Just Call Me Red Adair!
"Whooooooooooooooooooo?", I hear you cry...
Red Adair
And then I hear you cry "Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?"... Well, pull up a comfy seat and I'll tell you about this morning's near-death-experience...
It all started as Viki was making Sunday breakfast as normal... her afore-mentioned wicked scrambled eggs, crumpets and (for the first time, since it was on offer in Tesco) smoked trout, with fresh orange juice...
I was in the sitting room, getting the table ready, when Viki came flying through from the kitchen, in a total panic, having temporarily lost her normally brilliant grasp of English (for those of you who haven't read my blog before, Viki is my Hungarian flatmate)... all I could make out was:
"Sorry... micro... fire... really!"
So I dashed into the kitchen, expecting there to be nothing more than something smoking a bit...
But, no, sure enough... there was an orange glow coming from inside the microwave (the door was slightly open, so at least it wasn't still going)... clearly flames!
Opened the door and found the culprit... a tub of butter (well, by this time it was half a tub, and half a melted, burning pool of butter and plastic). Wearing proper protective gear (oven gloves), I grabbed the turntable from the microwave and ran out the back door with it (thank god it was raining... and thank god I was dressed by this time). Viki chucked a jug of water over it, and the fire was out.
It turns out that, not unusually, she had put the hard butter in the microwave to soften it a bit before spreading on the crumpets... and when she does this, she sets the timer for a minute (being one of those horrible knob timers, not a fancy digital one), but takes the butter out after about 10 or 20 seconds, nicely softened...
This time, however, she decided she would start to open the smoked trout while the butter was softening... and the silver paint or whatever on a tub of Lurpack Lighter Spreadable must have been too much for the poor microwave to cope with!
Emergency over, I found a tiny bit of real butter left in the fridge (so we could still have our crumpets), and we had our breakfast.
Microwave survived (albeit a little bit blackened inside til I cleaned it out), the breakfast was delicious (as usual), and the cats eventually calmed down.
If this was Viki's plan to not have to make breakfast again, I hate to disappoint her... I WILL let her cook in my kitchen again - just maybe I'll supervise her next time!
Red Adair
And then I hear you cry "Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?"... Well, pull up a comfy seat and I'll tell you about this morning's near-death-experience...
It all started as Viki was making Sunday breakfast as normal... her afore-mentioned wicked scrambled eggs, crumpets and (for the first time, since it was on offer in Tesco) smoked trout, with fresh orange juice...
I was in the sitting room, getting the table ready, when Viki came flying through from the kitchen, in a total panic, having temporarily lost her normally brilliant grasp of English (for those of you who haven't read my blog before, Viki is my Hungarian flatmate)... all I could make out was:
"Sorry... micro... fire... really!"
So I dashed into the kitchen, expecting there to be nothing more than something smoking a bit...
But, no, sure enough... there was an orange glow coming from inside the microwave (the door was slightly open, so at least it wasn't still going)... clearly flames!
Opened the door and found the culprit... a tub of butter (well, by this time it was half a tub, and half a melted, burning pool of butter and plastic). Wearing proper protective gear (oven gloves), I grabbed the turntable from the microwave and ran out the back door with it (thank god it was raining... and thank god I was dressed by this time). Viki chucked a jug of water over it, and the fire was out.
It turns out that, not unusually, she had put the hard butter in the microwave to soften it a bit before spreading on the crumpets... and when she does this, she sets the timer for a minute (being one of those horrible knob timers, not a fancy digital one), but takes the butter out after about 10 or 20 seconds, nicely softened...
This time, however, she decided she would start to open the smoked trout while the butter was softening... and the silver paint or whatever on a tub of Lurpack Lighter Spreadable must have been too much for the poor microwave to cope with!
Emergency over, I found a tiny bit of real butter left in the fridge (so we could still have our crumpets), and we had our breakfast.
Microwave survived (albeit a little bit blackened inside til I cleaned it out), the breakfast was delicious (as usual), and the cats eventually calmed down.
If this was Viki's plan to not have to make breakfast again, I hate to disappoint her... I WILL let her cook in my kitchen again - just maybe I'll supervise her next time!
2 comments:
God grief...Bri had a similar thing back in Oz, when ex wife incinerated Christmas Puddings!...Hope you are both ok...and the microwave survived to fight another day!
we've both recovered (all three of us, if you count the microwave too), but maybe we'll just have cereal for breakfast this Sunday!
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