Saturday, January 20, 2007

The Ballad of the Teflon High Dive


This story shall be called:

The Ballad of the Teflon High Dive

My one and only frying pan is lying on the roof of the building below me. Right before the Christmas holidays I was sugar-roasting almonds to put into a chocolate bark for the office Christmas party. As per the rule of thumb for all appliances in Chateau Shoebox nothing quite works how one would expect it too. The “melting box” (Oven) will produce a deliciously warm pizza in about 50 minutes of cooking it on high (think: what pizza would look like if you simply microwaved it into submission). The refrigerator will freeze fruit that is on the middle shelf, but rot fruit in the crispers. And the actual microwave will explode a mug of milk in 15 seconds flat.
Now the stove top part of the oven is what I would like to call “Temperature wildcard”; sometimes if you put it on “5” it’s hotter than the sun, and sometimes if you put it on “5” you could sit a baby on it.
This particular almond experiment fell under the former category and smoke was filling up in my kitchen. I wisely dumped the almonds into the colander and held the pan out the window. My arm got tired, or I got bored and so I rested the pan on my rather large window sill and went in the living room to continue wrapping presents. 20 minutes and 4 beautiful chartreuse and fuchsia wrapped gifts later I walk back in the kitchen, immediately realize its STINKIN’ cold, spin around and roundhouse kick the window shut.
At that moment, time stands still as I realize, while fully committed to the roundhouse that my pan is still sitting on the sill. Like a movie climax I run to the window to watch the pan soar 6 floors down and land nicely on the roof of the Chinese Food restaurant below.

The almond bark still turned out fantastically though.

I have briefly considered going to the Chinese restaurant and asking if somehow I could retrieve the pan from there roof, but I’m pretty sure that with my limited French and Chinese, trying to get the message “I kicked my pan and it fell on your roof” across would probably be in vain.
Fortunately for me however, I shared this pathetic tome with my family over the holidays and you know what happened? 5 beautiful frying pans appeared in my bedroom!! Aunt Cizzy, Uncle Slim, Ret and Chance were so totally amazing and got me all new pans!!! I love you guys SO MUCH!

Moral of this story is this:

Almonds burn easily.


***I love my family so much and they care about me a lot and that makes me smile and look forward to seeing them again soon!