Jesus fucking christ, HOUSEFIRE!

Today, I tried to make soup. Chicken and dumplings, to be exact, which I have made multiple times and always turns out delicious.

Today, it turned out ON FIRE.

I had the pot on the stove, as per usual, waiting for it to come to a boil. I was right next to it, making the dumplings. I noticed that the burner was smoking a little, but that happens sometimes so I didn’t worry about it (MISTAKE #1).

I figured I’d turn the fan on high, and walked over to the front door to open it, since it seemed like there was maybe a bit too much smoke (MISTAKE #2). By the time I’d opened the door and looked back, flames were coming up from the bottom of the pot.

I ran back over and turned off the burner. I remembered that I don’t own a fire extinguisher (MISTAKE #3), but since I wasn’t sure if this counted as an electrical fire figured I’d be better off not throwing water on it regardless.

MISTAKE #4 was forgetting that grease fires exist at all, luckily I still somehow did the right thing:

Baking soda to the rescue!

I always keep a big box in the kitchen for cleaning purposes, so I ripped open the top and started tossing it at the base of the fire (i.e. my stove). When the flames were small enough, I grabbed my potholders and moved the soup to the sink, so I could throw more handfuls of baking soda at the fire. It went out pretty quickly at that point, and things started to disperse, THEN the smoke alarm started going off (Yeah, thanks for the heads-up, smoke alarm, you did a bang-up job there).

Then, I decided to sit down quietly for a while, and order a pizza.

No More Naughty Curry?

Today I found out that my very favorite cooking website, Naughty Curry, has finally lapsed into oblivion. They had stopped updating a while back, but as the archives (and more importantly, the recipe list!) was still up, I didn't think to copy the lovely, spicy morsels of information into my own recipe box.

Today I went to look up their recipe for Madras Shrimp, thinking to make the sauce and serve it over some chicken and rice for a houseguest I've got this weekend, and horror of horrors! The website was finally gone.

So after a little light flickr-stalking I hopped on over to the Wayback Machine, and lo and behold! The Madras Shrimp recipe was mine once more.

So after lunch today, with the continued aid of the Internet Archive, I will be spending my evening copying over every recipe of theirs I can into my personal recipe boxes, into Google Docs, and saving them as word files on my computer to boot. I urge you all to do the same. These recipes are too good to be allowed to float off mindlessly into the ether. So go, please, and cook up something spicy for someone you love.

Stuff to Recall

So, I came home tonight from a friend's, with a very nice bottle of Pomegranite wine :) I haven't tried it yet, but I'd like to have it with a nice dinner with said friend, who's Vegan. Ergo, possible foods listings:

The Joey Stuff
Three With Parsley

Also, due to wacked-out financial stuff, I've now got more motivation than ever to stick to free pattens and stashbuster projects :P I think I can make something similar to the White Lies pretty jacket thingy by modifying a pattern for a circular shrug - that'd be something fairly mindless to make (functionally, it's a big rectangle that you sew up) that'd end up nice. Also, I think shrugs/boobholders are starting to grow on me, and while I'm not sure I like that, this one is significantly cuter than normal. Also, if I make it out of recycled wool that I've got, the whole thing will have cost me a quarter, and if I make it ouf of my Baby Silk, then it'll look real nice and dressy - real swanky-like. I figure I'll need some dressy clothes anyway, eventually, and it might as well be something nice that I can say, "Oh, this old thing? I knit that up ages ago."

Because as we all know, I am a praise-based organism. Screw you, Carbon.

Botchulism Tacos at Ramadan

So, today was my birthday :) Sweetie and I cooked a large birthday meal, consisting of grilled salmon in a pomegranite marinade, steamed asparagus in a butter sauce, and, of course, Botchulism tacos.

I like to call them that, regardless of the fact that they have no meat products, and are not in any way tacos. They're more like biscuits. You get two whole avocados ($4), 3 cups of shredded cheddar/monterey jack with jalepenos cheese ($3.5), a box of bisquick ($2) that you only use about half to 3/4 of, and a can of diced tomatos with the mild green pepers in them ($1). Mash up the avocado real good, mix it all together, and bake for 15-20 minutes at 325 - they'll poof up and settle back down during cooking. A batch this size makes about a million (or 3 dozen, in our case). They are delicious. I will eat a pound of them for lunch tomorrow. Total cost: $10.50

Speaking of lunch, I also found out today that PrimaryBrother is keeping Ramadan this year! I'm really proud of him; dad's been doing it for about 3 years now, and I'm glad he's doing it too. Next year I should really think about joining them with that, I only eat once a day anyway and it's not too hard to push that back an hour for the sunset.

In other news, K-the-knitter got me two skeins of green Kathmandu for my birthday, J-the-roomie got me the Serenity soundtrack, and Sweetie, heart of my heart, got me firefly and unleashed :) I luff him. I'll make him some bo'tacs to take to work tomorrow.