I was taught to be very careful when cooking, My mom’s stove (an electric one) had 1 2 3 heat settings on the dial. I was taught never to walk out of the room if a burner was set at 2 or 3 and never to walk out of house when the stove was on (unless in either case someone else was in the room to watch the stove). After we married, in our apartment we had a (natural) gas stove/oven combination which scared the heck out of me as I was always afraid that it would blow up. I had to light the oven with a match to use it and was always sure that would be the last thing I did. (I actually once smelled gas outside the apartment as we were going out, called the gas company and when we got home later we had no stove. I telephoned to have it turned back on per the note left. When I asked, I was told that this all stemmed from a woman who had smelled the gas leak in the street and called them - hey, that was me.)
When we bought this house there was a gas stove/range combination also. I was not happy about that. I was even more upset when I was sure I smelled gas when we were in the house for later visits before we bought it. I was again right. Rather than get the unit repaired, we bought an electric stove/oven unit and had the kitchen wired for it.
Last night I made for dinner a pot pie we had bought on sale (we bought a few of them on sale - these are small production ones, not the major brands ones). I, of course, had forgotten to go down and put it in the oven to bake and therefore did so an hour late. Husband really likes these pies so he did not complain. I bake it in an oven which sits on the counter (uses 1/3 of the counter space we have). I carefully pulled the oven away from the wall and the stove and removed some plastic storage items sitting next to the oven to the other side of the kitchen. I lined the pan with foil to keep it clean.
In the interim while it was cooking I set the table, laid out our pills for dinner, etc. I would have thought nothing of walking out of the kitchen while the baking was going on, but in this case I stayed in the kitchen.
I made a can of soup for us to share as a first course. I split the can of soup before cooking it and use two small pots to cook it. It is worth cleaning the extra pot as it is much easier to split the soup as it comes out of the can and husband likes more water added to his soup than I do. As the pie went into its last ½ hour of cooking, we sat down and had the soup. After I poured the soup into our bowls, I put the pots on the stove. The burners for the soup had been shut off and I also made sure not to put the pots on the burners they had been on as the burners were still hot (electric burners take a short while to cool down after they shut off). As I said, I am very careful.
When the pie was done cooking, the countertop oven beeped and I took it out and put the pan on the stove - on the larger burner in the front on one side which was cold. We had the very nice pot pie for dinner.
After dinner I normally have a cup of tea for dinner. I normally cook it on the rear smaller burner, but I had moved the pots onto the baking pan and had put it on that rear burner, so I put the pot of water on the front, larger, burner to boil it and turned on the burner. I went back to the kitchen table - 5-6 feet away - and started reading the newspaper (TV was on for husband) while I waited to hear the water boiling.
It dawned on me that it was a bit long for the water to take to boil and something smelled wrong and notices small bits of black floating around the room. I had turned on the wrong burner!! I had turned on the burner with the pots and baking pan! I shut it off and using pot holders moved the burner with the pots still on it to another burner that was cold.
Luckily I caught it before we had an actual fire. The stove was covered in soot and the pots looked burned. The foil I had put in the baking pan was what seemed to be the black wisps flying around the room and the pan had a mark that went through it. I never did have tea. Husband suggested checking inside the oven to make sure all was okay there - I carefully put my hand on the front of it first to check that it was not hot before I opened it.
When they cooled a tiny bit, I put the pots and the pan into a dish pan of cold water to finish cooling them off. I was surprise that the pots and the pan (even the foil stuck to the pan) cleaned so easily. The pan though rocked when I put it on a flat surface, distorted by the heat. After I was done with pots and the pan, I started on the stove. It cleaned up much quicker and easier than I thought it would. I took apart the burner that all this happened on to clean it and found when I took out the drip pan that the foil liner in the drip pan had mostly melted. This had been the source of the black wisps floating about. I immediately pulled the liners in the other 3 pans - too dangerous (despite this not happening in the past 30 years) - and threw them out also.
Today husband was able to mostly get the baking pan to stop rocking by leaning on it. The kitchen no longer has a burning smell. Unrelated to all of this, we took in Chinese food for dinner tonight (easy way to deal with Ash Wednesday for husband).
Something we realized later in the evening when I boiled water - with the same pot I started to do so to make tea - later in the evening for some hot cereal before bed. The smoke detector had not gone off. (For a reminder of a past cooking incident that did set off the smoke detector see - http://wheredidileavethat.blogspot.com/2018/07/not-in-pennsylvania.html )
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -
Well two of them actually. Be careful when cooking - even if you think that you are being careful - be more careful.
If you have foil drip pans in your stove - TAKE THEM OUT.
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