- The visual still gives me goosebumps to this day
because it's pretty much a nightmare.
- I think I'm lighting the apartment on fire.
- The Hobart machine just went (whooshing).
(pensive music)
- I cook for a living, but surprisingly,
I don't have many cooking horror stories for me personally.
But I do have one that involves my mom.
So, this was a couple of years ago.
It's Christmas Eve,
so my whole family is home for the holidays.
So, because it's Christmas Eve
and we are hosting a Christmas party the next day,
my mom is in the kitchen baking a cake,
and she put in all of the ingredients
and then she has this big KitchenAid mixer,
which is an awesome tool for any chef,
but I guess it can be pretty dangerous
when not used correctly.
So, there's one lever on one side to unlock the top
so it flips up and then there's one lever on the other side
that turns it on to mix.
She went to unlock the lever to put it up
because she wanted to make sure
the mixing attachment was on correctly, but instead,
she turned the level to turn the mixer on
while her hand was inside of the whisk.
So, it basically turned on and caught her hand in the mixer
and started mixing her hand,
which immediately broke her hand, which is pretty awful.
The visual still gives me goosebumps to this day
because it's pretty much a nightmare.
I guess the thought of what had happened overwhelmed her,
so it made her lightheaded and pass out.
But without having known that,
we were just so confused at what had happened.
But yeah, that is the story of our Christmas cake disaster.
- So, I was playing hookey from work.
I remember I had called out
because I think I was a little hungover,
and I decided that today was the day I was gonna cook.
I had just moved into an apartment in Manhattan
with my two roommates,
and I was in the kitchen and I had put on the oven
to pre-heat it,
and I went away to go take a shower or something.
I think I was making cheese toast,
but I never really had turned on the oven
in this apartment before.
And I went into the shower.
When I got out of the shower,
billows of smoke were everywhere.
So, I went to go open up the oven
and there was nothing in the oven,
so then I got even more freaked out
that there was all this smoke coming out
and I had no idea what it was from.
Then I opened up the broiler
and saw that my roommates store their oven mitts in there,
and I open it up and it's just three mitts just in flames.
And now the smoke is everywhere, the flames are everywhere,
so I call my super crying and panicking and I was like,
I think I'm lighting the apartment on fire.
And the guy that picked up the phone was the maintenance guy
and he didn't really speak English, and I know Spanish,
but in this particular moment in time,
I lost all ability to know any words in Spanish
and I just started screaming help.
And then all I could get out of me was fuego.
And so, I started screaming help fuego
for about five minutes straight
and then I heard a knock on my door.
And the maintenance guy came in
and was looking at me like holy crap, what do we do?
So, that kinda made it worse for me.
I still had no relief
because even though another person was joining me,
they realized how terrible it was
that I'd gotten myself into.
So, what happened was we wound up turning off the oven
'cause I didn't turn it off in this entire time
'cause I was freaking out so much.
So, he turned off the oven,
he brought in two big industrial fans
to try to make the apartment not smell like burnt fabric,
but I'm pretty sure the smell lingered
for the following month afterwards
for our brand new Manhattan apartment
just because I decided to make cheese toast on my day off.
Yeah.
- I used to have a cooking class in high school,
and I was excited to take the class
'cause I wanted to be a chef
and I wanted to learn as much as I can.
And one particular day,
we were making a bunch of food for a banquet
and I was making focaccia bread for 300 people,
and I was paired with this girl named Crystal
who didn't want to cook for the rest of her life.
She was there 'cause it was easy for her.
We had this huge Hobart mixer
to put the focaccia dough ingredients into.
So, inside, there was flour, water, salt, some herbs,
and we were about to mix the batch together
in the huge Hobart mixer and I was like,
oh, Crystal, wait one second.
I have to go grab a spatula to clean down all the sides.
And I don't know if she didn't hear me
or didn't get what I was talking about,
but as I was walking away,
I heard the (clicking) of the machine being turned on
and I was like (groans).
I was running back,
I was like no because she didn't just choose the first level
or the second level where it would've probably worked fine,
she went all the way to the top
and I just hear the (thudding).
I think an explosion is an understatement.
The Hobart machine just went (whooshing)
and all the contents inside of the Hobart mixer
exploded into the air.
It was on her from head to toe, it went all over me,
it went all over the tables, on the walls,
it even went on the ceiling.
And everyone in the entire room stopped what they were doing
and just stared at us.
Their mouths were like...
All the kids were shocked in class
and our chef instructor was very upset.
So, Crystal and I had to stay after class
until the entire kitchen was clean.
I had to stand on tables with a brush and scrub the ceiling.
No joke.
Crystal, let's just say she's not a chef.
(jazzy music)