A few years ago when mom was really getting old, somebody made (or tried to make) cornbread for Thanksgiving once... it never solidified but remained kind of saucy, and mom could apparently not understand that it was supposed to be cornbread and was just rather confused... so "who med ze cornbread" has become a phrase in the family now, for an unacknowledged milestone like if you miss someone's birthday, oh, did someone make cornbread?

Also once when we made mechoui, which is an entire animal (in this case I think lamb, but it might have been a pig) stuffed with couscous and a bunch of other stuff roasted over a fire all day being turned by hand... and something on the spit itself turned the couscous black wherever it had touched. We were in southern India at the time and had taken the animal away into the kitchen to cut up once it was cooked, so we just kind of took all the black stuffing out and didn't tell anybody and nobody got sick but we still don't know what it was, we'd made a lot of mechoui over the years but this only happened the once.

Oh and once somebody was bringing out a sliced ham just as the wedding reception guests were arriving, beautifully arranged back on the bone, when they tripped over the basset hound and the whole thing went flying. I went and stalled the arriving guests by chatting madly in the garden while mom and dad quickly piled all the ham the dog didn't get back on the plate all anyhow and my sister got the dog out the back door... nobody said anything about the dog hair at least. Thank you for getting me to remember that! I must have been 12 or so...