Your Biggest Stuff Up
I realise that as professionals we hardly ever made a stuff ups! Now is the time to own up! I remember not long after I picked up my cooks rating the chief asked me to make six trays of fruit slice. (He had a lot of confidence in me lol) I had all the dry fruit in the hobart and added some jam and started to mix, next add the sugar. I threw in the first big scoop then another. Then the mix got a frothy head on it and I thought that a bit strange! I did a quick taste test oops SALTY! Someone had shifted the sugar bin and put salt in it's place. Bugger, I had to own up to the Chief, so I posed it as a question, " Chief do you know how to get the salt out of fruit slice mix?" Brick Bradford said "yes throw it over the side!"

Just today I forgot to put chicken on a chicken blt. Didn't read the docket lucky its only a small crew in the kitchen.

I was an AB so i always let the kellick take the wrap where i could LOL .On the very rare occasions that i had a fopar it was generally a doosie no stuffing around with me.Quite a few cakes burnt black as the ace of spades and quite a few trays of bacon cremated . I will Sit on this for a few days and see what i can come up with Making a roux with cake mix instead of flour comes to mind the flour bin was alongside of the cake mix bin at the apprentices Galley at Nirimba. 20 years and one or 2 stuff ups each year on average god i could write a book on this subject on some of the stuff up i saw and was involved in .And there is not one cook among us that hasnt turned potatoes into marbles when using those potato rumblers .

Making about 30lt of Custard in the Main Galley at Cerberus and some smart a** put bottles of Tabasco sauce into the vanilla essence it was the best custard with a ring sting chaser anyone had ever tasted. So now i always check the essence before i add it to anything. I heard of a cook ( No Names and it wasn't me.) who was making about 20kgs of Hamburger mix in a Hobart and went to add the tomato sauce into the mix. Two problems sauce bottle was glass and Hobart was ON. Ended up with 20kg mince with glass shard garnish.

G'Day Dean , that happened in the Main at Cerberus . The chef ...years later paid off a Chief . I was the POCK ..."What do I do . PO?" :shock: ... .."Shit bin it , :roll: then go and sign the 117 (?) form in the office " 8)

You should of told him to pick the glass out Jaffa. He was my PO at Penguin and i was told the story by my PO instructor when i was going though Cookery School, I couldn't take him seriously at all. Wasn't it fun cleaning the spud peeler, especially trying to taking the disk out of the bottom that most of the time was jammed, and you can't forget emptying the slop out of the bottom.

when I was a OD we had minted peas one night and i was told to grab a shake pack of dried mint and mint the peas. i grabbed the pack they all looked the same and tipped them in the steam copper the peas then turned a funny colour not green at all and smelled like chook stuffing lo and behold mixed herb peas . :oops: jesus didn't Kevin Larter do his nut you know where they ended up and i nearly went with them. cranky bastard he was. talking about custard i know a cook who put a tin of MSG in the custard at the PO galley at the tross and served it up.. no names no pack drill but he was with me at the reunion. :wink: best wishes to all Johnno

Stuff Ups
There was an incidence in the bakery at Cerberus when I was there. The night bakers could not get one of the doughs to rise so the Kellick decides to bury the offending dough in the volley ball court beside the bakehouse and start afresh. The hand over went well in the morning with no report of the buried dough. Come lunch time the night bakers were called back to the bakery to report to the Chief, who wanted to know if there was something they forgot to report from the previous night. "No nothing Chief" The Chief then says have a look in the volley ball court and see if you want to change your story! Oh dear the heat of the sun had made the dough rise into a huge sandy monster, Oops! Grab your caps lads!

Did hear about the bread dough at cerberus,one trip on the flat top was doing the bake house bit,my oppo was Barry Moffat (no Relation)he says I did it,I say he did it,bottom line is the Temp Prob sat through the whole mix bit,problem is how do you hide a 100 pound bread dough fxxx up,port hole looks good so out it goes,now this is where it is a bit funny,the phone rings and the bloke standing at the arse end of ship(think they called em life boy or some thing like that) says did you blokes just throw ANOTHER dough out to hole,we just cracked up as obviosly this bloke had been on watch when other fitter & turners had done same thing,if guilty own up lads

my best two were with the cds from penguin on the wewak we were at the training islands out from rockhampton and ran out of bread the arseholes wouldnt have scone etc had to make bread well the yeast was a few yrs out of dateso they became street sighns on the island then on the same trip about a dozen yank officers joined us theywanted baked fish all the fish had been sitting in a wheat bag outside for a few days so washed them in sea water gutted them and they reckon best they ever tasted didnt get to see how it affected them thoough?

Ah!! Wagon Wheel carrots !!!!! Top and tail carrots , chop into 1/2 inch slices and put through the spud machine . Had to be cooked straight away as they would go black quickly . Of course you used a lot of carrots , but it was bloody easier than hand peeling them all . Oh , Yeah , serve them with honey and mint . 8)

I don't know what his nickname was in the navy but a guy I know is Townsville Adam Ferguson was a clearance diver. Or maybe he's just telling porkies. Can you please clear this curiosity up.

Back to the subject I had a shocker the other day. Earlier in the day I had used the stick mixer and pulled the bain marie plug out. Apparently I had actually forgotten to turn bain marie switch the thing back on. No one got to arngry thankfully.