I started laughing out loud when reading Liz the Squeak's post, then the tears started with JenEllen & continued with Rick Fielding's post.

It's hard to read thru wet eyes.

When I was a young pup (not long away from my mother's bad cooking - she HATES cooking & slams pans etc) I was happily boiling a sugar sauce & ended up with something resembling charcoal & black smoke all over the place. As this was 1978 I can't recall the full details (did I leave the kitchen to do something else?) but I remember the very interesting texture of the resulting mess - it was a black brittle aerated mass, looking more like something from the bottom of a large furnace than a small pan.

When my younger sister was at primary school she cooked her first cake (no cake mix here). It was about half an inch tall & we all had the same thought - don't upset the proud cook, say its yummy, don't comment on it's appearance. But it was & we wolfed it down (didn't take long, there wasn't much!)

sandra