Flashback Friday--food disasters

I come from the old school of cooking that doesn't really measure anything and doesn't really use recipes. When I do use a recipe I am famous for making substitutions that change a recipe so that a recipe that started out as chicken and rice morphs to Beef and pasta. And through the years, this has led to the occasional disaster.

My first foray into cooking occurred early one Saturday morning when I was five years old and while my parents slept soundly unaware of the potential disaster that was occurring in the kitchen. All in all it turned out better than it could have. I climbed the chair and sat on the counter so that I could reach the buttons on the stove. I turned on the burner and placed a random pot on whichever burner happened to get hot. Then I cracked an egg into the pan and waited for it to cook. Somewhere around here, my mother heard the commotion and came out to "help" me. She nicely informed me that when cooking eggs, it works better if you add a little butter into the pan and that it would be good to wait for her to help me. I was very proud of myself. And that was the start of my love of cooking. I love to experiment and I love to invent wonderful creations that my family will love. My only difficulty is recreating any successful creation as I am not always aware of what went into my original meal.

When I was about 14 I decided that I could do a nice chicken dinner for my brother, sister, and my friend. I cooked it until I thought it was done and we ate our dinner, we all wondered why the chicken was sooo chewy and pink. Everyone at it politely and I was lucky no one got sick. They smiled sickly and ate the dinner and filled up on potatoes and gravy. I obviously didn't cook my chicken nearly enough and to this day, I am so scared of undercooking my chicken that I cook it until it falls off the bones.