I considered myself to be a decent cook.
I can make a multitude of things ranging from a simple slice of buttered toast to a Thanksgiving dinner (minus the turkey). Of course, I've made a numerous mistakes along the way. There was the time I forgot to put baking soda in chocolate cupcakes (they turned out very dense and compact). I once added baking soda to a pretzel dough when the directions said to let the baking soda dissolve in water (where one dips an unbaked pretzel before placing it in the oven). Turns out, baking soda in a pretzel tastes HORRENDOUS. Like EXTREMELY salty guck. That same night, I accidentally used half of my dad's calzone dough in making the pretzels before realizing I had mixed up the two bowls of dough. (That was not my night.) On other accounts, I have melted butter to the point where the cookies don't turn out flat, boiled pasta until it almost turned into complete mush, and burned white chocolate in the microwave when I was just trying to melt it.
Other than that, I've been pretty successful in my food expeditions.
However, this past weekend, I recently experienced one of, if not the worst cooking accident in the history of me. In fact, I very nearly burnt down my house. No joke.
And I blame the bacon.
It was a nice, fifty degree afternoon with the sun shining and the snow glistening on the ground. I had just come home from soccer practice and was going to make lunch for the family while they were out on a walk around the neighborhood. I decided to make sunrise sandwiches (so it was going to be more like an afternoon breakfast than a lunch). I was trying out a recipe for this meal which involved canadian bacon as the meat for the sandwich. There happened to be no canadian bacon lying around, so I came to the natural conclusion to use regular bacon instead. The recipe called for warming the pre-cooked bacon in a pan, but I was already using the pam dusted pan to fry/grill five or so 1/4 inch tomato slices (about 2-3 minutes if you were wondering). I wanted things to be ready when my family got home, so I set about multitasking. I mixed up some eggs and put them in a second, larger pan on the stove and they began to cook. While the tomatoes were also on the stove, I placed four strips of bacon on a toaster oven pan (eight inches wide, five inches long) wrapped with aluminum foil.
Now, you must understand that "toasting" bacon has been done quite often in my household. We put the bacon in the toaster oven, set it to a "toast" setting and keep an eye on it until the bacon grease is foaming up. Then the bacon is removed and set on a hot plate and patted with a paper towel to absorb the excess grease. IT TURNS OUT JUST FINE. The worst that has ever happened is the bacon was in the toaster oven too long and ended up drily burnt.
I took it to a whole new level.
My family arrived home while the bacon, eggs, and multiple rounds of tomatoes were cooking. My dad decided to help by preparing English muffins topped with a sprinkle of cheese. I started putting the cooked tomatoes on a plate and the scrambled eggs in a serving bowl. Both of our backs were facing away from the toaster oven and stove when my mom asked "Is something burning?" I guess my dad and I were so focused on our jobs we didn't notice the smell (even though we were three feet away and my mom was in another room). It was mostly my fault though for not watching cooking appliances that were on (something I need to improve on).
Anyway, we both turned around to see the bacon in the toaster oven COMPLETELY ENGULFED IN ONE. BIG. FLAME. HOLY CRAP! My dad opened the toaster oven at which point the flame split into flames and expanded out of the toaster oven and licked top of it along with the underside of the wooden cabinet that was on the wall above the toaster oven. He immediately and started blowing on the fiery bacon as hard as he could while I kinda just stood there (I know, I'm real professional in these disaster situations). For those of you who are confused at this point, my dad was trying to blow out six to eight inch flames because it was a grease fire and you never put water on a grease fire for it will EXPLODE. One way to put out grease fires is eliminating the fire's air supply aka smothering it (for other methods, click here). My dad was trying to accomplish this; there was no time to do anything else. Luckily after a few hard exhales, the fire went out, but then a massive amount of smoke filled the house, turning the air into an ugly haze. Plus, it smelled bad. Fans were switched on and windows were opened to force the smoke out. Oven mitts were used to carry the scalding toaster oven pan out onto the deck to cool atop a hot plate. After things calmed down, there was still two problems. The bacon was ruined and no way were we going to miss out on a bacon, egg, cheese, tomato and avocado (spontaneously added) sandwich.
I checked the bacon bag and there were four pieces remaining. Only four. This time I put them carefully in a pan on the stove. I watched those precious pieces like a hawk, well maybe not to that extent. The bacon cooked nicely, was added to the sunrise sandwiches and we finally sat down to eat. It was delicious and all was well.
Except for one thing.
I haven't yet told you what the bacon looked like after lighting on fire.
It was not the burnt, crispy charcoal that one might expect.
No.
That bacon was melted, MELTED I SAY, so it looked like strips of TAR. Yes, that's right, somehow I FREAKING MELTED BACON...INTO TAR! How is that even possible?
And now *snivel, snivel* I have lost my faith in bacon. How epically tragic.
For your convenience I present you all with a visual aid consisting of what I call "tar bacon."
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| Yeah, this is what it looked like. Image courtesy of my brother. |
hopefully.
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