Thursday, March 5, 2015

Distracted

One of my favorite children's books is If You Give A Mouse A Cookie. The person who wrote the book must have been like me. Whenever I started something, I’d think of something else to do, too.

Well, while I cooked, I tried to stay in the kitchen by the stove so I wouldn't get side-tracked and forget about the food that I was cooking. I had a large bag of frozen chicken halves which I decided to cook all at once, to get all the cooking and cleaning up after the cooking out of the way. All I had was a large aluminum broiler pan, so I put the chicken in this and put it in the oven.

This particular day, while I was in the kitchen, I opened mail, looked through a new catalog about courses, saw two I wanted for the combined price I was planning to pay for just one (which was cancelled anyway), needed a paper clip, opened the draw the paper clip was in, and heard a knock on my door. I left the draw open to see who was at the door. On my way back to the kitchen, I was looking up instead of down, and walked into the open drawer. Now I had to put everything down to nurture the injury I sustained in the doing so.

Also, on this particular day, I had the inspiration to reorganize a few things, including my pots and pans. I could put a couple of nails inside the cabinet next to the stove to hang a couple of the pots on. I got out my tool box, and found the nails and the hammer. The wood inside the cabinet was too hard to just hammer a nail into, so I needed to get out my drill. After I drilled two holes, I hammered in the nails and hung up the pots I wanted to hang. Then I went into the closet to put the tool box and drill away.

The shelf I kept my tool box and drill on had laminate along the front which was coming loose. I got the little tube of superglue out and intended to put a few small drops on it. But… I squeezed a little too hard, and superglue back splashed onto my left hand. I had just read about someone who had super glued their fingers together, so I kept my fingers sprawled out as wide as I could, and desperately searched for a way to clean it off. Many ‘helpful’ hints later, including nail polish remover, I still had super glue on my hand.

In the midst of the super glue panic, I had forgotten I had the chicken in the oven. I opened the oven door, relieved that the chicken had not over-cooked. The chicken looked delicious, and with a potholder in each hand, I expected I’d be able to pull the aluminum tray out without any problems. Wrong. The aluminum tray buckled and an inch of hot chicken fat spilled over the sides, down into the oven, down into the grill below the oven, all over the oven door, through the opening where the hinges were, and onto the floor, just barely missing my bare toes. This just wasn’t my day!

I tried my best to wipe up all the chicken fat before it hardened, and used a lot of paper towel to do this with. When I got to the grill, I opened it all the way out. Inside the grill was a large metal oven tray I didn’t know I had.

I was exhausted after hours of clean up, and sat back down at my computer to google remedies for super glue. I found one that involved smearing Vaseline all over the surfaces where the glue was, putting on a glove to keep the Vaseline from getting on anything else, and keeping it on overnight. The following morning, I took off the glove, and the glue began to peel away from my skin.

Since these incidents happened over a year ago, I haven’t cooked any more chicken in my oven (or anything else, either). Matter of fact, I have fallen in love with dehydrated food that cooks up in minutes with just boiling water and some spices… along with eating at pot lucks and fresh fruits/vegetables fresh out of their bags. Occasionally I have a frozen dinner or open a can of tuna. I think I’ll stick to writing, and let everyone else do the cooking.