Have you ever had to be a Kitchen "McGuyver"

[Wendy w]

I hate to confess this but, yesterday morning, as I was grinding my coffee beans, my grinder died. :mad: As one who really needs her morning coffee, I decided to throw the beans into the mortle and pestle. Hey, it works for spices. From there, I put them into a plastic bag and then gave it a few hits with my metal meat wacker. The beans weren't 100% ground and the coffee a bit weaker, but it worked in a pinch. I had to do the same thing this morning. I will be buying a new grinder today as I do not wish to have to do this again.

So...what ridiculous thing have you had to do in a pinch to get the job done?

[bobmark226]

My oven died sometime shortly after I put a pan of pumpkin enchiladas in night before last. I opened it a half hour along to see the whole mess sitting there and sort of liquefying. (The kitchen is going to be renovated soon, so a service call isn't even an issue.) I considered the microwave, then opted for the toaster oven. I scraped the whole mess into the lower part of the tray provided, put it in and turned it on to about 350. It wasn't real pretty, sort of a "pumpkin enchilada pizza glop" at this point.

Went elsewhere to entertain myself, came back a half hour later, and it was still totally uncooked.

Guess it's a good idea to turn the thing on after setting it to bake, huh?

I then turned on the broiler portion and left it for ten minutes. It heated, browned and crisped with interesting little tortilla peaks.

NOTE: There will be no Paula mini-cheesecakes this weekend. :mad:

Bob

[swquilts]

It wasn't real pretty, sort of a "pumpkin enchilada pizza glop" at this point.


Bob, it just morphed into Pumpkin Enchilada Casserole! ;) :D

I had to improvise the other day, but I've slept since then and can't remember......:rolleyes:

[Middydd]

Out of coffee filters, used a paper napkin. Worked ok, a few grounds in the coffee.

[MinEaston]

hmm, a few years ago I was home in the evening, working on dinner while DH was at a meeting. Went to open a bottle of wine and broke the corkscrew. Looked for another, no luck. DH's swiss army knife was with him.

so, down to the basement I went, retrieved a longish wood screw, screwed that into the cork, then attached vice grips to the top of the screw and pulled.

I left the contraption with cork attached out on the counter so DH could see it :D

(As you can tell, I wasn't going to wait until he got home to open that bottle!)

[katydid]

i've had to open a bottle of wine with a metal coat hanger. of course the cork was pushed into the bottle and therefore we had to finish the bottle of wine with dinner.
My husband would be so impressed if i used that technique with the vice grips to remove the cork.

[gertdog]

Originally posted by bobmark226


NOTE: There will be no Paula mini-cheesecakes this weekend. :mad:

Bob

Oh NO! Well, I guess that's the ultimate way to "lighten" a recipe, huh? :p

Me, I'm not much of a kitchen MacGyver. I'm much more of a "cry and send DH out for pizza" sort.

I do recall one time recently when my worthless W-S nutmeg grater broke and I only had whole nutmeg, not ground, that I needed for a recipe. I remembered the story of how Microplanes were invented and went poking around in the tool box- sure enough I found a never-been-used rasp, and soon I had showers of grated nutmeg. This wasn't innovative, but I was pleased to find a solution to the problem. And it worked a whole h*ll of a lot better than my specially designed tool, too.