Congratulations! The winner of our Spirit House restaurant cookbook giveaway is…

Our competition was to tell us your worst cooking nightmare. This competition topic idea was inspired by a friend of ours trying to make chicken satay for his now wife with a jar of peanut butter and not much else. His wife couldn’t wait to tell me this story the first time we all met. We’re all great friends now. I love that! Our cookbook giveaway from Spirit House is a nod to that.

We’ve all had these horror stories. I once made Mrs Romance almost throw up with a sandwich…

It was a long time ago and I didn’t have a job. I’d taken it upon myself to make Mrs Romance’s lunch for work while I was living with her. It’s a long story but I’d returned to England when my work visa had expired but returned to Australia as soon as I possibly could on a visitor visa to be with her.

Whilst trying to think of a sandwich for her (I hadn’t done this sort of thing before), I had a sudden realisation: didn’t she like peanut butter? And didn’t she also like mayonnaise?

In a rush I put two and two together and made uuuurrghhh!

One of my cooking nightmares: disclosed.

Amazingly, no one else has a story of making their significant other puke with a disgusting sandwich filling. That’s a good thing! We have, however, been so impressed with the response to our book giveaway competition.

Some of you have obviously gone through culinary distress, and that you’ve felt comfortable sharing that with us really is the first step to a brighter, happier kitchen life.

But one of you made a huge impression with your cooking nightmare.

Here are our top 5 entrants – all of which were not only savagely funny, but made me wince with empathy in their attempts to impress friends or new romantic interests… or just the whole heart-on-sleave stuff.

Runners-up:

Thank you so much for sharing your experiences with us:

My worst cooking disaster….hmmm…I’ve had many over the years A couple of years ago, in a severe sleep deprived state, a few months after our son was born, I squirted chocolate sauce over everyone’s sausages at dinner time – thinking it was BBQ sauce! Our 3 year old thought Christmas had some – chocolate flavoured meat!!!

Claire Chadwick from clairechadwick.scentsy.com.au

Some years ago & wanting to impress my new partner, I suggested he invite a few of his friends over for a dinner party solely provided by Moi.

Entree….mushy asparagus ….mains ….tough as shoe leather! …..finally dessert…..& obviously on a roll….instead of giving it a light dusting of icing sugar…. I proceeded rather heavy handedly ….after a few glasses of bubbles to smother it in baking powder!!

I was bonkers by then ….as my solution was to grab my hair dryer and decorate his kitchen & all within in white dust!! Funnily enough… I never felt the urge to impress his mates again!! And thankfully, we both developed a great love for cooking. Have heard about the Spirit House from friends …def on my list of places to visit.

Carole Hamilton

Being French, I thought I would try impress my husband for his birthday. I tried making coffee eclairs for the first time. I did think the choux dough looked a little runny when I piped it onto the tray before putting it into the oven. Not only the choux came out totally flat but it was also burnt! We ended up celebrating his birthday with coffee custard only for dessert!

Cyndie from mslimalicious.com

Grabbing custard powder instead of cornflower to thicken the sauce for our cauliflower cheese and not noticing until it was served up with my roast pork.

Margaret

My worst cooking disaster has to be the time I made instant noodles but because I was busy having a Twitter chat, I set the plastic packet on fire…which burnt a hole in the kitchen counter…but at least, my noodles were still edible

Ling

But our absolute favourite – really resounding with us and our (my) overarching love of really hot curry is this:

Winner:

When I was a very new Mrs, I decided to make the new Mr a curry ( this was the 80s when we only used curry powder) the recipe called for three teaspoons of curry powder, I used tablespoons. Not only that, I had bought Hot Madras curry powder. It was blisteringly hot. The pot, the wooden spoon and the plates were stained yellow from it and my poor husband tried really hard to eat it with streaming eyes and a runny nose before I told him to stop and we went and bought some chips. I’m a pretty good curry maker these days and never use curry powder, but neither of us will ever forget that first one.

Michelle Kindregan from ThatSummerFeeling.com

I’ve got so many curry stories it’s ridiculous, and most of my wooden spoons, our slow-cook pot  and our rice cooker are all stained yellow from curry. Congratulations, Michelle. We’ll be in touch really soon to get your beautiful cookery book sent to you – and may you continue to burn tonsils (in a good way) for ever after!

Well done and thank you to everyone who’s taken part in our competition. We really appreciate your sharing your personal cooking nightmares.

If you feel the need to further vent or share on your kitchen horrors, please feel free to do so: any cooking furies? Tell us here! 

Images by Mr & Mrs Romance.