Dear Folks, I never intended this list to be one in which everyone would be encouraged to post their most dismal cooking failures but if I can't discuss mine with friends, who can I? First of all regarding last evening's disaster with the underdone chicken thighs(?), Chardonay wine and Parmesan cheese, I put the two remaining thighs in a covered bowl added a bit of garlic powder to a bit of the wine and cheese and tomorrow I'll put them in the microwave and finish cooking them. And if that doesn't improve them, the remaining thigh gets wrapped up in plastic wrap and thrown into the freezer to join a few other choice bits of leftovers that are destined for the stock pot. Note: no evidence of Salmonella today! :-) Well, this evening I had myself pumped up to finally bake up a pan of mile-high popovers. I had diligently searched through just about every cookbook I own and finally came up with the recipe that suited me best. Since I have only six Pyrex custard cups, I chose the recipe that called for a heavy muffin pan with 12 compartments in it. And I followed the recipe to the nth degree. In fact I even sifted the flour! After I had sifted the flour and salt, beaten the eggs, added the milk and gently stirred the egg mixture into the flour, I used my manual egg beater to beat it all up (according to the recipe). I had already set the oven at 450 degrees, and I carefully poured the batter into the well greased aluminum muffin pan and placed the pan in the oven. I set my tick-tock timer for 15 minutes and when it clanged out to me, I reduced the oven temperature to 350 degrees and set the timer for another 20 minutes just like the recipe told me to do. Although I knew that they were rather delicate and that I shouldn't open the oven door while they were still baking, I still had to take a peak at them. And when I did, I was a bit distressed to find that all of them seemed to be overly brown on top and certainly hadn't risen up much higher than ordinary muffins. At that point I just turned the oven off altogether. When I finally got up enough courage to take them out of the oven, I wasn't surprised with what I ended up with. Although they weren't as hard as hockey pucks, I must say they were close to being in the same category. It was all that I could do to pry them out of the muffin pan in spite of my greasing the pan so thoroughly. Their only saving grace was that there was still a bit of moisture inside them and I slathered butter over the inside of one of them, heated it up in the microwave and with that much butter, it tasted pretty good! Well, now I've ended up with the remaining 11 scruffy popovers that I prepared so carefully and had such high hopes for but I'm not despondent whatsover. I still have my bowl of home made of soup to enjoy for lunch and the popovers will be good for dunking in the soup. Always look on the bright side. P.S. I don't know whether I should even clue you in to what I'm anxious to cook up again after all these years but I will anyway. Although this isn't the week to shop for beef on sale (ham yes), I noticed that the little grocery store in the village has beef chuck roasts and shoulder roasts at $2.58 per pound. Now I may find that the cuts are entirely too large for the Swiss Steak I want to prepare but I know that I have the perfect recipe for Swiss Steak. And if I find that I eventually screw up that recipe too, it's back to ordering Marie Calendar's frozen dinners in bulk! vee