How to overcome the smell of rotting broccoli in two easy steps

I am not a good cook.

This is not a surprise for most people who know me as it has been a running family joke for most my life. The tale of the hamburger soup I made to impress my step-mother but actually forgot to turn on is something that I still get teased about.

It's nice to know I'm consistent.

This week, I made a pretty decent Thanksgiving dinner. The turkey turned out great, the potatoes were creamy, the veggies were roasted, and we all ate like kings. So, revelling in my success, I thought I would make turkey soup to keep the party going.

I had good intentions.

But then...

My cooking in 4 sentences: Made turkey soup. Forgot soup on stove. Threw out turkey soup. Dang it.

— Bronwyn (@Bronwyn_MayB) October 11, 2016

This brought on a great deal of conversation on my FaceBook page about other people's mishaps and reminders that it could be worse. My cousin jokingly reminded me it was no worse than the time I forgot broccoli in the microwave for 2 weeks.

That brought up many questions for friends and family, so I thought I would regale you with the story. It may be the perfect example of all my cooking experiences.

Broccoli clip art for emphasis. Source here.

Once upon a time, my soon to be sister-in-law, Mel, and I lived together in an apartment. It was a cute little apartment with 60s style room dividers and a teeny kitchen off the living area. This was good as it was rare we ever cooked with any consistency.

One day, we were trying to be healthy and made supper. Pork chops in the oven, pasta on the stove, and broccoli steamed in the microwave. I'm sure it was lovely, but I have no memory of the meal itself.

What I have is memory of the aftermath.

A couple of weeks went by and we were overwhelmed with the smell of rotting vegetation. We cleaned the kitchen top to bottom. We moved the stove, cleaned out the fridge, and washed the floors.

Still the smell remained.

We didn't locate the source for many days.

Now, you would think with the extreme clean that we did that one of us would have remembered to open the microwave. You would think that someone would have used the microwave in those weeks, but then you would not understand how much we truly hated cooking.

Finally we opened the microwave.

There it was.

A small bowl of broccoli was sitting there in the middle of the appliance. It was green, but not in the way that broccoli is green, but that green that has taken over once-living vegetation.

The smell that wafted forth from the open door was somewhat sweet, but mostly decaying, and caused an immediate retching from each of us in the room.

We threw out the broccoli and cleaned the microwave. Like my other cousin pointed out on FaceBook, there is not enough vinegar in the world to stop that smell. But, we gave it the college try.

Eventually we admitted defeat. We were going to live with that smell forever and that was how it would be.

A possible solution came to us. Popcorn!!

Have you ever cooked popcorn and had the smell take over an entire room? Maybe this would do it for us.

Plus, we would get to eat popcorn. Double win!

We threw the popcorn into the microwave and settled down to watch American Idol.

I would like to remind you of two things here. First, this was long ago enough that watching American Idol was awesome. Not weird and sad. Second, this was long ago enough that the microwave did not have a popcorn setting. You put it in for numerous minutes and waited for the sound of popping to slow to one pop a second.

American Idol got very exciting. Mel's favourite singer knocked out my favourite singer in the last round. Mel was whooping and jumping around in victory while I felt small and insignificant.

Suddenly... "What is that smell?" and... "The popcorn!!!"

The microwave door opened to reveal the popcorn bag on fire. Panic ensued. Flaming bag was dumped in sink and doused. Popcorn was mourned.

Once the excitement finished, we noticed something important.

The smell of rotting broccoli was gone.