On Sunday morning, 17 called and asked if he could have some friends over for a last-minute SuperBowl party.  Now this surprised me, because he’s a theater kid and neither he, nor his girlfriend,  nor his theater friends have ever demonstrated any interest in football.  But we said yes, told him to tell his friends to bring the junk food, and set about tidying up the house to make it presentable,  and then I went to fetch a variety of pop and a couple of bags of ice while my dh started making a big pot of chili.

Shortly after the kids arrived, it was clear they did, indeed, have no interest in football, as they brought a Wii and all its accoutrements. By then, the chili  had been brought up to temp and dumped into the crockpot, and dh asked me to taste it for spices.

I did, and almost barfed. Seems one of the packages of ground meat had gone bad.  Way bad. Ugh. Pot of chili ruined.

Love of my life got rid of the nasty chili while I went into the pantry to dig through the cabinets for ingredients for a new pot (For speed, I used a base of canned chili, jazzed up with fancy beans, Ortegas, etc.)

As the new chili bubbled, I slipped off to the john.  It smelled of chili in there, which I chalked up to my husband dumping the first batch down the toilet.

A bit later, however, hubby went in there and promptly stepped in water—overflow, it turned out, from the shower, which had backed up. Turns out that was the smell I smelled, because hubby, bless his heart, hadn’t flushed the chili, but had run it down the disposal.  The whole 6 quarts of it. Clearly too much for the rather finicky pipes of our nearly 50 year old house.

Off to Safeway for Liquid Plumbr.  Let sit.  Nothing.  More LP, more sitting, more nothing.  Much use of plunger (including imprint of hollow handle-top on my palm). Nothing.

Next morning, one more large bottle LP, couple of hours of sitting, more plunger. Nothing.

So, a call was made to the plumbing service  The same plumbing service that was out a few months ago when our incoming water line failed.  Now, to their credit,  they were here within a couple of hours both times, and to their further credit, the receptionist/scheduler didn’t even laugh when I suggested that I was due a freebie.  They just showed up, fixed the problem, and handed me a bill.

So I added it up.  Plumber + ingredients of first batch of chili + ingredients of second batch of chili + multiple bottles of totally and utterly ineffective Liquid Plumbr = $117

All for one pot of chili.

How about you? What’s your most expensive meal disaster?