Fire Drama

Rob the Neighbour said it was one of the shortest and most dramatic phone calls he’d ever received from our house:

Rob: “Hello.”

dP: “Do you have a fire extinguisher?”

dP: “Hello?”

Rob was already at the door with a fire extinguisher in hand.

At some point, while I was on the way to the airport to pick up our friend Greg from New York the container holding bacon fat on the stove melted and fat ran into the burner wells on our ancient half working stove. dP was cleaning a cast iron skillet and the burner / fat combo promptly caught fire. dP swears it was because I’d left a candle (unlit) on the stove and the heat melted it (I’m not getting the logic) and I swear it’s because he’d left the fat container on the stove too close to the skillet and it melted. Greg insists it’s his fault (and Michi will back him up) because it’s his karma to be around stoves when they catch fire.

Regardless of how it started, fat fires are nasty because they burn inside your stove and you can’t put them out with water (unless you want to burn down your house). dP put the fire on the top of the stove out using a wet towel but the fire inside the stove continued to burn and that’s why he called Rob.

Still, whatever drama we experienced, it was nothing compared to the lightning strike/fire drama my parents experienced on the weekend.

Their claim will go through insurance and ours won’t. We’d already budgeted for a new shiny things stove (just like the ones in The SIMS) and thanks to the Deerfoot Sears Retail Outlet and Kevin the Neighbour it’s now sitting in our kitchen looking smart and waiting for me to bake cookies in it.

The only problem is I’ve only ever used crappy manual stoves – stoves that are one step up from throwing a login to increase the heat. This one beeps and whistles and sings a pretty tune when you are using it; and, it’s a little intimidating. Apparently, I can tell it that I want to make chocolate chip cookies and it will make the dough and everything. I just wish it would get rid of the lingering smell of burnt ancient stove innards that permeates around the house.

The Spoils

The new stove certainly does make a mean batch of cookies (though it made the dough a little softer than I would make it). The word “convection” is synonymous with “bake super fast at the temperature it’s supposed to bake at.” On the old stove, I had to crank it to 425F (the highest it would go before it started to smoke) to hit 300F.

Teaching the stove to make cookies for me was pretty easy; it even cleaned up after itself (a rarity in this house). The next step is teaching it how to potty train and take the dogs for their evening walk. I’m also hoping it will go to work for me all week.