Charred

Alternate title:
How I almost burned down the house.

I would have to say I have a pretty good track record when it comes to preparing meals that do not set off the smoke detector. I think maybe that has only happened once or twice in my 12 years of cooking for my family. If it ever happened, it was probably while frying bacon.

This past week I decided to make chicken pot pie. Doesn't that sound really good right now? Yum. I stuffed that pie pan full of chicken and vegetables and sauce before I laid a blanket of pie crust over the top and put the whole thing to bed in the oven. The spillover factor never really crossed my mind.

Sure enough, it started bubbling over the edge and spilling all over my immaculately clean oven. Pffffffft. Did you believe me? The inside of my oven is far from clean. It's one of those jobs that I tackle about once a year, usually before a get together that is going to involve someone looking inside the oven. But the part about the pot pie dripping all over the oven is true. It wasn't really that bad so I just ignored it and shoved a cookie sheet under it to catch the drips. At one point I pulled the pie out of the oven to test it for doneness. It wasn't quite done so I put it back in for another fifteen minutes or so. After just a of couple minutes Nate commented on the smoky smell. I reassured him that it was just some drippage burning on the bottom of the oven, everything was taken care of. Dinner was not in danger. After a few more minutes I noticed smoke accumulating on the kitchen ceiling and that smoke was rolling out of all four of the burners on the stovetop. I started to become a little bit concerned.

Was my potpie in danger of burndom? Was it I burninating it? Was I tainting my track record of uncharred dinner? I opened the oven and was immediately blasted with a wall of heat and a billow of smoke. One look into the oven and the source of the smoke was apparent. It was not my beloved pot pie. It was a pot holder. When I had checked on it earlier, I must have dropped a potholder into the over and not realized it. Half of the post holder was gone and had burned away in a cloud of smoke that was now hanging in the air in my kitchen. I grabbed the smoldering mess with a pair of tongs, went running out of the house, and dropped it on the cement to cool. Then I got a couple of fans running and tried to blow the smoke out the windows.

Dinner was a gourmet dish I like to call "Smoked Pot Pie" If it were listed on the menu at a fancy pants restaurant the description would read: "Tender breast of chicken, swimming in a creamy vegetable sauce and wrapped in a hickory smoked pastry." Sounds delicious doesn't it? The good news was that the house didn't burn down. The bad news was that Jack still had to eat his peas.