My grandfather has two stories like these. The first was when he succeeded in producing a loaf of banana bread that wasn't undercooked; by leaving it in the oven for 7 hours. The other was trying to cook a twice-as-large-as-usual turkey for Thanksgiving (more people). Unfortunately he quadrupled the amount of fuel for the grill. So, after the grill (the grill, not the fuel) stopped burning, he retrieved his 24-lb-turkey-sized piece of charcoal. Another story similar to grilling the turkey was a contest for how fast each team of engineering students at Purdue could get their (cheap) grill going well the fastest. The winning technique was to light a bit of the fuel and pour a few cups of liquid oxygen on the flames. The fuel, oxygen, and grill were gone in 3 seconds. After a few years of this, when the fire department found out, they banned this competition.

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