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Contest 2012 May

Written by

Manjula Jain

in

Everyone including myself makes big cooking mistakes from time to time. Sometimes I feel they always happen on important occasions. For this month’s contest, I would like to hear your cooking blunders. Maybe you were preparing for a big dinner party and things went very wrong. What did you do? Were you able to save the day? What did you learn from that day?

You needn’t send any photos for the contest.  All you have to do is post your story to the disucussion forum on the Cooking Blunders topic that I have created.

The winners will be selected randomly from all the forum post entries.

Below is my checklist:

  • You will not have email me anything this time. You can simply leave a posting on the Cooking Blunders topic.
  • If you are creating a new account for the forum, please enter your email address so that I can contact you after the contest is over. Don’t worry, your email address will not be public (only I will be able to see it).
  • The deadline is May 31st.
  • The winner will be featured on the homepage and a link to their website (if available).

1st Prize: $100 gift certificate from Amazon.com
2nd Prize: $25 gift certificate from Amazon.com

**Anyone can join this contest**

Comments

32 responses to “Contest 2012 May”

  1. Sheree Mangerson

    These recipes are very unique and ohhh soo good!

  2. Aarti Shriniwar

    Dear Manjula Ji,

    Here is my experience.

    Cooking Blunders!!!! this is something I always run into, that too on important occasions 🙂 now this has become part of my cooking. I want to share a recent blunder that I did and was still able to save my day.

    My cooking blunder: One of the item on my menu was Kidney beans curry. After the curry was done, I tasted it and found that by mistake I added salt twice to the curry. I was doing multitasking, instead of putting salt in two different curries, I ended up adding to the same curry. This was the only gravy dish on the menu.

    How I saved my day? the only was to reduce the concentration of salt in the curry was to prepare some more gravy (made from tomato and onion). I did not had time to prepare the actual gravy, so I added water to the curry and added some roasted peanut powder. Roasted peanut powder thicken the curry and gives a creamy texture (fortunately none of my guest where allergic to peanuts). Then I tasted the curry again, and as expected the concentration of salt came to normal but the taste of all the spices was reduced. Then, I took a bowl with some oil and added all the required spices and heated it in microwave for 40 secs. This spicy mixture I then added to the curry, and guess what???? It tasted as good as it generally tourns out.

    What I learned? If I am not sure wheather I have added salt to the curry or not then I better taste it first before adding extra salt :). Always taste the food before serving it to the guest.

  3. Ramya

    I doesnt know the basics of cooking when i got married..When i came to US after my marriage ,my husband invited some of his friends to our house for dinner..I asked my mom about the ratio to cook idli she said 3 : 1 ratio of rice and dal with 1 tsp of fenugreak seeds..I got confused with ratios and made 3 glass of rice to 1 cup of rice and 1 cup of fenugreak seeds..Thats it my idli came out yellow colour and was shocked to know that instead of 1 tsp i added 1 cup of fenugreak seeds..I only got 1 hour left for the party and ended up with simple idli upma out of those yellow idli…May be funny to read this from then i started to learn cooking in a serious way and now after 5 years of cooking i ended up with my husbands favourite cook..

  4. Jaime-Lynn G.

    High altitude cooking causes all sorts of problems for me.

  5. Julie Phiffer

    good recipes

  6. Victoria L

    For some reason, I am not able to make fresh pizza dough. I would buy the packages that you just have to add water too and for whate ever reason, all I could get was a ball of dough. I would try to roll it out with flour and it would just roll up on the rolling pin. When I would try and smooth it out on the pizza pan, it would just shrink back down to the size of a personal pan pizza. I have given up on pizza dough and now I just buy the premade ones. So much easier and faster.

  7. Tzipora J

    Blunders? Story of my life 🙂
    I once was making bread, I was so excited, kneading the dough and hoping for warm, fluffy and fresh bread. The recipe says it is supposed to rest for 1 hour and double in size. An hour later, nothing happened, no doubling in size. Then I remembered! I never added any eggs to the recipe! They were sitting right there on the table with the mess I created untouched!

