News Munchies
Not for The Naked Chef
Originally Posted
Updated
Time was, cub reporters were assigned the police beat until they could learn the business. They couldn't get into too much trouble there.
You'd think the same would be true of someone covering the food beat, writing recipes and such. And you'd be wrong.
Pity the poor recipe editor for Southern Living, who didn't bother to actually whip up the "Icebox Dinner Rolls," testing for the off chance that they might, well, explode.
After at least five Southern Living readers were injured by melted, boiling, exploded fat, the magazine put out a full-scale alert: Postcards to subscribers, an urgent safety notice posted on their Web site, pulling the April issue from store shelves, and lots of editorial-office yelling about the idiots who work there.
The magazine's media relations folks probably weren't thrilled with the extremely amusing local reenactments on television stations around the country.
There have been so many food-based explosions that we could run a whole column. Instead, we suggest you look to Google for your entertainment, which will include ...
- a Denver Post recipe for Apricot Brandy Chicken that blew the doors off at least two ovens;
- an Atlanta Journal-Constitution recipe for Hawaiian Fruit Salad that recommended the potentially explosive practice of boiling an unopened can of condensed milk;
- a cookbook recalled by Ballantine because it recommended decorating a cake with the poisonous flower lily-of-the-valley.
And there are many more. Now Rita has yet another reason avoid going into the kitchen.