Skip to main content

Burning Water

Whenever someone starts talking about their horror stories in the kitchen, I am always reminded of my buddy who managed to screw up pasta.  Pasta is one of those meals that's supposed to be easy to make, even with limited cooking ability.  In its most basic form, it's easy to prepare: boil some water, throw the pasta/noodles in the water until they cook, take the noodles out, throw pre-made sauce on it, and enjoy.  In theory, it should be almost impossible to mess this up.

Well, let's hypothesize a situation where one is a college kid who wants to play some video games while he waits for the water to boil.  Let's further postulate that the video game console is in an adjoining room, rather than in the living room.  Given this hypothetical situation, it's theoretically possible for said college kid to forget all about the pot of water on the stove.  After enough time, the water would completely evaporate, but the stove would still be on.  And if the student were to ignore the stove for longer still, the pot would begin to burn, to the point where the bottom would fall out if one were to later realize one's mistake.

It's a very unlikely scenario, right?  Not for my buddy.

And to this day, I give him a hard time about it, since he essentially managed to screw up boiling water.  In fact, I've been known to joke that he burned water.  Well, after today, I'm not going to tease him quite as much.  Or at all.

I needed to boil some water, and I was watching the tail end of a football game.  I didn't have a tea kettle handy, so I just threw water into a pot and turned on the stove.  I figured I'd watch a few downs, then go turn off the stove once it boiled.  Of the two tasks in that last sentence, I managed to do one of them correctly.  I realized my mistake when I suddenly smelled something vaguely like "burning" coming from the kitchen.

Luckily for me, I caught it early enough that there was no real damage done to the pot.  It had some black marks on it, but otherwise, there was no real damage done.  Even luckier, the burn marks came off after I used some polish/cleaner stuff we had lying around the house.  I also made more of an effort to find a tea kettle I could use.

So, what did I learn from today's unexpected excitement?
  • Open flame demands respect, no matter how small the flame is or how many times you've done the task
  • Sporting events are a poor choice for multitasking; it's too easy to get caught up in the game
  • That polish powder is pretty darn amazing.  I fully expected the pot to have permanent burn marks, but the pot looks more or less okay
  • Karma sure has interesting ways of exacting revenge.  Or, as the saying in Spanish goes, "don't spit at the sky, lest it fall on your face"
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

New York City Trip (Day 3)

By the third day of the trip, I was tired enough from the previous day's adventures/subway rides that I felt like sleeping in. And sleep in I did. I think I woke up at something like 11:30 or noon. Of course, that meant that a later start to the day, which started the vicious cycle all over again. By the time we rolled into Manhattan, it was about two in the afternoon. I had tentatively set aside Sunday to see something on Broadway, so we headed over to the tkts booth for discount tickets. There were actually various 3PM options, and after mulling our options, we figured it'd be a good idea to catch one of those. We settled on The Toxic Avenger , which was actually an off-Broadway option. However, we hadn't eaten yet, and the show started about 15 minutes after we got our tickets. Enter the food carts. There happened to be one right outside the theater, and the guy charged a little bit of a premium for the convenience. Still, I was hungry, and I had yet to try...
1 comment
Read more

Moment of Truth

I forget where I first heard it (I think it might have been Descartes), but I have long been a fan of the notion that certain things just have a " ring of truth " to them. If you've never heard the idiom before, the basic idea is that some things are super-true. They are not just true, but they are so obviously true, that as soon as you hear them, you recognize the truthiness inherent in them. I usually get excited when I hear one of these, since it means that I am a tiny bit less ignorant from that moment forward. For the first time in memory, though, I experienced the ring of truth. First, let me paint the scene with a little bit of background. I'd made plans to have dinner with my friend, but we'd agreed to play it by ear. The end result was that we ended up settling on a pretty late dinner in a local spot. That worked out just fine, since we weren't shooting for gourmet, we just wanted to grab some food and catch up in the process. So, we headed out to ...
Post a Comment
Read more

All Good Things ...

August 8, 2009. Over twelve years ago, I started blogging with this simple post . I didn't really have a great reason for starting the blog, other than I wanted to try it out. I wanted to try writing and putting it where others could read it. I don't know, it just seemed like a new adventure to try. Along the way, there have been all sorts of posts and all sorts of life events, but through it all, I kept writing. It just became a part of what I do at some point. It wasn't a matter of whether I was going to write a blog post, it was a matter of when. The Mild Wife has described it as a "writing practice," and it was one of the reasons why I kept writing. Honestly, it's good practice, and it gives me an opportunity to hone my craft. I'm no professional author, but we all have to write stuff in our everyday lives. Why not give yourself reps to get better at it? However, I think it's time for that practice to change. My weekly anecdotes sure kept me amused...
Post a Comment
Read more