Fur balls and fire fighting

So another important lesson learned, type your blog into another program and not directly into the web page. When Firefox crashes, it doesn’t save anything.

Here we go again. This morning or rather afternoon I woke up to a pile of fur ball filled cat puke on the kitchen floor. I was very grateful for this because usually it is at the foot of my bed on my carpeted floor. and I usually find it when I stumble blindly towards the bathroom in the dark and feel the cold slimy wetness under my feet. Yech! I was feeling pretty good, I scored with puke on linolemum instead of carpet and I was about to have fries and gravy for lunch. It is there that everything went sideways.

I just about burnt the darn house down. All because of a container of Chicken Delight gravy.

This is how it started. I normally don't fry anything in oil unless it is just sauteing onions or garlic in a bit of olive oil. But I was at my buddy's place the other night watching survivor (damn those recap shows) and she had a hankering for chicken so chicken was ordered. By the by, I must complain about KFC and their central phone / delivery system. The store about 30 blocks away is the store that delivers to her home and it was closing in 15 minutes - therefore no chicken from them. The store about 5 blocks away that was still open COULD not deliver because my friend's home wasn't in their delivery area. WTF!

If we had any inclination to pick up the chicken at the closer store – no problem but with all the snow, that wasn’t going to happen. So Chicken Delight was plan B. And my buddy had a coupon so it all worked out in the end.

I don’t believe I had ever had Chicken Delight before but Wednesday night i discovered they make fantastic gravy. I really appreciate a tasty gravy. I am a decent cook but gravy is one of those things I just can’t make. Correction, I can make it but it usually isn’t edible. So it turns out that I am a little impatient. Microwaves and TV dinners have ruined me. I wanted deep fried fries because, well they taste better and they are faster. So I put the oil in the pan, put a cover on and stupidly put it on high. Luckily my stupidity isn’t total. I didn’t leave the kitchen, I just turned around to wash the dishes.

First I heard a noise, it was a sound like WHUUUMP! I vaguely recognized it as the sound of fire igniting. While my mind was searching to remember what the sound was, out of the corner of my eye I saw a bright flash. All at once my brain recognized the sound instantly. Luckily I am not the type of person to panic. I turned and the pan was on fire and the flames were about two feet high.

My first thought was turn off the heat source which would have worked well except that would have meant reaching through the two foot high flame. My second thought was BAKING SODA. I have a lot of it because I use it for everything so I dive under the sink to grab my big container and run to pour it on the fire. They don’t tell you that when you do that the fire gets a lot bigger initially. I was immediately dismayed by the bigger flash of flame and stopped pouring and jumped back. I put down the soda and went to reach for the extinguisher. (When I first moved in, my mom kept bugging me to get an extinguisher and I wanted to but never did so she got me on for Christmas last year). Anyways I go to reach for the extinguisher and realize the fire is only about half as big. The lazy part of my brain realizes that the extinguisher goop is probably harder to clean than baking soda so I decide to go with the soda again. And the second dump works. Success, fire out!

Now the aftermath, my stove and floor is covered in soda. My pan and lid are burnt beyond recognition. The smoke is so thick I can barely breathe and all I can smell is burnt plastic. Don't get me wrong, I am not complaining - it could have been much worse. I am just evaluating my surroundings so I can decide what to do next. It is -17 C outside but I have no choice, I need to start opening windows. Off goes the furnace and I open all the windows on the main floor. I discover that the mudroom door won’t open. I guess it is frozen shut. Just one more thing to add to my list of things to do.

Anyhow, when the temp got down to 13 C from the normal 20 C that I keep it at, I realize although I enjoy the brisk freshness, I can't feel my hands anymore. That was as low as I could go and the smoke was cleared so I close up the windows and put the furnace back on. I put out vinegar to get rid of the smell. Hopefully when I wake up tomorrow the smell will be gone.

I still want fries and gravy. Do I risk home and pan for another go at deep frying or do I just put them in the oven. The crappy part about this is, if I had put some in the oven after the fire, they would be done by now.