On the heels of my August newspaper article with a recipe for making garlic fries, complete with directions on how to put out a grease fire, I attempted to set my own kitchen on fire. But not with peanut oil. Oh no. I tried to do it with a pizza box. There I was one evening last week, aproned up, sipping a glass of chilled Bouysse, chatting with the Ex-Ex and sautéeing carrots and celery. Something seemed to be burning, but my pan wasn't too hot. All of a sudden smoke started pouring from the oven vent at the back of the stove. I had turned the oven on to preheat at 425F without checking to see if anything was in it. Made perfectly good sense to me since I am the cooker in the family and the only one who uses the oven (with the exception of an occasional frozen pizza prepared by one of the eaters). But the Ex-Ex all of a sudden remembered the pizza box he had stashed in there the night before, not wishing to take it out to the recycling bin at 11:00 pm. I grabbed an oven mitt, yelled at him to open the back door and I flung the smoking, charred box onto the deck. (I did not take the time to take a photo... I recreated it from Skitch, a program I just learned to use. Mr. S would be so proud of me.) The house only slightly smells of smoke as I write this. The batteries need to be replaced in the smoke alarms. They didn't make a peep. Good thing it wasn't while we were sleeping. And I learned a valuable lesson. Always check the oven before turning it on. You just never know.
Bon appétit!
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