Day 97: Kitchen Disaster

So, this happened the other night:

I was calmly making fish and chips (like any good imitation-British person ought to do) and FaceTimeing with my friend Alex. The fish and chips were in the pan, which was in the oven, and all was going as planned. The chips were nice and crispy, the fish was sizzling, and I was hungry.

So I took the pan out of the oven and placed it on the stove top to let it cool off for a second.

Only, it didn't cool off. The fish just started sizzling even louder.

Just as I realized that I had placed the pan on top of the element which lets the heat escape from the oven.... the pan exploded.

Looking back, it's actually quite funny, though I admit it shocked me at the time. I gave a little shriek and Alex was wondering what in the world was wrong and there was smoke rising up from the stove and there was my poor pan split into half a dozen pieces and my fish and chips spread out across the stovetop.

I managed to open a window before the smoke alarms went off, rescued my poor fish and chips, and reassured Alex that I wasn't in the middle of a major catastrophe.

Now I need to go buy a new baking pan. But the lesson has been learned: never place anything on the bottom left stove element when the oven is on!

P. S. I'm almost done going through my London photos, and I've got a good start on my Dublin ones, so I should hopefully have those posts up soon!

Life at University: Food

I know this is a book blog, so I really shouldn't be talking about food, but I've been doing a lot more cooking than writing recently. To my great surprise, this cooking has actually been pretty successful. I've never gone hungry and never had to eat anything gross (well, once the rice was kinda dry) and never burned anything (besides for toast, lol). Since my cooking is going so well, despite the fact that I did barely any cooking at home, I've decided to share a couple of my successes with you. 

This was the first pork chop I cooked. I bought a whole pork loin (pre-sliced) and then put each slice in an individual bag. Then when I want one, I just stick it in the frying pan, add a little salt, and voila! It only takes 5-10 minutes. The peas were done in the microwave and the rice was made in a rice cooker. 

This was my attempt at bruschetta. I put tomato sauce, cheese and a bit of hamburger on the bread and stuck it in the over. The soup is simply tomato soup from a can. 

This was my supper last night. You know you're from PEI when you eat four whole potatoes... Simply cut the potatoes in wedges and put them in a bowl, then add some olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic powder then bake in the oven for 45 minutes. They stuck to the pan a little,  but boy... they were good!  

This is my food cupboard. As you can see, I do have some snack food (the Lays are displayed rather prominently, aren't they?) as well as some healthy stuff, like the huge bags of pasta and rice on the bottom shelf. There's also pancake mix and cans of soup and pudding cups and hot chocolate mix and peanut butter and lots of tasty things.

So, this is my experience with food so far. Will I gain the 'Freshman 15?' We'll have to see.... If any of you would like some tips on cooking while in university then I'll be happy to write a couple quick posts. Otherwise, I'll try to write a bit more about the academic side of things. I just needed to write this so I could boast about my unexpected cooking success. :)