Disaster Missed, and Other Ramblings

Sunday I was browning a post roast when it slipped from my cooking fork and splashed hot oil in my face.  Ouch.  And.  Really OUCH, again.  I first got cold water on my fingers and applied them to the area around my eyes--where it burned the worst.  But I didn't want to ruin my pot roast, so I slid the pot it was in off the front burner to the back.  Then I grabbed my small rice bag from the freezer and put it on my face.  So essentially I was blind to do much else.  The cold bag was ever so welcomed as immediate relief but can't see with bag covering eyes!  Fortunately, and blessedly I had not been splashed in the eyes with the hot oil!  I am so grateful.


Now, I've been spattered with popping grease from frying bacon and tons of other foods in a frying pan or otherwise, but never like this particular incident.  I hollered for my daughter to please come take over the roast cooking operation.  She was alarmed when I explained what had happened and demanded that I let her see the damage--which I knew wasn't serious, it just hurt like burns do!  She told me to wash the grease off so it wouldn't continue to burn.  (It wasn't, but I was a dutiful Mom and washed--very gently-- around my eyes and patted my face dry and immediately went back to assuaging my discomfort with the cold rice bag.)

The damage upon later assessment was very minor and mostly around the outer edge of my right eye, less so under my left and one small blister under my nose.  (Wasn't able to get the rice bag over my nose while covering my eyes and frankly didn't feel the burn there until much later.)  I'm pretty confident that the cold rice bag inhibited the blistering around my eyes that could have occurred--like under my nose--without its application!

I will ever be grateful no hot oil got into my eyes!  (Do you think OSHA will now require me to wear safety eye gear while cooking?  Just kidding!)

I have been cooking now for . . . let's see . . . about 53 years without a disaster of this kind, though like I mentioned earlier I've been popped with hot grease/oil on many occasions.  The worst cooking disaster I can remember in all those years, however, was when I was canning fresh green beans from our garden some years ago.  A friend and I were co-oping our time and efforts in helping each other with the project.  Because we had several batches to process I got a little impatient and forced the pressure cooker lid off prematurely and got a very nasty steam burn on my fingers of one hand.  Burns are the pits.

I learned after another burn incident with a soldiering iron years before the pressure cooker incident that plunging your hand into a cup of ice water--and mostly keeping it there--numbs the pain and halts the burn.  Yes.  The ice water hurts, too.  You have to decide which hurt is greater or lesser.  I choose (and chose) the lesser of two evils, for me anyway, and that was:  keep the hand IN the ice water.  Numb from cold was more tolerable than hurt from burning.

Now on to more pleasant things.  When finished cooking, the post roast--involved in the near disaster--was WONDERFUL!  It was delicious, tender and wasn't burned up because of my mishap.  I cooked carrots and onions with it and added mashed potatoes, gravy and corn to the menu and we all seemed to enjoy it quite well.

Last night I took the remaining pound of roast and made an Italian roast beef stew.  I sauteed onions, garlic and sweet red bell pepper then added a jar of  tomato basil spaghetti sauce, a can of beef consume, a can of sliced mushrooms, the leftover beef roast gravy, the leftover beef cut into small cubes, some salt, and oregano and let it simmer.  We served it with spaghetti noodles and the leftover corn.  It was pretty good, if I do say so!

Saturday, we had about 8 pounds of chicken breasts (boneless/skinless) to grill--which I did with the very last of the propane in the tank.  (I did have another tank on hand--mostly because I wasn't sure there was enough in the one to finish the job.)  Now we ate some of the grilled chicken with our great salad of greens and fresh tomatoes with mozerella cheese chuncks and cibatta bread.  It was all good.  But the side benefit(s): of grilling all that chicken at once

1. only had to clean/fire-up the grill once
2. we now have 5 freezer bags of grilled chicken to use whenever we need to put a meal together quickly--and we've already anticipated more of those than we have grilled chicken to put into them!
3. thawing raw chicken and then having to cook it is NOT gonna be necessary
4. its much cheaper than buying pre-grilled frozen, or rotisserie chicken 
5. we're happy with this arrangement!

So, I've survived a near disaster, and I've grilled chicken, and I've rambled through it all.