I have a couple. I am a stay-at-home mom who is a former professional chef. I think it's rather ironic that I come from a mother who doesn't measure ANYTHING 'cause it is too much trouble. This, more often than not- and especially in baking- results less in the "happy accidents" that she prizes so much and more in hockey pucks at the dinner table. Most famously, she loves to make crescent rolls for all holiday fetes. Proper crescent rolls are fabulous. One year, because she doesn't own measuring cups or spoons, she made the entire thing using a teacup (with a capacity of about 2/3 cup) as her 1 cup measure and an iced tea spoon (about 1 1/2 tsp.) as her tablespoon measure. On everything else, she guessed. They were tough as nails and probably could've been used as door stops. However, she is such a fabulous woman and such a lover of humankind that no one had the heart to tell her that they were awful. We all choked them down with copious amounts of water.
Of the same vein is my sister. However, she REFUSES to measure as it "stifles her creative cooking juices". Sometimes, I think the juices ought to be stifled. For a party that I was having, she offered to bring the baguettes for our bruschetta. In order to be helpful, she decided to make them herself. Her "creative juices" started flowing apparently, because she made whole-grain baguettes. Nothing wrong with that, of course, except that in her quest to never measure a thing and not use recipes (more stifling, I suppose) she guessed at what might go into a baguette. Anyone here ever make 3 12 inch long, thin, whole-grain baguettes with the equivalent of 8 cups of whole wheat flour and very little leavening? My sis did. My poor husband and his spoiled self tried his best to choke some back. What he ended up doing was pretending to take a bite and then dropping his hand below the table to feed the dog (which he is steadfastly opposed to.) The dog refused the bread and ran out from under the table.
Believe it or not, the dog never sat under the table during mealtime again.
Last, but certainly not least, is my cousin. He is vegan. He has ALWAYS eaten odd combinations, but the latest was the straw that broke the camel's back. He brought snack mix to my house when he came to visit. He wouldn't tell me what was in it 'til I tried it. I gamely stuck my hand in the jar and threw a handful in my mouth. While I tried to maintain facial composure, he proudly explained to me that it was his own special blend of raw garlic, raisins, wheat germ, and carob chips. WOW! I'm thinking maybe, just maybe, I'll think twice before taking THAT leap of faith again.
My own disaster? I tried making a very slack spinach pasta in a brand new pasta maker 30 minutes before dinner guests arrived. I blended the pasta without incident and switched it over to extrude whereupon it made a sickening crunching sound and promptly exploded spinach pasta goo all over my ceiling, floor and counter top. Luckily, they were bachelor friends of my husband's and were THRILLED with a quick home-made pizza (made on carefully measured crust, I might add...) :-)