  8. Margaret Konczal

    I love finding receipes online!

  9. gary schlicher

    the recipes are good.

  10. susan tran

    When I was newly married I decided to make my husband’s favorite curry using the malaysian curry powder pkg. My sister in law told me to use half a pkg. instead of 1 tsp or so to go into the meat. He took one bite and ran screaming over to the kitchen sink for water I have never used themalaysian curry pkg again!

  11. T SHANNON

    FTRST TIMECHECKING OUT SITE. SISTER EATS GLUTEN FREE GOING TO SEND SITE TO HER..

  12. Ramya

    Dear Manjula,
    Thank you for the wonderful recipes that you have presented specially without onion and garlic. Your recipes really come in handy so many times and I really appreciate your blog.
    Thanks for the wonderful job and keep going!

  13. ashly brown

    It was an experimental dinner for the family. It required fresh lemon juice and zest. my ex husband taste tested and didnt taste the lemon so while i was doing something else he added a LOT more lemon. Bless their hearts they didnt want to hurt my feelings and tried so hard to eat it. When i finally took a bite….I took all their plates away and we ordered pizza. ive never tried to make that dish again.

  14. jeunese

    I love your recipes!!

  15. Adina Weinstein

    I was so proud of making my first meal as a married woman. I was making a recipe that called for 1 teaspoon salt and I put in 1 tablespoon of salt. Needless to say my spouse put up a good front.

  16. jane jakins

    thanks

  17. Shilpa

    It’s something that happened during my college days.
    Mom was out for some work and I decided to surprise her by preparing dinner before she returns. My knowledge about preparing curry was limited to a once-a-while prepared potato curry. I prepared ‘Bhindi ki sabji’ following the same recipe. Properly seasoned it and added water to get the Bhindi cooked.
    Ew…what a sticky mess it came out…..
    Memory of that prepared item, still horrifies me… 🙁

  18. hamida

    Hi manjula aunty . I am a great fan of ur recipes and i luv them.
    Would it taste good if i sprinkle some cheese over the paneer gravy after the gravy is ready?

  19. jenny hebert

    cool site

  20. KENNETH WINTER

    Thanks for the great sweepstakes.

  21. John Kraichely

    Could really use this prize.

  22. Mike Fairchild

    Great sweepstakes !

  23. Yvonne Howell

    My son was bringing his girlfriend home for the first time and I was putting the big pot in the little on as they say. I was preparing a pot roast and also had to mow the grass. Time got away from me and the roast was charred. The house filled with so much smoke the smoke detectors went off and I had to raise the windows. I was actually afraid someone was going to call the fire department. EVERYTHING stank like smoke – even the curtains. Needless to say, we didn’t have roast that night.

  24. jose benavides

    one time i left barbcoa in the oven for longer than i should have and it burned .. 🙁

  25. ANITA F

    ROCKS!!

  26. barbara butler

    great sweeps i wanna win

  27. Robert Weaver

    Thanks for the great sweepstakes.

  28. Debra Vallone

    My big cooking accomplishment was mastering Ramon Noodles!

  29. Danielle Ryerson

    Nice! Great recipes

  30. Debra Sl

    Happened to me just this weekend. Had to make Something to bring to a brunch. Had bananas, over-ripe. Oh Banana Bread! The grandkids were over “helping” me during this time. So…. in all the chaos, I made the bread, forgot to put in the BUTTER. Oh the loaf LOOKED good.. but at the brunch, when we cut into it- the MIDDLE was RAW in one of the loaves. I had used two different pans, one aluminum one glass. The glass one did not bake the same, and I was not careful checking… and no butter affected them both! Oh well…..

  31. Richard Robertson

    cool

  32. Michael McLane

    Contest entry

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