Please share your dinner party disasters

[Anonymous]

For fun, let's recount dinner party horror stories, either those you've hosted or attended witlessly.

As a young whippersnapper living in a basement apartment in Mt. Pleasant before it was cool, I invited my boyfriend and my boyfriend's boss and his wife over for a dinner to "impress" them.
My boyfriend's boss was a portly fellow who FELL THROUGH my Ikea dining chair onto the floor.
His wife was obsessed with breast-feeding and kept discussing how much she loved nursing her kids when they were young (!?)
I made a truly horrid overcooked lasagna with burnt edges.
I was bored senseless and ended up getting pretty plastered, got into a fight with my BF afterward and ended up puking in the little garden-terrace area outside.

The boyfriend is now my DH. The weird thing is, his boss wrote him an email Monday morning raving about the meal.

[Anonymous]

Insane. I am a great cook and this was known in grad school. I had a dinner party for 7 people and invited a guy I didn’t know well but had a big crush on. He was vegetarian. I made a meat, I think it was a chicken ravine, that turned out amazing and a cheese soufflé…that was hopelessly undercooked and awful. He starved. And wouldn’t eat what I made for dessert. Not my DH .. obviously. Happily the osso buco I made for him on our third date is something he still talks about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Insane. I am a great cook and this was known in grad school. I had a dinner party for 7 people and invited a guy I didn’t know well but had a big crush on. He was vegetarian. I made a meat, I think it was a chicken ravine, that turned out amazing and a cheese soufflé…that was hopelessly undercooked and awful. He starved. And wouldn’t eat what I made for dessert. Not my DH .. obviously. Happily the osso buco I made for him on our third date is something he still talks about.

Autocorrect is insane. Chicken *tagine*.

[Anonymous]

Engaged to my DH. Made a lovely dinner for a group of our friends at his place. His roommate kept spices and things in clear glass unlabeled jars. I ended the meal with quite a flair when I served strawberry shortcake sweetened with table salt.

[Anonymous]

When we were dating DH had a dinner party where he made fresh tortellini. There were maybe 10 people and it took him forever and in the end there wasn't enough. There was plenty of wine, so by the time the tortellini was ready the whole group was plastered. It was fun! I helped out by knocking up a charcuterie plate and having that at the same time.

[Anonymous]

My cousin had just gotten engaged. Her younger brother (who was like, 27-ish, so a grown adult) was being really weird, which says a lot because he's already super weird, ultimately shoved her - hands on chest style - and she fell down a short flight of stairs (she was physically fine). Her fiancé lost his shit and charged Younger Brother and Fiancé's dad had to tackle him and pin him to a chair to keep him from attacking Younger Brother. My uncle, the father of the two cousins, yelled at Fiancé whose response was, "I'm sorry Mr. Bing, but he was hurting Brenda!" Happy THanksgiving! I've now known him for 25 years and he's the most gentle, kindest guy who I love. Younger Brother and Husband get along just fine - it was just that one night. We were all SHOCKED! Nobody gets in physical fights in our family. It's just not done - we generally all get along swimmingly.

This was my mom's disaster, but she's dead so I'll share it: she used to host Passover and start cooking like two weeks in advance. She made this apple-matzoh pudding that everyone LOVED, so she'd make two huge pans of it each year - one for our immediate family later in the week and one for the seder for extended family. I was in HS and it was nearly midnight and my mom was cooking up a storm, and I went to say goodnight to her. She went to take one of the puddings, fully cooked, out of the oven, and dropped it face down on the kitchen floor. We both stared in shock and horror. Our beloved pudding! My mom started to cry. "I have to pee! What do I do?" I immediately became an adult, closed the oven door, grabbed the oven mitts from her, told her to go pee and I'd start cleaning up the floor. We served one and our immediate family had none.

[Anonymous]

PP you are a great daughter

Mine is this - as a young in love person I invited my parents to dinner at my apt with a barely working oven to meet my boyfriend. I cooked roast chicken for the first time, as it was lovely golden outside but still raw and pink inside when I served it. I started crying and my dad jumped in shovelling it into his mouth exclaiming how delicious it was while my mother screamed hysterically he would get sick from salmonella. DH calmly dumped the whole thing and ordered a pizza, and we’ve been happily married for the past 20 years and I still appreciate his rational cool headedness.

[Anonymous]

I once made dinner for my three best friends on my birthday, and used blue twine in my leek soup, which turned the soup blue. Also tried omelettes that fell flat. Then, my crush showed up because he thought I would be alone on my birthday!

[Anonymous]

i was home for a solo visit with my mom (sans family) and i decided to make dinner for her and her BFF. They were enjoying cocktails in the lounge while i was busy in the kitchen with an oven full of casserole, and squash from the garden. The squash in the pyrex pan was looking a little dry so I decided to add some water- directly to the pan in the hot oven - and KAPOW - the hot glass just freaking shattered right there! ExPLODed all over me, the oven, the kitchen, and the dinner! Shattered glass everywhere.

Time for another cocktail!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I once made dinner for my three best friends on my birthday, and used blue twine in my leek soup, which turned the soup blue. Also tried omelettes that fell flat. Then, my crush showed up because he thought I would be alone on my birthday!

Is this a Bridget Jones reference?!

[Anonymous]

Once I was hosting around 40 for the 4th of July. My gas stove sprung a pin leak in an arm and caught on fire. Had to grab a fire extinguisher and spray my STOVE FULL OF FOOD minutes before serving.

Sent the husband out for local supermarket fried chicken for 40, had a good laugh, and spent days cleaning up because fire extinguishers make a huge mess, if you have never had to deploy one. Oh well, what the hell.

[Anonymous]

Elderly relative misjudged a fart and stained my ivory fabric dining chairs with diarrhea. Needless to say, no one had an appetite for the soup I was serving.

[Anonymous]

In college a group I was in had a potluck. I was responsible for the main course- Stouffer’s lasagna. I had no idea it took almost 2 hours to bake! So I brought it to the hostess apartment half baked and stuck it in her oven. Everyone was starving, ate most of the sides first, and got drunk. I went home with a mostly uneaten lasagna.

[Anonymous]

Last Thanksgiving, my dad didn’t realize until after he fried the turkey that the oil was rancid. It was already 4pm and the grocery store was totally out of fresh turkeys. Dad bought a pack of sliced deli turkey that no one ate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Elderly relative misjudged a fart and stained my ivory fabric dining chairs with diarrhea. Needless to say, no one had an appetite for the soup I was serving.

This is so sad. Getting to this stage is so undignifying. I hope I die before it comes to this.