Last night I had one of my biggest kitchen disasters…you know the kind of disaster that makes you want to cry!

Our neighbors had a baby girl on Monday and I wanted to fix them a nice, hot dinner! I even broke out all of the disposable casserole dishes and containers so there would be no clean up on their part! I started cooking around 2:15 because dinner was promised between 5:15-5:30! All was going well for the first 2 hours, the chicken casserole looked beautiful, the brownies baked up perfect and my hash brown casserole looked delicious!

Around 4:30 I put the chicken casserole in the oven because it needed to  bake for 45 minutes. I also pulled the hash brown casserole out of the oven to check its status (those little potatoes seem to take forever to soften.)

Here is where I tell you that since I cooked everything in disposable pans, I was cooking the hash brown casserole in a pie pan, and the pie pan was heaping full of yummy hash brown goodness!

All was well, the hash brown casserole was looking good, so I stuck a piece of foil on the top to keep it from drying out, put on my oven mit and proceeded to put it back in the oven…but that was not to be!

The pie pan gave way and about 1/4 of the casserole plopped down onto the oven door and since the oven door wasn’t completely flat but tilted every so slightly (another bad habit of mine), it proceed to run from the door down, a little into the oven and a lot in the crack between the oven door and oven!

At this point my first thought was to turn off the oven, sit down on the floor, call my husband while crying and ask “what do I do?!?!” However, I realized although it was bad that I just had to make the most of it because this dinner was not for me!

I proceeded to scoop as many hash browns from the mess on the door, in the crack and on the floor. Then I took a wet rag and tried my very best to get as much of the casserole remnants wiped up! After about 10 minutes of the oven door wide open (while still on, I just didn’t have the time to turn it off) I got the huge mess to a reasonable point of cleanliness and was able to proceed with cooking!

The oven (after the initial clean up):

The door, some of the smear towards the top of the door (the right of the picture) is from the clean up process, the actual casserole landed on the bottom corner of the glass and down from there! I think it looks mighty clean considering…

Here is another shot…there was hash brown casserole all in that crack and into the oven too! It was horrible! (And see the nasty inside of the oven too…um…)
So, this was by far my worst kitchen disaster (I think partially due to the fact that I was on a time schedule cooking for another family!) However, I’m sure there are many more left to come! And, I’m just thankful that I did not burn myself while frantically attempting to clean a hot oven!

Now, it’s time to get that oven fully cleaned…

This post linked to: Friday Fails