More kitchen humor

There really is never a dull moment in the Johnson kitchen.  If you haven't been to our place, I don't think I can really create a picture small enough to describe the size of our kitchen.  It's tiny.  As the owner of a bed-and-breakfast once phrased it, we have a "one-butt kitchen" for sure.  Only one butt can fit in it.  This makes all of our cooking projects pretty interesting.


This weekend we hosted our Sabbath community on Sunday night - the group that meets once a week for a shared meal and time together - about 15 or so.  We decided to make chili because the weather has turned cold and soggy for the season ("crisp" Falls do not exist in this city).  Conscious of our community, we also decided to make two different chili's: one meaty, and one veggie.  Unfortunately, however, we only have one large stock pot big enough to hold an entire batch of chili.  


What to do?  What to do?


Get creative.  


And, boy, did we ever.


And, boy, did we pay.


T (yes, I will blame this on him - it was his boyish curiosity) really wanted to see if the ceramic insert of our crockpot could cook a pot of chili on the stovetop.  I mean, it's meant to get hot, right?  Oh, how you must be chuckling at this point.


I argued - but not hard enough.  "I don't think it's a good idea."  "But it's meant to get hot!"  "Fine, T.  Do whatever you want."


Aye - never good words to utter.


So, as you may have guessed, T put the ceramic crockpot insert onto the large eye of our stove.  In our bedroom, I heard him say, "It smells kind of weird."  But, after a few minutes it seemed to be working ok.  


We had about 45 minutes before our Sabbath group was supposed to arrive, and, as any amateur chef knows, soups need to boil to actually cook all the flavors together.  So, T turns up the heat: medium-high.  I was nervous, standing over the sink, washing a few dishes, my third eye on the stove.  


Then, we hear POP!  


I cursed...loudly, quickly.  One syllable.  Just enough to allow T to utter, "Uh-oh."


"It cracked!"


I frantically began scouring the counters for our oven-mits.  I shoved them in his face.  "It's not hot, Kelsey, it's cracked!" T yelled.  He grabbed both sides of the pot, pushed the halves together, and lifted.  He did not know that a perfect circle had cracked in the bottom of the pot - when he lifted, the bottom of the pot stuck to the eye,  and chili came flowing out like molten lava.  (It seems like our kitchen disasters always involve a molten-lava-like substance).  Yes - a steaming river of chili.


As you can imagine with the burner still on medium-high, the chili instantly started cooking right to the stove.  Not to mention that it also flowed right underneath the burner, covering the innards of stovetop.  Then onto the floor and dripped all over the counter where T carried it to the sink.  Chunks of tomatoes, beans, and zucchini everywhere.  Not to be disgusting, but chili already looks unpleasant as is - when it has been thrown all over kitchen floors, cabinets, and counters it's really appetizing.  You would have thought someone vomited over our entire kitchen.


30 minutes till guests arrive.  What do we do?  We don't have enough for everyone!


"Here, this is big enough to hold all of it," T says, as he pulls our roaster out of the cabinet.  I shrugged, grabbed hold of the roaster, T with his spatula, and began scraping all of the stovetop chili into the pan.  Yes.  Scraping chili into a roasting pan.  Salvaging our crockpot-vomited chili.


I had lost most verbal capabilities at this point.  I chose, very intentionally, to mute myself because I knew that anything that rolled off of my tongue would have been regretted later.  T chuckled as we were scraping glops of chili into a turkey roasting pan and I gave him a look.  "T, I'm sorry, but this just isn't funny to me yet."


At least I knew it would be funny eventually, right?


And yes, we got it cleaned up, heated up, and served on time.  Don't worry, we didn't do any intense scraping so as to get the burned chunks into our friends' dinner.  Gross.  Just the top layer of goodness that we could still salvage.  We told them the story and of course they laughed and were shocked because they had no idea when they came in that anything like that had happened.

I'm so glad we'll have such a substantial repertoire of stories to share with our kids - keeps us humble.  Real, real humble.


T, honey?  You did a real good job.


Ironically, my lovely friend and House of Love roomie, Dana, brought T and I a gift that night as a part of an inside-joke from living together.  While I can't fully describe the extent of the joke, it felt too appropriate for our cooking experience.  Little did she know what this little gift meant!