Cooking and Doing Edits at the Same Time Can Be Dangerous!

You know I do all this stuff to give you a laugh, right? To give me more fodder for a story, right? I don’t do it just for fun. 🙂 I do it with purpose!

First off, the setting:

It’s a cool, windy day, so not quite yet warm out. This is good in that it means the bugs are still at bay. My birds are happily eating at the feeders, not paying any attention to me and my pending disaster. This is the foreshadowing of conflict. Just in case you were already tired of the boringness of this post. Notice, boringness is not a word. As an author, I can take liberties with made-up words. It’s like James Bond having a license to kill.

But I digress. I usually bake something. Just set on the timer, the meal is done when it’s done. Eventually I pry myself away from writing or edits and go check on it. It’s usually still fairly hot.

Rarely, I fry something unless it’s leftovers and I don’t want to just reheat it. So I’ll make something special like roast beef hash.

Usually, I set the heat on low because I forget when I’m writing  or editing. And I try to remember to check on it, or sometimes boil another cup of hot tea and wait for the stuff to finish cooking. I really hate to wait on anything. I want action. I want to get more editing or writing done. Staring at food cooking or water boiling doesn’t do a thing for me.

Now, I was impatient. So I put it on medium heat, not a smart thing to do. All protagonists should have faults, and impatience is apparently one of mine. I’m not saying it always is though. I can be really patient about a lot of stuff. I just do other things and then no problem. So I’m not sure what clued me in. Maybe the slight odor of smoke? Hate smoke. It makes me ill. So any hint of it, and I usually notice. I have the door to the rest of the house closed, so it would have blocked the smoke for a time.

I rush through the house to the kitchen, choking on smoke, really, really a lot of smoke. Not exaggerating here. And the frying pan has flames all around the lid of the pan. They’re too  high to reach the lid and close it all the way.

But that is one way to douse the flames, cut off the oxygen.  I immediately turned off the stove, and moved the pan off the heat. Now, they say not to move a pan because you could splash burning oil all over you and that would be worse. The oil was only a thin layer, so it was too low in the pan, and mostly burned up to worry about.

I ran through the house to get the baking soda. That will also put out flames, BUT, it takes a lot of it, and I threw some on it, but couldn’t douse the flames because the pan’s lid covered most of the oil I would have needed to reach.

Now, I have to again mention the horrendous amount of smoke in the house. The oil burned off shortly after that since there wasn’t a whole lot to begin with, but then I was trying to as quickly as I could, open windows, the front door, the back door, turning all the fans on as I went.

I scared off a big old hawk sitting on the telephone pole and as I’m trying to catch fresh breaths of air, I’m thinking how much I wished I’d gotten a photo of him!

Remember my eau de skunk post? Well, guess what? The next thing I know, I’m smelling skunk. LOL

They say not to take the pan outside, again for the danger that you could splash burning hot oil on yourself. But after I opened all the windows, I took the pan outside, and made the dumb mistake of opening up the lid. What was inside? A whole bunch of smoke, which I promptly inhaled. And choked on.

Nothing was left in the pan but burned-to-a-crisp potatoes–or Cajun style, blackened.

I hadn’t put the roast beef chunks in, so… I had those cold. And that was the rather unappealing lunch I had.  And I’m back to baking in the future. This was a picture I took of a Japanese cook who makes fires on purpose. Not something I would do!!!! Just for clarification.

flames hibachi (486x640)

So… are you entertained???

Do you ever burn up your food???

Terry
“Giving new meaning to the term alpha male!”
www.terryspear.com

4 thoughts on “Cooking and Doing Edits at the Same Time Can Be Dangerous!

  1. I have two well worn slow cookers that I use constantly for the reasons that you bake (I’m assuming you use the oven). I suppose this habit came from the hot Texas summers when I did not want the heat from the oven to warm the house. Anyway, I have come to use these pots a LOT. They remind me of Huckleberry Finn saying that the widow Douglas used too many pots to cook. He liked it when the “juices swapped around” lol.

    I like to “take liberties” with words also. My Mom was a school teacher and constantly corrected me because she could not stand it if I made up a word. I surely am not an English scholar, and have reached the age when I do not care if people think I am ignorant when I do this, I get just as much fun out of their reactions as they do from me. But I hate it when folks appoint themselves the “grammar police” because I think we have enough police already. I think they should just learn to laugh along with me.

    Please be careful with your frying pan Terry, I don not wish to see a big cloud of smoke coming from towards your way. LOL Tom

  2. I used to have a slow cooker, and I’m thinking I’ll get another. I love that the “juices swapped around!” I use a counter top convection oven so it doesn’t heat up the whole house. And it has a timer on it, so if I forget, it turns off anyway. I have a teapot that shuts off automatically also. My parents burned up so many saucepans heating water for coffee, none of us were into the high grade coffee for coffee makers and liked instant, but when we found tea pots that turned off once the water was heated, that was perfect.

    I’ll laugh along with you, Tom. 🙂 My dad used to make up words or ways to pronounce words that were unusual, just for fun. And we used them in that way–just for fun. But if I use them with other people? They don’t get it. LOL 🙂 Have you ever heard of a Nauga?

    When my dad worked for the space program in Florida, a lot of the guys were always looking for a get rich scheme. So dad told them that they ought to invest in Naugas. Their skin was used to make Naugahyde®

    They’re cheap to raise and breed like bunnies. No expense at all to them. And you can make a bundle. Well, I wasn’t sure of the spelling, so I looked it up and now they’re talking about the Naugas, but way back when there wasn’t internet, there was no such thing. Several of the guys were really interested in investing in the scheme. So now you see where I get some of my quirkiness???

    Yes, on the frying pan!!! No more frying food, which isn’t good for you anyway, unless I’m standing right there watch it cook. 🙂 If you see smoke coming from my direction, I didn’t learn my lesson the first time!!! Thanks, Tom!

  3. Oh girl you got nothing on me, I have been know to get so distracted that I have burned the bottom right out of the pan. That’s why I can’t read when I am trying to cook and also why I love my slow cookers of all kinds, I think I have 5 of different sizes now lol. Much safer for everyone around. Hope your days goes well from now.

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