Flames?!?!

I have now officially had a real disaster in the kitchen. Sure I have messed up numerous recipes and have had to through away several batches of cookies, bread, and whatever else you can think of. When this happens I just wipe away the tears, give out a frustrated cry, put a smile on my face and start over. This time there were no tears. It was too catastrophic. All I could do was laugh and wonder in bewilderment how the almonds could have possibly burst into flames after being in the oven for only a minute! That's right there were legitimate flames in the oven.

Last week Jared and I were so excited to have some friends over for dinner. We love spending time with those we love and we love feeling more justified in making a nice dinner together. On this particular occasion Jared was preparing the chicken while I was preparing the salad and deviled eggs. For the salad we wanted to toast some almonds with a little seasoning. So I filled a cookie sheet with almonds, seasoned them, and then put them in the oven to broil. Anyone who has broiled anything knows that whatever it is can go from not done at all to too done in a matter of seconds. I had been constantly checking the almonds to avoid this problem but of course I let them get too done. I quickly pulled the pan out of the oven to examine the damage. Fortunately only the almonds in the middle were too done to serve. I set aside the good almonds and prepared another small batch determined not to let this batch burn. 

I placed the almonds in the oven turned around to peel one more egg (it took hardly any time because it was a very easy egg to peel) and then decided to check the almonds certain they weren't done yet but checking just in case. When I opened the oven door it was not a perfect batch of almonds I saw but flames. FLAMES! I went to grab the towel that is normally kept on the oven door and it wasn't there. I spun in a circle frantically looking for something (I'm not sure what exactly because the hot pads were right quickly accessible) I couldn't find it, or rather I couldn't think of what else to do so I called Jared over to save me. He calmly pulled the pan out, put it in the sink, and turned the water on. The flames were extinguished but my perfect almonds were now a pile of charcoal at the bottom of our sink and the cookie sheet that I had searched everywhere for (no one carries light colored cookie sheets) had all kinds of burn marks. 

I laughed in disbelief. How could they have burst into flames when they hadn't even been in the oven half the time of the first batch? At this point I gave up and we decided to just put fewer almonds in the salad than we had hoped. A week later I still can't believe it or figure out how it happened but it is a good story to laugh at.