Any holiday disaster stories?

[lxxf]

I've been fairly lucky. The only semi-disaster happened post meal anyway. I had cooked a corned beef for St. Pat's day. The kids were probably ages 1 and 2. We pulled up their high-chairs to the table and they had age-appropriate food while we ate a New England boiled dinner. I took care of the presentation with the corned been sliced in the middle of the platter with the vegetables surrounding the meat. When dinner was over, we each grabbed a child and it was off for bath and bed time. When I came down to clean up, the meat was gone. The dog had finished off about 4lbs of leftover corned beef. He was happy but thirsty.

[labradors]

ROTFL!

Not QUITE so disastrous, but I remember a couple of things from when I was a kid.

At one Aunt's/Uncle's house, they had the typical, separate table just for us kids. Naturally, one of my younger cousins, who wasn't very coordinated yet, spilled the entire gravy boat.

A different time, in a different place, with a different set of cousins, we were all at the same table with the adults. This wasn't the main, holiday meal, but was a few days before. My ten-year-old (same age as I, at the time) handed a bottle of ketchup to his eight-year-old brother, who dropped it. Since the dining-room floor was carpeted, the glass bottle didn't break, but the bottle landed with the bottom of the bottle hitting the floor perfectly flatly, and Newton's Third Law went into effect. The ketchup shot straight out of the bottle, and straight up to the ceiling, where it stuck. LOL! Needless to say: we kids couldn't stop laughing for a while, with that one!

[Roxanne 21]

YEAH!!!! TODAY!!!! NO power and I had South African guests coming for a true American turkey Christmas dinner!!! We rescheduled for tomorrow----what a nightmare!!! At least they are still interested for a raincheck---now I'm hoping that the climate changes don't interfere again---then I'm gonna be is DEEP dudu!!

[lxxf]

Oh Dear, Roxanne! I hope you come out OK.

Sally

[bjcotton]

Well, we had a semi-irritant this morning. I'll let Jean tell the story since she does a better job than me. It started snowing Christmas day and culminated this morning with us sitting for about an hour and a half due to an accident on the freeqay.

[cjs]

Total of two hours stuck there...what a pain in the rear!! We hit every kind of weather this time on the way home, but we made it safe and sound. Always nice to hit our own front door!! Glad you made it home in fine fettle also, Billy!!

[Mare749]

I'm glad you're both home safe and sound. No disaster stories at our house, but on Christmas night when my SIL got home and was looking forward to her nice soft bed (she had to be at work at 6:00 a.m.) there was a plumbing leak from the floor above her that went through the ceiling and soaked her bed.

[Gourmet_Mom]

My only disaster was my mother's two dried out hams. She made two because last year, there were not enough leftovers to go around. Since she was doing two, she decided to increase the time...poor dear.

One of them was left at my house. Nobody wanted the ham. My chef friends have trained me well...no waste here! I took half of it and tested out my new grinder and made ham salad for the boys at the hunting club. That and a couple loaves of bread, and their good for a day! If I can get my hands on a saw, I'll halve the bone and make some split pea soup this weekend. (I should have taken the bone Mom took home, because that one is destined for the bin!) The other half of the meat is destined for black eyed peas on New Year's Day. The rest of the bone will be used to flavor my collard greens! (Same day...traditional Southern "thang".) A pan of fried cornbread and I'm good to go!

[Harborwitch]

We didn't really have any disaster stories, sort of, but we may have caused someone elses.

I got up Christmas eve and we started in on a leisurely day. I had made a beautiful Chocolate Orange Marble cheesecake the night before, in addition to getting some 18 hour sourdough cracked wheat bread going, and a batch of sourdough potato bread in the fridge to rise.

I got the 18 hour bread rising in it's basket and the oven turned on so I could bake it, grabbed the sourdough potato dough out of the fridge and made a big pan of dinner rolls and a nice loaf of bread for Bob's lunch - plan was to take the rolls and the cracked wheat bread, along with the cheesecake and a salad to Jennifer's step brother's house for dinner.

Bob got the hot tub fired up while I was doing that. When it hit 104 he opened a bottle of champagne and we climbed in. Now keep in mind we had had a couple bloody mary's (for him) and vodka cranberries (for me) while all this was going on.

After the hot tub Jennifer called and said she was on her way home and we'd go to Leo's together. Bob and I said "yeah Jennifer" figuring she'd drive. More drinks for us while we waited. Well. . . best laid plans of the tipsy . . . she wanted nothing to do with driving, been driving all weekend for other people and to work. By this time I had the beautiful huge salad made - and by then the three of us made the decision that we weren't going anywhere. OOOOps there were some ticked off folks - but the guest of honor - my ex (who's got lung cancer) wasn't even going to be there so we didn't feel too bad.

Christmas day Jennifer made a beautiful turkey sausage Lasagna for dinner to go along with the salad and rolls from the night before. Only problem was that she used spicy sausage and a dinner table teaspoon full of cayenne. Wheeeeeeeeeee! I think that was the day AFTER Christmas disaster.