by Kal
Hi all -- long time no see. I could tell you what I've been up to since I posted last, but then I'd have to kill you.
I cook a lot less these days, thanks to a fortunate relationship situation where a devoted and excellent cook adores making me noms. For the last few months, I've accepted this gratefully and assured myself that this wasn't making me soft in my kitchen skills or anything -- I wasn't rusty, just disused, right? Right.
But alas, my wonderful in-home chef turned up sick, so today I volunteered to cook a simple breakfast for three: veggie sausage links, some toaster hash browns, four eggs over-easy, and a couple of slices of toast. You already know from the title of this post that something probably went horribly wrong in this plan, and oh yes, my friend, it went horribly, horribly wrong.
My toaster hash browns were fried to a beautiful golden brown, my veggie sausage was browning nicely, and my eggs were cooking a bit slow but not enough to concern me. I popped the bread into the toaster oven, then turned my back on it to deal with my reluctant eggs. Some minutes later, seeing the finish line of my meal preparation, I turned the vent fan off over the stove and promptly noticed smoke.
I turned around and realized the toast was smoking. Well, fuck, thought I. Something's burning in the crumb tray. I pulled open the door of the toaster oven to see whether I could salvage the toast.
I cannot emphasize enough what happened next.
The toast -- which was the source of the smoke, not crumbs in the tray -- greedily sucked in all that air from the open toaster oven door and FUCKING BURST INTO FLAMES.
Now, I have had a lot of kitchen misadventures in my life, and I watch a lot of Hell's Kitchen, but I have never, ever seen toast burst into flames, no matter how badly burnt. I shut the door and unplugged the toaster oven, thinking that just a moment without air would be enough to smother the fire. Sure enough, the flames died almost immediately. "Uhhh, there'll be no toast," I yelled toward the living room where my hungry breakfasters-to-be sat. I opened the toaster oven again to see how bad the situation was AND THE FUCKERS BURST INTO FLAMES AGAIN. This time, when I shut the door, they kept going. These were not little flames, either. These were flames that filled the six-slice-capacity toaster oven. Some of the flames were even freaking green.
"Uhhh, a little help?" I yelled.
My boyfriend ran in to help, and while I stood there thinking WHAT THE FUCK, FLAMING TOAST!, he threw baking soda on the fire and out it went.
We then laughed for at least half an hour about my toast flambee. If you have to set toast on fire, it's nice to do it for compassionate diners with a sense of humor. And I had no idea you could burn toast so badly it would become a small bonfire, so I learned something, too.
Until next time...watch those toasters!
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