Lesson Learned

Well, what was supposed to be a post about delicious apple cider donuts is now a post about cooking safety.

Last night I almost burned my house down. Everyone is ok and no damage was done (except my poor cooking pot), but it was one hell of a scary time!

The mistake was mine - I was heating the oil to dip my donuts in, and I left the lid on the pot. That's a #1 big no-no. As soon as I went to lift the lid off, all hell broke loose. I was immediately rushed with a big cloud of smoke that smelled horrific and then the oil caught on fire. Luckily, my boyfriend was home to tend to the fire as I had to run to the living room (yeah, this smoke pierces your lungs. Healthy.).

Lesson #2 - DO NOT use water to put these types of fire out! Of course, our natural reaction to fire is water... and my boyfriend wasn't aware that oil fire and water do not mix... it only fueled the fire more. Not to worry though, as he automatically reached for our fire extinguisher under our sink and put the flames out. But the ordeal wasn't over. We still had a townhouse full of smoke, and it was hard to breathe and smelled terrible. It didn't help that all of our smoke detectors were going off either. We finally got it under control after about an hour of fanning the smoke out the windows and taking turns standing outside to breathe some fresh air.

So please learn from my mistake. Do NOT heat oil with a lid on. And in the event that it does catch on fire, do NOT use water to put the fire out. It's always good to have a fire extinguisher on hand in the kitchen just in case.



Needless to say, I will be baking these donuts next time.