Life Lesson Learned #5098: leaving hot oil unattended :-P

This adventure seemed to deserve its own post. Heh. Generally, I’ve found a happy balance between not starving and not spending all of my time and money on buying and cooking food. When I’m with Laura in Pira, I just eat the food in the school because we have an actual cook...and the food is actually good. :-) However, the other schools cater, and it’s...well...usually disgusting. :-D So I’ve been buying more “real” food to make and bring to classes. One of my favorites, both because I like it and it’s inexpensive, is cooking chicken breast in olive oil. Easy, right? Actually, it IS easy, and it’s so easy, that I get bored waiting for the oil to heat up. I had the bright idea one day to let it heat up while I went to the other room to check email “for just a minute”. So I put oil in the pan, place the splatter guard on top, turned on the stove, and proceeded to get lost in internet land until I smelled something odd. Like the strongest smell of olive oil I’ve ever smelled. Ack! I charged to the kitchen to see a mildly smoky room and steam pouring out of the pan on the stove. I ran over to the pan, about to pick it up, when the whole thing caught on fire! Without even thinking, I picked up the handle of the pan (fortunately NOT hot!) and then had to debate what to do. Should I call the Spanish version of 911? Should I run and tell Rosa? Should I put the pan in the sink? In the bathtub? I knew NOT to put water on it, but beyond that, my fireman’s daughter skills were...um...not very good. I didn’t want to leave the fire just sitting there, nor did I want to carry around a flaming pan, so I had the idea to go out on the terrace/balcony area and...well, see what would happen. :-) And there I stood for about 5 minutes, holding a pan with flaming oil. Haha! Fortunately, no one was outside watching. :-D It was pretty windy and cold, and I then realized that the fire would probably go out on its own if I could just get rid of the oil. So I slowly dumped the oil onto the pavement below, and the lack of oil and cold wind eventually put out the fire. Phew!

I have neither a fire extinguisher nor a smoke alarm (different regulation from the US!), but I do have a ventilator above the stove that I use whenever I cook. I also left the terrace doors open for awhile, and it wasn’t long before the smoke went away. The splatter guard is a mess, and the pan seems questionable to me, but aside from that (well, there’s also a slight “mysterious” discoloration on the pavement below :-D), everything was fine! God was once again watching out for me! And the crazy thing is that NO one, not even Rosa and her husband, knew anything about it.

So aside from a pan and splatter thing I need to replace before I leave, life has gone on as normal. I told some of the teachers about it, and Javi joked that I was practicing Medieval torture methods on the people below my terrace (dumping scalding oil on them, etc. :-)). I now either never leave oil unattended...or else I set my cell phone timer to remind me to check it!

No, I’m never bored over here. :-P