Shouldn't This Be Happening to A Much Less Intelligent Person??

We have had an eventful week. We almost died and I almost started my grandma's kitchen on fire, all in the same day, oh, and I completely spaced out a t-ball game. Kaydn Rye doesn't exactly know what day it is from one day to the next (luckily) so he didn't know he had a t-ball game that day, and I never told him about it. Ignorance is bliss. Next year at this time, if I miss a t-ball game he'll probably freak out on me, so I thought I'd take advantage of the situation while I still can.

With the airing of my little t-ball secret out of the way, the near death story goes something like this. We were on our way out to my dad's rental property that I manage, Kaydn Rye, Gertie (see The Dog, Our Old Chinese Man) and I all in the Durango, when Gertie proceeded to try and jump on my lap.

Gertie has some separation issues which prevent her from being more than a foot from any one of us, and I tried to give her the boot into the backseat when I proceeded to drive into the ditch. Gertie was clinging to the center console for dear life while I attempted at shoving her onto the floor of the backseat. You'd think she was hanging from a cliff for pete's sake. We were almost fully in the ditch when I looked ahead and realized we were almost fully in the ditch and seriously over-corrected. While we then almost entered the ditch on the other side of the road, we were definitely on two wheels, I'm sure of it. We were all over the road for quite a while before all was well again, and Kaydn Rye was on the edge of his seat when I asked him if he was alright. He said he'd be alright but that he definitely did NOT want to do that again.

So with that behind us, we proceeded to swimming lessons in neighboring Stanley. My grandparents also live in Stanley so I thought during swimming lessons I'd make them a nice puff pancake, egg and bacon dinner. No problems there, right? Well, the puffy pancake tends to poof up a little too much sometimes, and this was one of those times. The melted butter that coats the bottom of the pan must have also started dripping on the bottom of the oven, and I ended up with a seriously serious oven fire. Everyone once in a while, the puff pancake will drip on the bottom of the oven, but I still have absolutely no clue what in the heck happened, I've never had an oven fire before.



I opened the oven and there was a fire, and by the time I got the puff pancake out of the oven, the fire was completely engulfing the inside of the oven. My grandma's idea was just to shut the door and let it burn itself out, but something about sitting down to eat a nice dinner while the oven was on fire just didn't sit well with me.

To make the situation even better, two of my great-aunts were also over there that day. To save my life I could not remember how to put out an oven fire, without a fire extinguisher of course.

"Anyone have any idea how to put out an oven fire?" I asked.

"Put salt on it," said my great-aunt.

"Pour some flour on it," said my grandpa.

The salt was handier, so I threw an entire container of salt on it, which significantly decreased the fire, but didn't put it out. My grandma was getting pretty upset that I was wasting all the salt, apparently not thinking about the fact that her oven was on fire. That's when I grabbed the tupperware container of flour and doused the oven in flour. That did the trick, and with more than a century of combined cooking experience between my grandma and her two sisters, none of them had ever had an oven fire before. My guess, somebody in the bunch is lying. Really, how is that I am the one responsible for their very first oven fire experience?

Sadly, the oven fire was not the end of a day gone seriously wrong; it was perhaps the pinnacle, but not the end. After everyone was stuffed with puff pancakes and we had ruled out making a trip to the hospital for smoke inhalation, I then began the hour and a half cleanup of the oven fire.

There was a pretty big heap of salt and flour in the oven, so I thought, "Hey, let's just vacuum up the heap and I'll wipe out the rest." Well, my grandma failed to tell me that after every use, her little vacuum with all the wonderful attachments needs to be completely cleaned out. So not only did the vacuum not really do much to suck up all the crap in the oven, but I then had to spend a half hour cleaning out the vacuum.

Once I had spent more than an hour with my head in the oven, scrubbing as ferociously as I possibly could, I then had to clean up the mess I had left on the floor by the oven, and once that was done I had to clean out that stupid vacuum.

I proceeded to the porch for said vacuum cleaning task and accidentally emptied out half of the vacuum cleaner dust onto the porch, which then needed to be cleaned up as well.

Once the oven, the floor, the vacuum and the porch were as good as new, I headed home, where before I left for grandma's I had sprayed oven cleaner in my oven. So, you guessed it, I had a dirty oven awaiting me at home.

It made me wonder, why is it that things that would typically happen to stupid people, keep happening to me?

Oh, and for future reference, flour cleans up much better than salt in a scorched oven. Thought you'd like to know.

Oh, and that puff pancake recipe, here it is:

Pancake:
1 1/2 cups all purpose-flour
1 1/2 cups milk
6 large egges
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
To make pancake: In a bowl, whisk together flour, milk, eggs, sugar and salt until no lumps remain. Let stand for 30 minutes. (You can mix batter the night before, cover and refrigerate. Remove from refrigerator when you begin preheating oven.) Preheat oven to 450 degrees. While the oven preheats, place a large slope-sided baking pan or ovenproof skillet into oven with the stick of butter. When the butter is melted, remove from oven. Pour pancake mixture into heated pan and return to oven. Bake pancake for 15 to 20 minutes until edges are puffed high and golden.

Apple filling:
2 large apples, peeled and sliced (I leave the peelings on though)
2 tablespoon butter
1/4 cup brown sugar
To make apple filling, While pancake bakes, in medium skillet, sate apples in butter until tender, 5 to 10 minutes. Add brown sugar and stir until dissolved. Transfer to serving bowl.

To serve pancake, be sure everyone is at the table when you bring it in, as the pancake will slump quickly. Cut pancake into quarters and fill each serving with sauteed apples. Pass the whipped cream on the side if desired. Serves 4.

Here's to a fire free day!



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