the kitchen to entertain in the reception .... only to be informed an hour later that my culinary masterpiece had burnt to a biscuit!!!

(Yes, I had completely forgotten about it!!)

When I was younger I made a mandarin fruit fool, instead of adding 3 tsp of arrowroot, I put in 3 tablespoon !!!!!!!!
It was like wallpaper paper paste.
As I was only 14 at the time, the family always tasted and enjoyed !!!!!!
They had to chew their way through my delightful dessert.

It was the first night back from our honeymoon, back to work and time to make my new husband supper, whilst, of course, showing him how talented I was as a cook.

I had decided that I could grill chicken quarters and serve with mashed potatoes and cauliflower. Thinking that as a 'man' he needed more food, I added rice... and pasta.

The resultant plate of whiteness was a sight to behold and gave mileage to the old adage that food has to be attractive and colourful to be palatable!

Oh well, I had tried! In the forty seven years since, I have improved... just a tad!

NB
Thank goodness for 'ready-meals' after a long working, newly-married day! Lucky young things of today, eh?!

My first attempt to cook a dinner for some friends of my new husband, having just got married I left the giblets in the chicken having no idea what they were!!!

I was newly married and panicked when told that a vegetarian colleague of my new husband was joining us for lunch. What to cook? The best that I could come up with was cauliflower cheese and it it looked and tasted disgusting. I had no idea how to make a sauce, edible or otherwise.

We went out for the afternoon and returned to the colleague's flat where she had the most fabulous display of vegetarian food for our supper. I was mortified thinking what I had served her earlier. I have never forgotten that episode.

I decided to cook Christmas dinner for my extended family. I'm vegetarian but said I would cook a turkey crown for the meat eaters. I bought it from a supermarket a couple of days before the big day, but on the morning it had gone green and smelly! Everyone had to have veggie sausages and cheese and onion pie instead.

Not my disaster as such but involve a meal for me. I was on an early shift as a nurse, husband in charge of cooking Xmas dinner for me and my 2 kids. As he had time in hand he decided to put up the Xmas lights in the porch (a job that had not got done prior due to life getting in the way). So up they go, the wire had to go through the front door, so he shut the door to check it would shut.......him in the porch, uncooked Turkey on the side in the kitchen, he had no keys. 2 hours later my children arrive to find hubby wrapped up in all the coats from the coat stand, sitting on the floor awaiting their arrival. We took 3 hours to open our Xmas presents and has a very late 'lunch' and lots of laughs about the situation.

Making a Boxing Day lunch for 12 people, I popped the large Christmas pudding to steam on top of the cooker while we ate the main meal. By the time I remembered to check it had boiled dry and the plastic container melted all over the saucepan which had to be thrown out. My young nieces never let me forget.

When I was in my early 20's, I planned a lovely lunch for friends. The main dish was a Quiche Lorraine. I cooked it for 45 minutes but it was still completely wet, and hadn't risen at all. Finally dawned on me that I had left out the eggs! Never did that again.