Dingbat

I've had a day full of dingbat moments.

1. I heated some water for my tea this morning and started to pour it over my already prepared cold cereal. I could chalk this up to lack of caffeine. I may still do that.
2. Some very poor driving decisions were made, mostly having to do with stop signs (not lights). Fortunately none of these resulted in anything resembling an accident or near-accident. I just realized about three times that I would have yelled and thrown hand gestures at someone who did the same things to me. Again, caffeine could be to blame. High oil prices could also be to blame.
3. While I suppose this dingbat moment happened when I was packing for the week, I just realized today that I left my running shoes behind in TN. I have a race this weekend and thought I had all the things I needed for that. Guess not.

Dutch Apple Pie Flambé

My first attempt at a Dutch Apple Pie went a little awry. Everything went really well up until the crust, which split and cracked during it's pre-bake. I asked Jeremy if I should re-make the crust and finish the pie later or just use the pie crust as it was. We (I) decided that the crust was okay as it was and I evidently angered the pie gods.

When the first full bake cycle was done, the crumb topping hadn't browned as nicely as I would have liked and Jeremy suggested that I put it under the broiler. This seemed like a good idea. I set the timer for 3 minutes and continued my conversation. About a minute and a half into the time, I smelled something odd and decided that I should check the pie.

The pie was on fire.

I pulled it out of the oven and looked at it for a minute, then blew the flames out. I'm pretty sure that huffing and puffing is not in the manual for effectively putting out kitchen fires, but it quickly became Plan A and fortunately worked. Plan B involved moving the pie to the sink and dousing it with water.

The good thing about Plan A is that it left the pie mostly in tact. If you think of the crumb topping as a disposable outer shell, as you would with salt crusts, it's still a tasty pie. It's not going to win any beauty contests, but it will do.

Two years, two fires in my kitchen. I've now set a precedent.

More Unnecessary Excitement

After the excitement of the grocery, I was starving when I got home and decided that a stir-fry sounded good. I started the rice, and pulled my beloved cast iron skillet out and preheated it while getting the veggies ready. The veggie prep took a little longer than expected and I noticed that the pan looked really hot when I was ready to add stuff. I threw in the canola oil and saw it instantly change colors and start smoking. Oops.

The fan was turned on, skillet put directly under the fan. Bad choice. Oil ignited. Pan back on the stove top. Turned off the offending burner, juggled the other burners to minimize damage to...whatever was going to be damaged. I still have a fire. Not good.

For everyone's information, the flash point of canola oil is 270-290 degrees Celsius. Electric stoves suck.

I managed to arrange things such that the burners were off, the pan was sitting on a burner and not an immediate threat to anything nearby, and found the salt to throw upon the flaming mess. This put out the flame, but there was still a lot of smoke. I was surprised at how long it took for the smoke detector to go off, but it finally did. I ran to tend to the noise, the imminent danger subsided. I tried to open the windows and found that the windows in the apartment don't hold themselves open. I ran to get books to prop the windows open and finally manage this task.

Fifteen minutes later, I'm sitting down to a stir-fry dinner in a smoky apartment. It's a good thing I bought the beer.

An aside: I didn't think to take pictures of the charred salt/oil mess, but in the future, when I try to set my kitchen on fire, I'll consider the blogging aspect and do my best to document the event.