If you’re ever looking for a good conversation topic, try “disastrous dishes prepared by loved ones.” If it ends up anything like the conversation we had at our last KegWorks Happy Hour, you could be in serious laughter-induced stomach pain before it’s all said and done. Perhaps our growlers of beer inclined us to laugh a bit harder… but upon further consideration and total soberness, it has been determined that some of the stories that surfaced are still pretty damn hilarious and very much worth sharing.

KegWorks Blog readers, eat your heart out on these bizarre tales from the kitchens of our nearest and dearest:

My contribution to the conversation was a series of stories including all of the gory details of the awful creations that my grandfather regularly prepared, shortly after my grandma passed away. Grandma had always been a sucker for a sale and she bought in bulk, so Grandpa felt no need to go grocery shopping… for months. When he didn’t have an ingredient that a recipe called for, he’d find the next best thing in Grandma’s stockroom as a substitute.

My favorite dish at the time was lasagna. Being the adoring grandfather that he was, he made his very first lasagna just for me – only he didn’t have any ricotta cheese, so he used the closest thing he could find in the fridge, which happened to be crumbly blue cheese. Hey, cheese is cheese – right? Wrong! He neglected to inform anyone of his “secret ingredient,” so as I tasted my first big forkful of Grandpa’s “special lasagna,” my mouth was overcome with an awful taste that bordered somewhere on stinky feet and rotting tomatoes.

The story that topped all others however, was the tale of a thrifty Grandmother who grew up during the depression and never quite dropped her penny-pinching ways. Late into the 1990’s she would serve the following meal to her extended family: “Goulash” made only with macaroni and ketchup with sides of hand-balled wonder bread. Yum!

It gets better though…after boiling a couple of hotdogs for a meal, that very same Grandma would serve the empty pot’s remains as a tasty batch of “Weiner Water Soup.” Delicious!

The scary part is that Dave found the recipe on cooks.com – then again, we’re pretty sure that he was the one to submit it.

For your budding chefs, check out this kitchen starter kit and whatever you do, keep them away from our grandparents.

TAGS [ FOOD | HAPPY HOUR | COOKWARE ]