Jan's Sushi Bar

When Jen announced “drama” as the subject of this week’s Spin Cycle, I kind of went “Meh – I’ve raised teenagers.  I’ve had my share of drama.  I’ll be glad when they’re all on their own, so the drama will at least be reduced, if not over.”

In fact, with The Young One in Texas visiting the paterfamilias for a month, I was looking forward to some more-or-less-drama-free time.  (Drama is greatly reduced by the ability to roam about the house naked, you know.)  Yeah, well, that’s what I get for looking forward to something.

So.  We smoked a brisket Sunday.  Beloved bought some sort of grill thermometer that came with its own beeper.

Yes, beeper.  It was designed to keep you from over-cooking meat that you are barbecuing or smoking; apparently, you can wander off to do other things, and if the heat goes above what you want it to, the beeper will go off, signaling you to go, er, baste your brisket.  At any rate, Beloved wanted to heat the meat to an internal temperature of 140º F, and keep it there while he smoked it for several hours.  It worked like a charm, too.  The only problem was that after six hours, as my in-laws (who had come over for dinner Sunday evening) sat around our kitchen table waiting to be fed, the brisket was only medium-rare, which is what it should have been at an internal temp of 140º F – and if either of us had thought about it, we’d have realized that.

A medium-rare brisket is a very chewy brisket.

At my suggestion, Beloved wrapped it up in aluminum foil and put in the oven to cook for a little while longer, and about an hour later we had a perfectly cooked and extremely tasty hunk o’ meat.

You’d think that would be that.

But it wasn’t.

Fast forward to last night – we come home from work, let the dog out, power up our laptops, and I turn on the oven to preheat it for a very nice meatloaf and to roast some beets we picked up at the farmer’s market on Saturday.  Beloved sat down at his laptop to do some work, and I sat down at my laptop to check my Facebook page and play some Jungle Jewels read some blogs chat with my sister work, too.  After a few moments, I noticed an odd smell.

So I look up, and see smoke coming out of my stove.

The brisket had apparently leaked all over the floor of the oven, as well as the baking stone that is a permanent resident there.  The leakage was smoldering quite nicely; I turned off the stove while Beloved removed the battery from the smoke alarm.  Then, after conferring, we decide to put off the beets until tomorrow and do burgers on the grill while I make squash and zucchini pancakes with some squash and zucchini we picked up at the farmer’s market on Saturday.

And decided, like the rocket surgeons we apparently are, to run the cleaning cycle on the oven.

I shredded the squash and placed it in a paper towel in the colander to drain, and sat back down at my laptop while Beloved went back to his work, too.

But the smoke didn’t go away.  In fact, it got worse, a fact brought home to me by my watering eyes and a small dog, coughing pitifully at my feet.  When I looked up, smoke was now billowing from the stove.

See?

Smoke Billowing Out of My Stove

This picture doesn’t begin to do it justice, trust me.  (And what does it say about me, that my first impulse was to grab my camera?)  At any rate, I ran over to the stove and turned the “clean” cycle off while Beloved removed the battery from the smoke alarm upstairs.

“It’ll stop in a minute,” Beloved said.

I sat on the floor, where the fresh air was, and nodded my agreement.

And noticed this:

My Oven On Fire

Yes, that would be FLAMES inside the oven.

The baking stone was, in fact, on fire.

“OH MY GAWD!” I shouted.  “Hon, the OVEN is on FIRE!!”

“DON’T OPEN IT!!” Beloved instructed as he came thundering down the stairs.  Fortunately, it was locked shut (what with cleaning mode and all) because I was tugging on it frantically, possessed with some vague idea about beating it all out with a wet towel.

“We can’t just LEAVE it like this!” I said, wondering how long it would take the neighbors to call the fire department as we opened every door and window in the house.

“Just give me a minute,” he said, running out to the garage to gather up old towels and a fire extinguisher and I made good use of my time by taking pictures.  He threw the old towels into the sink, soaked them with cold water, and proceeded to cover every crack and vent on the stove.

And the fire went out.

And we had hamburgers, cooked on the grill, and left-over green bean salad for dinner.

And we were thankful we didn’t have to use this:

Fire Extinguisher

And that the kitchen was relatively clean for its photo shoot.