Umm...Fire?

In Tuesday's post, I mentioned that if I ever set the oven on fire again, I'd tell you.  Well, this prompted a few people to ask, "Again?"  Implying there had been a first instance.  So even though it happened 5 years ago, well before I turned 30, I suppose it's a good enough story to share with you here.

When Dave and I were still dating, we were long distance for about 2 years.  We would make the 7 hour drive to visit about once a month or so.  This included one Thanksgiving weekend that I came to visit Dave.  Since Thanksgiving is a great bunch days off in a row, perfect for cookie baking, I decided I would make a few batches during my visit.

Dave had moved into the house about a year prior, and while he's pretty handy in the kitchen, he hadn't really used the electric oven all that often.  Less than a handful of times in the year.  In I march, ready to bake, and really gave the oven a workout, having it on for a few hours while I bakeds batch after batch of cookies.  Busying myself in the kitchen, Dave was in the living room watching TV or playing video games.  I had several cooling racks full of cookies, having just completed a batch of Peanut Butter Cookies, and just starting on a recipe of Oatmeal Cranberry.  My first two sheets of oatmeal cookies were in the oven when the timer went off and  I opened the oven door.

There was a flame.

In the electric oven.

So I did what any logical person would do.  I shut the door.  I stood there for a second and thought, "Surely that wasn't a flame."  Assuming the flour had officially gone to my head, I chalked it up to me seeing things, and opened the oven door again.

Nope, there's still a flame in there.

Me: S#!T!

Dave: (no response)

Me: S#!T! S#!T! S#!T!

Dave: (no response)

See, here's the thing.  Even at this early stage in our relationship, and only seeing each other for a few days each month, Dave had already become immune to my use of the word S#!T!.  Turns out I use it so frequently that when Dave would ask, "What's wrong?", my standard response was, "Nothing."  It became a new twist on crying wolf.  Only I was crying S#!T! and needed to find a way to get his attention.  So I searched my vocabulary for a word that would express the dire situation unfolding in the oven.

Me: FIRE!

Dave, boy scout and lab safety professional that he is, sprang to his feet and practically jumped over the couch.  He grabbed the fire extinguisher (I'm not sure I knew where that was) and asked where the fire was.  I opened the oven door and then immediately began opening doors and windows to blow the smoke out, sort of stunned and a little scared.  I just set my boyfriend's kitchen on fire!

I should have gotten Dave these cookies from www.sunflowerbaking.com

After the fire was out and the smoke cleared, Dave calmed me down and we went about cleaning up (all those poor, innocent, extinguished cookies) and figuring out what had happened.  Apparently at some point in the oven's life prior to Dave, someone had a messy oven episode and something had dropped onto the heating element in the oven (the black oval shaped thing on the bottom of the oven that turns red when it gets hot).  Whatever the mess was got stuck on the element and was never cleaned off.  It had never been a problem before since Dave never left the oven on for that long.  But since I had the oven cranking for so many hours, eventually the goop just combusted and when it did, the element caught on fire as well, completely ruining it.

Luckily, Dave is also very handy and knows how to fix things.  This was the day before Thanksgiving. So the day after Thanksgiving, he called a local appliance store, explained what he needed and started to give the serviceman the part number.  The guy at the store actually rattled off the last few digits of the part number and said, "Yeah, I've got one of those left.  We always have a few people who need one of those the day after Thanksgiving."  

It made me feel better to know I wasn't the only one in town to set the oven on fire that weekend.