I saw the above prompt on my WordPress page and couldn’t resist telling the story on how I cooked myself a snack while asleep on Ambien. Ambien is a prescription sleep aid notorious for inducing sleepwalking.
I was having trouble sleeping at the time this story happened, and the doctor was trying many sleeping medications to get me a good night’s sleep. He prescribed me Ambien, which many people have had much success with.
The first night I tried it, it worked magnificently. I slept soundly and didn’t wake up in the middle of the night. Night two, however …
My husband was working a night shift, and I was hungry. I went to bed craving something very specific. We had all the ingredients for the recipe: candied pecans. It’s a very simple recipe with butter, pecans, sugar, and cinnamon. It cooks up in a skillet until the pecans toast and the sugar/butter mixture has caramelized. I decided it was too late to cook, and so I went to bed.
The next morning, I woke up to the smell of burnt pecans and sugar in the kitchen. I wondered about that, until I looked in the garbage and saw a mass of burnt pecans and sugar. I then remembered the dream where I had made myself the pecans I had craved the night before.
Apparently I had gone sleepwalking and made myself a batch of candied pecans, which I had managed to burn on the stove. I looked on the stove and saw the cast iron frying pan, freshly cleaned and seasoned. Not only had I made myself candied pecans in my sleep, but I had cleaned up after myself like a good home economist (which I am).
So that’s the story of my greatest cooking disaster. It wasn’t even that disastrous, except I couldn’t eat the results. It’s a wonder I didn’t set the house on fire. The doctor took me off Ambien the next day.
Words Like Me 