Kitchen Nightmares

I like to think I'm pretty good in the kitchen. I make a pretty damn good risotto and a selection of bitchin' curries. But there have been some rather embarrassing moments on my way to culinary excellence.

I was pondering the differences between someone who is intelligent, someone who is clever, someone who knows a lot, and someone who has common sense. A good example of lack of common sense is demonstrated by some events which have taken place in the kitchen under my fair hand.

Here, in no particular order, are a catalogue of some of the woeful events that could probably have been avoided by a dash of common sense:

*Put a tinned curry in the microwave - in its tin (what? We didn't have a microwave at home and no-one told me you couldn't put metal in the microwave).
*Set light to a pair of oven gloves by leaving it on top of a switched on electric hob - twice in less than a month.
*Failed to properly secure the valve on the top of a pressure cooker and sprayed the ceiling with bright, red tomato stew.
*Cracked a beautiful hand cast, hand glazed ceramic casserole my friend had brought me back from Bosnia after putting it directly on the hob.
*Finely chopped some bird-eye chillies without any protective gloves or similar and burnt my hands so badly with the capsicum I had to keep them in luke-warm water for about two days.
*Curdled a milk-based sauce by attempting to make it go a bit further by adding some wine.
*Left a rice pan boiling, only returning when there was no water left and the rice was a blackened, stodgy mess at the bottom which took me an hour to scrub off.

And on a related theme, when I worked at a supermarket once, I watered the dry flowers.

To make me feel less bad about the whole thing, I asked a colleague about the stupidest thing he ever did in a kitchen and I think his is even better.

He stabbed himself in the hand with a red-hot skewer while trying to pierce a conker. He was 24 at the time. He also left some eggs boiling once and didn't remember about them until he smelt the smoke.

You'll be pleased to know that none of the above was sufficiently disastrous for me to seek medical attention or call out the fire brigade.

But there's always time...

Now, spill the beans, what's the silliest thing you've ever done in a kitchen situation?