These stories are awesome, thank you everyone for sharing!!
My dad was always the more adventurous one in the kitchen (when he was home from the boats), though my mom kept us fed most of the year. (He kept us well supplied with king crab, salmon, and halibut from Alaska, so we weren't hurting too badly!)
My two most distinct memories of my dad's kitchen exploits were him making homemade horseradish, and another time (shortly later) cooking a beef tongue.
He found out our house in Seattle had horseradish growing in the backyard, and decided to grind up some of his own, cursing the ridiculous price of 'that store bought crap' the entire time. He threw the horseradish roots in the Cuisinart, and let it run for a good long time. Always the engaging parent, and wanting to include us in the festivities, he invited us older kiddos (4 and 6 years old) to take a big sniff of his made-at-home miracle. Caught up in his excitement, we stuck our little faces deeply into the Cuisinart bowl, only to be immediately overwhelmed with horseradish mustard gas that left us horking and blubbering the rest of the afternoon.
Undeterred by the verbal lashing he received from dear Mama, he soon decided to share with us one of his childhood favorites, beef tongue. As he's no longer around to give his version of events, it will suffice to say that the afternoon involved a pressure cooker and beef tongue that were left home alone on the stove to their own devices. We returned home to find the kitchen redecorated with wee bits of tongue glued to every surface imaginable, and the sad remains of a crock pot on what was left of the stove top.
Everyone always assumed that any bad words we learned as kids were a result of having a boat captain as a father-- I assure you, this was not entirely the case.