Okay, so all beginning cooks - and more than a few experienced ones - have had disasters in the kitchen. Share your most humiliating, awful moments! Ever been halving or doubling a recipe and forget to make adjustments to one of the ingredients? Left out ingredients altogether? Made substitutions that simply did not work? Come on, we're your friends!

-- Liz (brooksliz@hotmail.com), March 09, 2000

Answers

Okay, I *have* to share one my colleague just told me about, about one of *her* friends' cooking disasters. The friend, who was not native to the U.S., had developed a strong love for potato salad. She decided to try to make it for herself, one day-- cubed the potatoes, added the celery, the mayo, the spices, and tasted it to see how it came out. Then she called my colleague for help, because it didn't taste right to her. "Well, did you rinse the potatoes in cold water after you cooked them? Maybe they were too hot for the mayo," my colleague explained. "You mean I was supposed to cook them?"

-- Karen O. (Lisl_1@yahoo.com), March 20, 2000.