Now, I know what most of you are thinking - a fire in an oven is not that big of a deal right? Well, of course not I mean I have had very small flames on the bottom of my oven before where some grease was burning off or something. But this time it was different. This time I was doing something stupid.
So, I will start at the very beginning. Over the summer I had a large jar sitting in the middle of my outdoor dining table and I put a pillar candle in it. In the heat of the summer, the candle warped and I could no longer get it out of the jar. I really wanted to use the jar for a different purpose this fall so I decided to try to melt the candle to get it out of the jar. I had remember reading on the Internet that you could put a candle in the oven to melt it. What I did not remember was that this needed to be done at a LOW temperature. For those of you who are wondering, 350 degrees is NOT a low temperature.
Luckily, I was in my kitchen talking on the phone when it started so I could catch it early but it grew very quickly and soon the flames started coming out of the top of my oven. Holy Panic!!!! We keep a fire extinguisher in our kitchen but I had no idea how to use it and was so panicked that I could not read the directions. I started pulling on all of the tabs and pushing any sort of trigger button I could find and eventually set off the extinguisher in the middle of my kitchen (dust everywhere). Now that I knew how to make the extinguisher work I sprayed it in the oven and put the fire out!!!
The house was filled with smoke so I grabbed The Youngest (The Oldest was as school) and the dog and we went outside. Because I had never experienced anything like this before I did decided to call the fire department just to make sure everything was okay. Over the phone I explained that everything was okay and that the fire was out, I just wanted someone to come and check out my kitchen.
Three minutes later the fire chief, a fire truck and the ladder truck were all outside my house.
Need I remind you that I live on MAIN STREET!! I was mortified! To make matters worse, one of our friends (and the mother of our babysitter) was driving by and stopped to make sure we were okay. The firefighters were very nice and they did bring a handy little fan to get the rest of the smoke out but I do think the ladder truck was a bit of overkill, don't you?
So here is what my oven looked after the incident. You will notice the small film of white fire extinguisher residue that fell all over everything in my kitchen. But if you also look at the bottom of the oven you will see about a 1/4 inch of wax where the candle melted all over the bottom of the oven.
So I spent the rest of my Friday cleaning white dust off of everything in our kitchen but The Husband really went above the call of duty and cleaned the oven for me. We haven't tried it out at high temperatures yet but it seems to be back in working order. However my entire house smell like a burning candle.
So, how was your weekend?
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