First of all, I apologize if you are a subscriber and you got eleventeen update notices, but I have been categorizing uncategorized posts. I don’t know if WordPress sent out notifies on all of them or not, I hope not, but if you were inundated, I apologize. I am trying to get into the habit of putting them into categories as I write them.

I may have mentioned that the spectacular October grease fire was not my FIRST kitchen fire, just the largest one so far. Small oven fires are really quite common, because I like to broil steaks, and quite often the fat on the steaks catches on fire on the broiler pan, and has to be extinguished. I also bake a lot of sweets, and they boil over and get on the bottom of the oven, and then I forget about them, and the next time I use the oven, they smoke lot and may or may not catch on fire. There was a notation in last year’s Christmas letter about flaming muffin batter, I don’t think I have made those muffins since then, and they were good muffins, but you know, trauma.

My previous memorable fire was when I totally destroyed the toaster oven.

I was on one of my various health kicks, and I was making homemade tortilla chips by cooking cut up tortillas in the toaster oven. (I don’t remember if they were corn or flour.) Let me tell you, if you do that, you need to watch them VERY closely. Because I turned around and those chips were on fire. And after I threw a whole box of baking soda in there, I didn’t think I wanted to eat them. Or to use that toaster oven ever again. The time required to clean it of all the baking soda was not attractive. So we just threw that toaster oven out and it was still kind of a mess to clean up.

I also boil things over quite often. My mom has had the same burner pans on her stove since she got the stove, I believe, but not so in my case. But I am trying to do better, after noting her example. It helps if I remember to clean them up right after I cook something, rather than after I cook something AGAIN and things get really cooked on.

I really would like a gas range and stove top but maybe that isn’t such a good idea with my proclivities.

I don’t have any pictures of the aftermath of the toaster oven fire, so how about a picture of Leo after his summer haircut? His hair has all grown back now and he was rather dandruffy so we gave him a bath the other night. He took it rather well, considering. A video of the procedure is not possible because it requires one person to do the holding and one person to do the washing. And, we don’t have room for a third person in the bathroom.