The longer you have been cooking, the more likely it is that a culinary disaster will strike. Usually, it comes in the form of either a missing ingredient or one added by mistake.

After a hilarious round of sharing cooking disaster stories at Thanksgiving I was left with so many gems I couldn’t fit them all into one column. So this week prepare for some more cooking chuckles, courtesy of my extended family.

To be fair I probably should go first with my famous birthday ice cream recipe. My late Uncle Warren had a February birthday and one year I planned a birthday supper in his honor when I learned his sister, my Aunt Carol, and her husband would be in Lexington to celebrate as well.

I planned a true German menu with rouladen, kartöffel klöse (special potato dumplings) and rot kohl (red cabbage). For dessert I went American as a birthday tradition on my Bierman side of the family was to make homemade ice cream for our birthday celebrations.

The main course went together as planned and I had made the ice cream mix ahead of time so when we sat down for supper the ice cream maker was churning away. As we were clearing the dinner plates Hubby went to check on the ice cream.

I was summoned to the back sink where the machine was placed. “It’s not freezing right,” he whispered.

Indeed, only the sides showed the barest amount of thickening where the outside ice was freezing. We decided everyone was pretty full anyway and announced dessert would be served in about 30 minutes.

Thirty minutes later there was a bit more thickened and so we scraped it out, dished it up and set out the strawberries and chocolate syrup toppings. My uncles nearly simultaneously took their first bites, anticipating a creamy, sweet sensation.

By this time I got my dish and was ready to dig in when Hubby discovered why the mixture wasn’t freezing properly. In the preparations I had missed putting the full amount of sugar in. From then until he was gone my uncle never let me forget my adventure into making “diet ice cream.”

Another time my brother-in-law’s mother made an entire batch of chili before she realized she had put in cinnamon instead of chili powder for the seasoning. Mary had never been a great cook and several more stories of her cooking faux pas were shared.

One time they had been gifted an elk roast and her husband was anticipating a fine wild game meal. Unfortunately for Merlin, Mary wasn’t familiar with cooking much game and had added no extra moisture to the pan. Elk is naturally low in fat and unlike a beef roast, by the time she thought it was done, the roast had turned into a leathery burnt offering.

Mary’s granddaughters had their own cooking experiment one night. Some crab meat had been purchased and they found a recipe that called for cooking the crab with red wine. Sounded delicious enough, except when they went to the cupboard and found the red wine – it was a bottle of red wine vinegar. Naively thinking it was close enough they proceeded to finish making the dish, which was so sour not even their farm cats would eat it.

Finally, I leave you with the puzzling dinner rolls. Dan’s mother recalled the time they made a batch of rolls for a family gathering, but they just kept turning out flat. Three people had looked at the recipe and no one had caught the line, “Let the dough raise twice,” until Charlotte’s mother read it.

So dear readers, please be sure this holiday season to follow Santa’s rules, read the recipe, make your list, and check the ingredients and methods twice.