Don't Try This At Home

I wrote last week about how I knew I needed more sleep because I was doing stupid things. While I've been making a concerted effort to get to sleep earlier, I apparently have not yet caught up on my sleep. Today? Definitely one of the stupider things I've ever done, and I'm beyond lucky that there were no lasting repercussions.

I'm on a productivity roll today. I dropped off my husband's lunch. I picked up my driver's license that I forgot at speech therapy yesterday. I returned the book on CD that was due. I got a load of darks in the laundry. I put away the dirty dishes. I updated my expenses spreadsheet. I even finished a few more solicitations for Mister Man's gala.

My mind is sort of running a million miles an hour, as there's a lot more I need to do today before I leave at 1:30. I won't be home again until almost 6:30 when I walk in the door with two very tired and hungry wee ones. Dinner needs to be ready, and I'm not quite ready to stoop to fast food. This is where the crock pot comes in handy. I have nothing thawed, but the awesome part about a crock pot is that you can put meat in still frozen. Yay, I have a roast left from the last time I made pot roast (yay Costco for selling meat in large quantities). And I have carrots and celery and onion and all the other ingredients on hand. Phew. I'm making my easy pot roast.

I placed my large cast iron pan onto the stove and began heating it while I got out the rest of the ingredients. After all, I want the pores of my pan to open before I put in the oil to sear my meat. As I tried to get the meat out of its glass container, I realized I had a little problem. It was frozen to the glass and was not coming out. The oil was now heating in the pan, and I didn't want it to burn. Warm water to the rescue - after a minute or so of warm water flowing over the container and meat, the container released the meat. Phew. Utterly paranoid now about my soon to be smoking oil, I immediately placed the meat into the pan.

My wet meat.

My frozen wet meat.

Into a very hot pan.

Into a very hot pan that contains oil.

Annnnnd I watched the flames flare. Can you say grease fire? Yep, that's what those ingredients get you. I pushed the pan to the center of my stove after turning off the stove (always step one!), as the flames showed no signs of dying down anytime soon, but the pan was too heavy and my sink too full to place it there - plus grease fires should never ever have water added to them.

I held my breath, and the flames died down with no damage to anything, aside from grease spattered everywhere. Oh, and the smoke alarms blaring throughout my house. Even with the vent fan running on high - because I of course forgot to turn it on until after the fire had died out - the smoke wasn't dissipating quickly.

I was lucky. I was very very lucky. This is why you always dry your meat before putting it into oil to sear. And probably why searing frozen meat isn't a good idea, for that matter. Learn from my stupidity - please! It's my public service announcement for the week.