To say I am not a culinary genius, is possibly one of the grossest understatements of the century. Baking? Sure, I got that, no problem. Cooking? As in, a meal? That wasn't frozen first? Yikesers - put your fake happy faces on because you're probably in for a bumpy ride. But since Tom is a fantastic cook, I'm learning from him.
But obviously not fast enough.
See this?
That's right. It's smoke stains from the grease fire I started in our kitchen a few months back.
"But, Christa, how did this happen?"
I'm so glad you asked, because I'd love to tell you the whole story.
So one day Tom is all, "Instead of baking these french fries today, I'm gonna fry them up in this big wok using oil."
He poured oil in the wok, heated it up on the stovetop, poured the fries in, fried them up, and they were delicious. NBD.
A week or two later I was like, "hey those fries were good, I'm gonna fry some up like Tom did." Lay off me, I was starving.
So I poured oil in the wok, turned the stove to high, and waited for it to heat up. And it started smoking. So I picked it up to move it, because it was obviously too hot. And it spontaneously combusted or something because all of the sudden I was holding fire. Not like, banana-flambe-dessert-fire-at-the-side-of-your-fancy-restaurant-table fire...like, Backdraft inferno fire. And an important character died in that movie, so you know the fire was a big deal. And that is what I was holding in my hand.
In the words of my dear grandma Patty when things go wrong in the kitchen, "Oh shit."
TJ was looking at me wide eyed from about 10 feet away, and I didn't really know what to do so I put the inferno wok back on the stove (NOT on the hot spot, thank you) and just started yelling, "Fire! Fire! Tom! I need you! There's a fire! Fire! Uhhh, babe can you come here, I started a FIRE! Not a drill, it's a fire! Fire!"
And Tom (who had been sleeping after a very late night of work the evening prior) skidded out of the bedroom, surveyed the situation and channeled grandma Patty with an "Oh shit!" of his own before masterfully putting out the fire and moving the smoking wok outside to the porch.
Crisis averted. Kind of. The smoke was so thick in the house it burned our eyes and got stuck in our throats, and we knew right away we needed a massive air-out immediately, and should probably leave the house for a bit.
So we did. We opened all the windows and doors and me and T had an afternoon on the town as Tom stayed behind posted up on the porch to make sure no intruders compromised our wide-open apartment.
What a fun day that was, and now we have abstract art on the wall and ceiling to remember it by! Needless to say I have not attempted to fry anything since this little incident, and do not foresee another try in my future.
I just put this photo in because, a.) I felt like the post needed another photo, and b.) No one ever went wrong by sarcastically including a photo of themselves doing a savvy side-glance smile to offset the stupidity of their cooking disasters. Sooo....
One question though - what do we do about the smoke stains and discolored paint? Our landlord was quite proud of the (crappy - shhhhh) paintjob she did on the apartment before we moved in, so I know it will be a big deal when we move out. Do we have to clean up the soot before we paint over it? And the paint is discolored and bubbled up in some places...what do we have to do about that before we paint over?
Help me! I can't cook and I have inadvertant misplaced abstract smoke fire art on my walls that my landlord will make us pay way more for because they like to gouge...what do we do with this to fix it??
Christa
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