My kitchen tried to kill me (again)

Narrowly escaped another run-in with my kitchen last night. However, unlike my previous cooking disasters, this one turned physical. I'm beginning to think my kitchen really does want to hurt me!

After inhaling a houseful of smoke in February, I've backed off cooking a bit. But now it's officially summer, which means busting out my grill. I don't consider grilling "cooking," which is maybe why I'm okay at it. It's more like throwing some food over the fire, and cooking it until just before the smoke starts. And if the smoke does start, who cares, I'm outside, and at least the smoke disperses into the neighborhood, not into every pore of my home's interior.

(Yes, I know my attitude toward cooking is probably contributing to my mishaps, but hey, I'm a little gun-shy!)

And so, last night, I optimistically fired up the grill and slapped a giant salmon fillet on. Only, the fire seemed a bit...reluctant. So I turned on the second burner, and instantly heard the deadly POOF! you don't want to hear when you are mixing propane and lighters. I immediately turned off the burner, glanced down at the propane gauge, and said a very bad word when I saw that it was in the red section marked "Refill."

I sighed, and returned to the kitchen to fire up the oven to finish the job. I placed the salmon inside, and tidied up while I waited for it to cook.

And this is when things went terribly awry. Two things you should know here: 1. I am not good at house repairs, and 2. I finally recognized that when I tried sealing the saltillo tiles in the kitchen, and turned it into a danger zone. Even after removing the excess wax I'd painstakingly applied, we occasionally still slide across the floor.

The other thing you should know is that one of my kitchen shelves is missing a bracket. As a result, the shelf is unstable. I did not know this last night.

So we had the perfect storm brewing. I was grumpy because I was cooking, I was sliding across the ice-rink kitchen floor, and I decided to put away clean wine glasses.

I climbed on the step stool, and started rearranging the shelf. Suddenly, I could feel the stool sliding out from under me (damn tile sealant!). I grabbed for the shelf, which turned down and inward toward the missing bracket. Before I could comprehend all that, glasses started raining down on me. Wine glasses, champagne flutes, and coffee cups all came crashing
down, shattering everywhere. It was walking through a mine field, or having bombs explode all around me.

At first, I held my hands up defensively. But as the glasses kept coming, my instinct kicked in. I jumped down and literally ran out of the kitchen.

Finally, the crashing stopped. I was barefoot, so I put on some shoes, and surveyed the damage. Poor Mark was just staring at the sea of broken glass. It was everywhere--big chunks, little slivers, razor-sharp shards and broken mugs. The impact even shattered two plastic travel mugs which looked indestructible.

"It was like dominoes," Mark said, shocked. "They knocked each other all down!"

I sighed. I grabbed the broom, and Mark went for the vacuum, and we spent the next 45 minutes carefully cleaning up. I killed all of our favorite coffee mugs, the champagne flutes, and even Kathleen's favorite wine glass.

"I guess that's a sign we need to go shopping for new glasses," Mark observed. But I interpreted the sign differently.

"No," I told him. "It's a sign I shouldn't be cooking. Crazy things happen when I cook--God clearly does not want me in the kitchen."

We both laughed about it, but I don't think I'm far off.

I really hope Mark likes my Crock-Pot meals, because that's the only thing I'll be cooking up in the foreseeable future.