Kitchen Disasters

I have had pretty good luck with the kitchen in my cooking days. I mean, everything doesn't always turn out great or even edible, but I have not had any major disasters. My old roommates, bless their hearts, had many cooking disasters and I could never really understand why. One roommate caught the trash can on fire (grease fire) and forgot what to throw on it, so tried lots of things and eventually got it out with only the trash can suffering. Another roommate tried to use my pressure cooker as a double boiler to make her spaghetti in (don't ask why...) except she didn't put any water in the bottom pot. Did you know that you can melt holes in your pots if you're not careful? She (we) learned the hard way. (By the way I wasn't home at the time.) I really wish I could find the picture of me peeking through the 8 in. diameter hole in the bottom of the pot that had melted onto the burner.

Now for the pertinent story.... It was Tuesday, I had visiting teaching at 5 pm then Rob and I both had an Activites Committee Meeting (oh yeah, that's our new calling) at 7 pm. Not much time for dinner right? So being the brilliant planner that I am, I decided we'd have soup for dinner and that I would make cornbread right before I left so when we both got home we could eat the cornbread and soup and run to our meeting. So, I made the cornbread, and as usual it spilled out over the pan into the oven. Why, oh why, don't I ever remember to put a pan underneath to catch the drip? Someday I'll learn...maybe. So Wednesday we had lasagne (thanks Dad!), so I pre-heated the oven and sat down to feed Grace. A few minutes later I smell smoke and with a glance toward the kitchen see smoke. So I put Grace down and run to the oven. As I opened it this is what I saw:

Oh yeah, I forgot to clean the oven after my other little mishap. Oops! So I called Rob and watched it burn then I threw water on it and it steamed something fierce and scared the dickens out of me but it squelched the flames. All better. I just can't believe that I had a fire with actual flames in my kitchen.

And this afternoon I have over-cooked every single batch of cookies that I am in the process of making. Here's one of my favorite things about being a mommy: blame! I'm pretty sure that none of this would have happened if it were not for Grace distracting me all the time :) Yeah right, but I can pretend can't I?