One of my worst and most horrific kitchen mishaps goes like this:

It was a hot July day. I headed out early in the morning to go pick some blueberries, since I knew the day was just gonna keep getting hotter. If I recall correctly, it wasn’t a great season that year and it was a bit early in the season anyway. I had to drive about 45 minutes to the farm, where it took me about 2 hours to pick a little under 5 pounds of berries, in the increasingly hot sun. I headed home, salivating over the pie I was going to make. My mother (I was still living at home then) thought me insane for turning on the oven and baking a pie, but dammit, I had to have those bubbling berries ensconsed in a flaky crust!

I made the pie, stuck it in the oven and waited. When it was done, I took it out of the oven and went to place it on a cooling rack on the counter. Well, the cooling rack slipped off the counter, just as I was placing the pie on it (I think my oven mit caught the edge of the rack or something). The pie, with its lava-hot blueberry filling, slid off the counter and skidded across the kitchen floor UPSIDEDOWN, leaving a trail of hot purple heartache for about 4 feet. I burst into tears, wailing bloody murder. Thankfully, my mother was outside at the time and didn’t witness the carnage in her kitchen. I spent the next 30 minutes cleaning up the now ruined pie. There went about 6 sweaty hard-earned hours of my life.

Not one to be defeated, I used the remaining berries I had to make another pie. This one made it out alive and we enjoyed it after dinner that night. It was a bittersweet accomplishment, as all I could think of was the three pounds of lost berries that had given their life in vain.

I still have nightmares…
Lisa