Right after I posted this Blondie cartoon, this real-life story came across my desk:
I was trying so hard to not miss the show I was staying in the kitchen near the radio so I wouldn’t forget. I realized I had enough time to put the laundry in the dryer before the show started. I had put the tea pot on the stove. My husband always reminds me I should never leave the room with the stove on. Well he wasn’t home and I thought I could make a fast trip the laundry room. When I got there I thought I might just turn on the watering system to be efficient. I remembered I had never tried to set a new watering pattern myself and thought I would give it a try. When I got back to the kitchen the tea pot had boiled so dry it totally warped the bottom. The good news was that the glass top stove did not crack and I did get back in time for the show!
Boy, can I relate! I have boiled my kettle dry on several occasions. Because of that, I now heat tea water in the microwave. If I forget my tea water there, all that happens is that the water gets cold!
A more spectacular story for me is I once forgot about a tamale I was steaming for lunch. I had (notice the tense) a favorite non-stick pan I used to cook just about everything in. Because it was non-stick, I’d found a plastic steamer basket to use with it so I wouldn’t ruin the finish. Well, I put in the water, the steamer basket, and the tamale, turned on the heat and went back to my desk to knock off a few more emails. By the time I remembered my lunch, it was a stinky mess of scorched masa corn meal on a bed of melted plastic in the middle of my now ruined pan. It looked like one of those gags you get in the joke shop…
So that was the end of my pan. And I now have a personal rule that I don’t leave the kitchen while I’m cooking my breakfast or lunch. Dinner isn’t a problem because when I’m cooking dinner I have hungry family members asking me when dinner will be. It’s hard to forget about the cooking with that kind of automatic reminder at my elbow!
What’s your story?