It was an "OH DEAR" moment

Have you ever done something stupid and then afterwards wondered "What was I thinking"?

Last night was one of those moments for me. In the process of cooking noodles for dinner, I burned some onto the bottom of a pan. I heard that if you put some water in the pan and boil it for a few minutes it helps the noodles to become loose (and it really does work) so you can clean the pan. Well, I put the water in and put the pan on the stove. I had some others things that I needed to do and planned on coming back into the kitchen in 5 minutes to turn the pan off and clean it. I got busy doing my little things and in the process forgot about the water on the stove. (Bet you can't tell where this is going, huh?!!!) Pretty soon the smoke detector was going off, which it does randomly when the battery is going dead. Still, nothing clicked in my head. I let it buzz because I was in the middle of something downstairs. No one else moved or even flinched to go and see why it was going off, mainly because it just does that sometimes, so the smoke detector continued to screech. After a couple of minutes I decided to go upstairs and take out the battery because it was driving me crazy...as I reached the top of the stairs the kitchen was filled with smoke...yep- then it clicked in my head. I remembered that I had left a pan of water on the stove. The only problem was, the water had all boiled out and the pan was burning. I ran into the kitchen and the pan was on fire along with the top of my stove. I grabbed the pan off and threw it in the sink and turned on the water. We were all coughing and choking trying to get to the windows and doors to get them opened and get the smoke out. After the smoke cleared, we assessed to see if there was any damage and to my surprise there was none. The pan may not be able to be salvaged, but my stove was fine and we all seemed to survive. The house smells of something horrible and so Monday morning may consist of laundry galore as well as cleaning the smells from curtains, couches and such. But the important thing is, we are all okay...which may not have been the case if I would have waited much longer to go and check the smoke detector....

The moral of my story is...DON'T ever leave pans on the stove unattended, and make sure that you have smoke detectors!