Hi Deadly Chakram,
Thanks for the feedback and the anecdotes. (Forgetting to turn on or boil the water are easy enough mistakes to make, especially for beginning cooks.)
My favourite personally experienced culinary mishap occurred when I was in high school. My friend Greg was extolling the virtues of microwave ovens. I’m old enough to remember when not many families had them. I had never seen one in action, and so he demonstrated by putting a loaf of bread into his family’s microwave, started it, then turned back to me to tell me something.
I looked at the oven and asked him if it was behaving properly; since I had never seen one in action before, I honestly didn’t know whether all of the blue arcing I was seeing was normal. It turns out that when he put the loaf of bread in the oven, he left it in its plastic bag - complete with metal twist tie.
In many ways, he was the most brilliant person I have ever met, but even as a teenager, he was the walking stereotype of the absent-minded professor.
