Me and The Kitchen


Two things you must know about me. I love to bake. I hate to cook. I think if I lived alone and every night I could make whole wheat pasta with fresh tomatoes and basil for myself, cooking would be nice. But there are 4 other people who live here and sometimes I feel like all I do is feed the masses and wipe up the crumbs. I have one meat-and-potatoes husband, one child who eats only "less" food: odorless, colorless, and tasteless. I have a child that I swear has a tapeworm sharing his digestive track, and another child who starts crying if you look at her wrong while we're all eating. Fun, fun times.

The other night I made this recipe and it was amazing. Too bad the pan I used had a tiny crack in it and dripped chicken grease all over the bottom of the oven. Chicken grease on the bottom of your oven is a no-no, because it makes all your other food that you cook taste like, you guessed it, chicken grease. Soooooooo.... I thought I'd run the oven cleaning cycle early the next morning.

And that's when the oven caught fire. But the oven door was LOCKED because the SAFETY LATCH kicked in because I was using the CLEANING cycle and all I could do was watch helplessly. So billowing smoke filled our kitchen--smoke that had the distinct odor of chicken grease. It was 7am and I was trying to pack lunches and make breakfast and we had to open all the windows (and a few doors) and turn on a fan and the kids were crying that they were freezing and I reluctantly had to send them to school smelling like a house fire.


It truly is a wonder anyone ever let me parent. Truly.