Memory Monday-Culinary Disasters...

I'm not a bad cook, but if I don't have a very good recipe that is where the problems arise...

Here are my two biggest culinary blunders.

When I was in High School, my mother gave me the task of cooking a chicken and rice casserole.  This is a family recipe of my grandmother's and my mom had made it a million times, but this was my first attempt. 

Here's the recipe:  (It's delicious if you want to try it!)

2-3 pounds of chicken
1.5 cups rice (Uncle Ben's Converted Long Grain Rice)
0.5 cup milk
1 can cream of mushroom soup, undiluted
1 can cream of celery soup, undiluted
2 envelopes Lipton onion soup mix

Roll chicken in onion soup, heat (do not boil) together rice, soups, and milk.  Butter casserole, salt and pepper chicken.

Put rice mixture in pan and lay chicken on top.  Cover tight with foil and bake at 350 degrees for 1.5 hours.

Pretty simple, right?!?  Well, you see, I misunderstood the very first sentence.  Here is what I did.  I opened my 2 envelopes of Lipton onion soup mix, added the water the packets called for and mixed them together in a bowl.  Then, I rolled the chicken in the onion soup.  That wasn't where the disaster occurred...oh no...I then added the onion soup I had just made to the casserole (because it said heat rice, soups, and milk).  The casserole was a big ole floating mess...
My mom arrived just in time and managed to drain the casserole enough so that it was still edible, but to this day I never lived this down. 
For those of you who would make the same mistake I made (it is easy to do).  If you decide to make this casserole, roll your chicken in the dry Lipton onion soup mix and discard whatever is left over...

My second cooking disaster was when Jeff and I were first dating.  I often cooked meals for him.  We had decided to grill out and I was going to make some mashed potatoes.  I've made mashed potatoes a million times and they are delicious.  This time, I did not have any potatoes on hand, but as I went through my pantry I found canned potatoes.  So I figured, I can make the mashed potatoes with the canned potatoes and save myself a trip to the store and the time it takes to chop up and boil the potatoes.  I made my potatoes as I always had substituting the canned potatoes.  They were disgusting!!! Don't every try to cut corners on mashed potatoes.  Every time I make mashed potatoes now, Jeff reminds me of the time I made them with canned potatoes...