re: Kitchen Disaster, what's yours?

Jell-O. Seriously. Jell-O. My wife loved red Jell-O, so I was going to surprise her by making some Jell-O for her after she left for work so it would be ready when she got home. I boiled the water and put the powder in a big tupperware container, poured the water in, and clamped the lid on and started shaking it to mix it. I didn't think about the fact that the water was still turning to steam and that Boyle's Law was in full effect in our kitchen. The lid blew off from the pressure and red liquid Jell-O sprayed EVERYWHERE.

I cleaned for at least an hour, but for months after, we'd find spots of dried Jell-O in strange and wonderful places around our kitchen.

It was either that or the time she baked a turkey and some of the sweet glaze bubbled up and overflowed onto the floor of the oven. She couldn't get it off after it hardened and decided that she'd just turn the self-cleaning cycle on. By the time the smoke started pouring profusely out of the oven's vents, the lock on the latch had engaged and all we could do is turn the oven off, but we had no way to open the door to cool it down. It set the apartment's smoke alarms off. Apparently, if the smoke alarms go off long enough in that complex, it will set the entire building's smoke alarms off and call the fire department. So, we were trying to figure out how to stop the smoke, we had wet towels packed on the oven's vents, and smoke was pouring out of our open doors when the fire department arrived to witness the scene. We had to explain to them that while smoke was still pouring out of our open doors the apartment was not, in fact, on fire. The firemen came in to inspect everything and agreed that the kitchen was not on fire and went away laughing. The neighbors did not find it nearly as funny.

After we could get the oven open, we discovered that it had turned into a black spongy looking mess that was adhered to the bottom of the oven. I had to remove the element and get at it with a paint scraper and various chemicals to get it off.