Saturday, February 5, 2011

kitchen street smarts

Last night our stove caught on fire.

Our stove is very old and very strange.  The clock doesn't work, the timer doesn't work.  The only thing that works is that it gets hot.  Over 2 of our burners is a wooden cutting board.  Way back when we moved in, we discovered that these 2 burners didn't work as well, so leaving the cutting board there wasn't a problem.  I've learned to cook with 2 burners and somehow make everything come out at the same time.

Last night I really did need all 4 burners.  I couldn't really remember what exactly was wrong with these burners, so I turned one on.  I set my pan on it, put in a bit of olive oil, and turned it on low.  About a minute later I noticed the burner was RED ... like the red that it turns when you have it on high.  I quickly removed the pan and there was a flame!  I made lots of noise and said Colt's name a hundred times, but my mind went one place and one place only:  Ms. Butler's 7th Grade Home Ec Class.

I learned a lot in that class.  I learned how to make english muffin pizzas.  I also learned that it's not easy cooking in a group, as my group totally screwed up no bake cookies one day.  She made the comment that there's no way to screw those up.  I also learned that when you have a fire on your stove, you throw baking soda over it.

So, when my stove was on fire last night, my mind went like this: THERE'S A FLAME. 7TH GRADE HOME EC.  MS. BUTLER.  THROW BAKING SODA ON IT. WHERE IS THE BAKING SODA??

In the time that I thought all of that, Colt, who was calm the entire time and said nothing, simply blew a little bit on the flame and it was out.  I almost had a heart attack.  Sometimes having kitchen street smarts is better than kitchen book smarts.  And ... that's just one more reason why we married each other.

3 comments:

  1. hahahaha I LOVE THIS. oh ms.butler. she smelled of nursing home and stale coffee. im glad that the fire didn't harm anything (because really, when i started reading this, I thought, "oh NO, not something ELSE they have to replace) and im glad you are married to colt :) love you

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  2. haha! oh i love this post : ) It's okay, Claire. That happened when I was a kid and Anna and I were making scrambled eggs for my parents (breakfast in bed, you know). Anna and I were the first ones up. She started the eggs in the skillet and told me to keep an eye on it while she went to the bathroom. In that 30 second period of her leaving the kitchen, a flame of fire lept from the burner and all I could do was loudly whisper (kinda raspy-like), "Smoke! Smoke! Anna! Smoke!". She lazily strolled back in and thought, "duh, dummy Abby. Of course there is sm..." and then she saw what I was talking about! Haha!

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  3. Bahahahaha I remember how upset Ms. Butler was!! We ruined her bowl... i really didn't think something microwave safe would ever do that...

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