la vie en rose

FIRE!

I put out a fire last night!

A couple days ago we made fish tacos and we like to get corn tortillas and then fry them into the shells ourselves. I guess some oil must have spilled into the burner thing and we didn't realize it.

Cut to dinnertime last night, and I am boiling some water for some potatoes. J was on the deck grilling the steaks, and I was watching TV, just waiting (because you're not supposed to watch a pot of water - it will never boil! At least that's what I've heard). I went back to the kitchen and there were flames leaping up around the pot, big orange flames! I called out to J, "[Expletive!] There's a fire!" I was looking around for something to extinguish it with and J came running in and said, "It's a grease fire! Grab a lid!" So I did and I put the fire out.

This is the 2nd fire we've had in our kitchen (but this one had real flames). The 1st one was our 1st Christmas as a married couple. We had only been married for 3 months and I wanted our Christmas to be awesome. So I decorated and made treats and for Christmas morning we had waffle sticks (now a tradition) and I made homemade wassail, complete with all kinds of spices floating in it like cinnamon sticks, star anise, cloves, fresh nutmeg, orange rind - the works. J's present to me that year was a featherbed cover, so after breakfast we proceeded to take a nap on it. We woke up to this acrid (but strangely sweet-smelling) smoke filling our tiny apartment (really tiny - we had 6 foot high ceilings). We ran out to the kitchen and I realized I had left the stove on and the wassail had boiled away and the spices were burning. J somehow managed to grab the pot, I opened the door, and he tossed it out into the snow outside. It melted right through to the ground so we left it there (it was ruined anyway) and the pot refroze and was stuck in the ground until the ground thawed a couple weeks later.

So a couple of lessons here: clean up thoroughly after cooking in oil, it's okay to watch a pot of water boil - it will still happen, don't leave the stove on to simmer your wassail, don't take a nap while the stove is on, (unrelated lesson - keep your wassail spices in a cheesecloth bag or something. Biting a clove isn't pleasant), your new husband will not be impressed that you burned a holiday beverage and he won't let you live it down, find something else to lord over him, fish tacos are still awesome even if they inadvertently cause a fire a couple days later.