Big lunchtime scare

[meezercat]

Today I decided to make myself a bowl of pasta for lunch, a nice hot lunch for my last weekday before I start working again.

Filled up my medium saucepan with water (good size for a single serving of pasta), turned up the burner, and put the lid on the pot. Now, since the pan and cover are all metal, I normally stick a hotpad (one of those childhood hand-loomed things) on the cover and let it sit there, so when I go to remove the cover I don't burn myself.

After about 10 minutes (the usual amount of time) I go to see if the water is boiling. The first thing I see is the hot pad, fallen off the pan lid, in flames!! Luckily it must have JUST fallen, because only 1/4 of it was on fire so far. I picked it up and threw it into the sink under cold running water, and finally got it out.

The hotpad is toast, obviously, and there's a scorch mark on the stove, but luckily no other damage (well maybe a few heart palpitations).

I consider myself a really careful person, and I'd never given this habit a second thought. Just wanted to pass along a note to you all.

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"I suspect that many an ailurophobe hates cats only because he feels they are better people than he is; more honest, more secure, more loved, more whatever he is not."

--Winifred Carriere

 

[spidergoolash]

jeez, hermie - you gotta be careful

has anyone ever "melted" anything on the stove (and i don't mean food)

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"only a white man would build a fire for everyone to see."

[crawl]resident spiderMOD[/crawl] "to know her is to FEAR her."

 

[meezercat]

I haven't melted anything, but I've turned two teflon saucepans into charcoal

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"I suspect that many an ailurophobe hates cats only because he feels they are better people than he is; more honest, more secure, more loved, more whatever he is not."

--Winifred Carriere

 

[spidergoolash]

i melted a bunch of baby bottles once. the smell was too much.

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"only a white man would build a fire for everyone to see."

[crawl]resident spiderMOD[/crawl] "to know her is to FEAR her."

 

[Doomedchild]

I've melted the plastic handles of various kitchen utensils

 

[kezzer]

I set a pizza box on fire that was put in the oven by hubby. I forgot it was in there and put the oven on to preheat it, left the kitchen to give my daughter a bath and started smelling smoke. That was scary, and to top it off, hubby was at work and I was 8 months pregnant with my son.

 

[BizkitBabe]

I recall a similar incident happening just last year. Luckily, my roommate had been out at the time, because she would have spazzed had she been there. I was making God’s gift to college, Ramen, and had put a pot of water on the stove to boil. I started doing something else, only to smell something burning seconds later. Spidey is right about the smell. It’s repulsive! Anyway, after hastily walking myself back over to my Ramen’s preparation I realized I had left the Ramen package on one of the stove’s burners and had turned on the wrong burner! The plastic package melted itself all over the stove and some of its enclosed noodles were also beyond edible...Ooops!

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Does anybody really know the secret or the combination for this life and where they keep it? It's kind of sad when you don't know the meanin', but everything happens for a reason...