Lending a Hand
So, I'm hungry. Real hungry. Innocently enough, I decide to tear myself away from the television (Revealed! with Jules Asaner) and fix myself a snack. What'll it be? What will it be? Some cookies? No, I'm hungrier than that. A frozen pizza? I better not, I'm having an early dinner and don't want to spoil my appetite. Rooting through the freezer, I come upon a Ziploc bag with some frozen french fries. Ore Ida, I presume. Oh, she would end up being the death of me. I take the bag to the other side of the kitchen, where the stove is. Reaching into an adjacent cabinet, I pull out a pan prime for cooking. I set it on the range, and turn the knob. I then poured a good amount of vegetable oil into the pan, enough to cover the bottom so that the french fries wouldn't burn. I grab one handful, no, two handfuls of french fries from the bag and dump them into the pan, arranging them evenly so that some don't come out undercooked and mealy - I hate that. I let them cook, the oil searing, the french fries browning, you know the drill. I'd flip the french fries occasionally to make sure they cooked evenly - nothing out of the ordinary. Finally, they were done. I was all ready to dump the contents of the pan into a strainer, letting the hot oil go down the drain while still holding on to the french fries (a miracle that thing is), but then recalling to mind what my parents had told me years ago, (not to pour hot oil down the drain - it can cause untold damage) I thought better of my rash actions, and reached for some sort of family oil receptacle (really, this is nothing more than a used, empty coffee can) and, holding the strainer in one hand and the hot pan in the other, emptied the searing oil into the can and keeping the french fries all for me. Delighted at the prospect of such a snack, I walked over to the other side of my kitchen and got a paper plate from the cabinet and promptly dumped the french fries out of the strainer, and tossed the strainer into the sink. As the fries cooled, it was time to clean up. Reseal the bag of fries and put the rest in the freezer for another day, put the cap on the bottle of oil, put the pan in the sink, and then it came time to put the lid back on the coffee-can-turned-death-trap. Putting a lid on a can is something I've had the privilege of doing many times in my life, so admittedly, I wasn't paying much attention to the simple task at hand. It so happened that the lid was a little warped, and as I tried to adjust it, the lid fell into the hot oil, and my hand with it.
It's one of those moments where you stand there, in such excruciating pain that your body kind of freezes up. A bad time for this to happen, seeing as how my hand was still submerged in the oil. I pulled my hand out and yelled (real manly-like though), spraying oil everywhere, the counter, my shirt, my pants, but there were more important things to attend to - I quickly turned on the kitchen faucet and ran my hand underneath cold water. How my hand burned. The loud yell had alerted my brother, and he came down to see what the fuss was about. I gave him a short synopsis of my ordeal, and looking at my hand, said, "Well, it looks fine, so it can't be a 3rd degree burn." and he returned to the comfort of his room. I looked at my hand once again - it doesn't look nearly as bad as it feels, a couple red splotches ,but I think one may be a mosquito bite - it's hard to tell. In any event, it doesn't itch anymore. As I'm writing this now, it's been a good 45 minutes since my injury, and I just have a minor stinging pain in my left hand. Once positive that emerged from all of this: if you put water on my hand, it beads. It's pretty damn cool - kinda like that Turtle Wax on TV.
It's one of those moments where you stand there, in such excruciating pain that your body kind of freezes up. A bad time for this to happen, seeing as how my hand was still submerged in the oil. I pulled my hand out and yelled (real manly-like though), spraying oil everywhere, the counter, my shirt, my pants, but there were more important things to attend to - I quickly turned on the kitchen faucet and ran my hand underneath cold water. How my hand burned. The loud yell had alerted my brother, and he came down to see what the fuss was about. I gave him a short synopsis of my ordeal, and looking at my hand, said, "Well, it looks fine, so it can't be a 3rd degree burn." and he returned to the comfort of his room. I looked at my hand once again - it doesn't look nearly as bad as it feels, a couple red splotches ,but I think one may be a mosquito bite - it's hard to tell. In any event, it doesn't itch anymore. As I'm writing this now, it's been a good 45 minutes since my injury, and I just have a minor stinging pain in my left hand. Once positive that emerged from all of this: if you put water on my hand, it beads. It's pretty damn cool - kinda like that Turtle Wax on TV.