I recently nearly burned down the house.
Here's what happened. Aaron loves to pull down the springs on the toaster - left and right - it does FOUR slices. I always turn it off at the socket, but hubby had used it on this day and had left it on at the socket. Only trouble was, the kitchen was in such a mess I had run out of surfaces so THREE boxes of weetabix were on top of the toaster when Aaron turned it on - on both sides.
LUCKILY I was making pasta adjacent to the toaster and even more luckily, I don't go off an leave it unattended to come back when the water's boiled - had I done so, the kitchen would have been on fire and we'd have had to evacuate. I know how quickly fires start and finish having been a Fire Warden for years and years.
So there I was watching the pasta even though it was no where near boiled and I got a smell - the pan I was using does NOT have a plastic handle so I knew it wasn't that. I was just looking at the hob to see if there was anything on it that was creating the smell as it is a gas hob and things sometimes stick to the hob and then get burned by the flames and suddenly something made me look to the left of the hob and it dawned on me that my weetabix was HOT and for all the wrong reasons!
I was scared it was smouldering on the inside of the box so I dunked it all in the sink.
Here's some snaps:
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| Even though the cardboard didn't burn this was the inside |
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| The brown burn marks where the hot parts of the toaster are! |
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| When they said Try it Hot! I don't think that's what they meant! |
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| How close my toaster is to the hob (excuse the mess!) |
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| Cookery books and timber framed cuboards - erm! it woulda GONE UP in seconds! |
So had the fire started that woulda been the end for us - we would have had a mortgage on a property that quite literally went up in smoke.
So lessons learned are - (1) turn the toaster off at the socket (2) don't store things ON TOP of it, no matter how crowded the kitchen (3) in fact because of point 2 get better at keeping the kitchen tidy (made good headway today) (4) good that I stay WITH the pasta while it is boiling and (5) heat Weetabix in the way intended from now on.
Since Aaron's been weaned he has OATIBIX for breakfast every day and I have Weetabix; I do believe it is quite a healthy breakfast.
I did mention this incident here, but it has taken me till now to write about it. Crazy that it happened back then, and yet I didn't get the insurance in place till today - CRAZY!
Bye for now, Liska xxx
