Adventures in cooking

I'm usually pretty good in the kitchen. Jason and I both like food and I've learned how to be a pretty good cook. Last night I was making burgers and french fries before the missionaries came over to give the kids the discussions in preparation for Cole's baptism next month. My girls were in the kitchen chit chatting with me, so it took me longer than normal to slice up all my potatoes. In the meantime, I let the oil get too hot without realizing it. So as I dumped the first of the potatoes in, the entire pot just errupted, gushing oil all over the gas stove. Of course since the girls were there I had to stay absolutely calm although I was really worried about how big the fire would get. (And interestingly enough, Bailey and I had just had a discussion the other day about grease fires and how you absolutely cannot put water on it, but she even said something about how I couldn't just put a lid on it because it was beneath the pot). Luckily I had a fire extinguisher close by, but I had moved the kitchen one outside when we got a gas grill because I thought it would be more likely to cause a fire than inside my kitchen. By the time I got back in the kitchen with the extinguisher, the fire was actually dying out by itself, so I didn't have to use it. I think we were extremely lucky that my stove is designed the way that it is (all of the oil got trapped on the top of the stove and didn't spill over although I had a deep layer all over the top). I only burned my hand in one little place, and that's the only damage that occurred. I was lucky too that my girls didn't freak out, they realized it was pretty bad and got out of my way very quickly. In the meantime, I had burgers on the grill that I wanted to make sure didn't burn, so I was trying to clean up the stove and flip burgers at the same time. When I got the burgers to the table, and we were ready to start eating, Lindsay asked me to cut hers and I found out that I undercooked two of the burgers. So Jason gave up his burger to Linds so that she could eat before the missionaries got there while I went and resuscitated the grill and threw a couple more burgers on it. While those were on and I was continuing to clean, the missionaries showed up twenty minutes early. Of all the nights to show up early! So somehow I managed to burn the second set of burgers for me and J, and besides the fact that I only had one more patty left and was pretty defeated at that point, I don't think he wanted to eat in front of them anyway. After they finally left I ended up having a grilled cheese sandwich and J had a cup of noodles. I certainly made for an interesting night--one I could definitely do without repeating.