A cautionary tale...
I left early from work this afternoon, fleeing into the sunshine, and happily delving in to the book I am currently reading.
I arrived home about an hour early, and went round to my door as usual. As I was getting my keys, I noticed a rather odd smell. Thinking that my friend and landlord was simply cooking something exotic, I pushed it to the back of my mind, walked downstairs, turned on my computer, and began taking off my coat. All normal activities...
Then that strange smell assaulted me like Mike Tyson in his glory days, and he wasn't leaving til he had a piece of my ear. Burning, something was burning... It might bring a smile to my room mate's face to know I checked his room first, and sequestered his cat into the bathroom. It wasn't my room, nor was it our kitchen...
Dashing upstairs, the smell near knocked me over, so powerful was its stench. Upon the stove upstairs was a smoldering pot, the stove element set on 5 (halfway). A small flash of orange light indicated the contents of the pot had just gone up in flame... grabbing a tea towel, I yanked the pot off the stove, noting it seemed ... a little stuck to the stovetop. Then came the momentary panic as I had to set the pot down to unlock and open the back door (I lock outer doors out of habit). There's a nice burned circle on the carpet there now. Heh.
So I get outside and plunge the pot into the snowbank, which vaporizes instantly. I yank the lid off the pot, and start throwing in handfuls of snow... then I have the presence of mind to use the shovel by the door... After a quick dash about the house to make sure that's all that was burning, I opened nearly every window in the house, usher the dog outside and leash him...
My clothes smell like burned plastic... what was burning was some beef stew... ugh.
I'm out for the night to try and find a place to sleep.
EDIT: Now with pictures.
Here's where I put the pot down so that I could open the door. Notice the upper part of the circle is burned, the lower part is melted. The upper carpet is a natural fiber, I believe, while the grey carpet is a high traffic office carpet, and synthetic. One burns, the other melts first, then burns.
Here's the pot sitting outside, the day after. In the bottom of the picture is where I originally dropped the pot. The snow there vapourized instantly when I put the pot there.
If you look closely, you can see the carbonized wooden handle.
Here we have the mess inside, with the snow mostly removed. That thing in the center of the pot is the remains of the end of the spoon.
A closer inspection of the inside. That black mess at the bottom is the remains of a beef stew. It used to be at least four or five inches deep... but has bubbled and boiled and burned down to about a half inch. It looked like bubbling tar when I grabbed the pot to put it outside, and the smell was really... indescribable. I think I'd rather be sprayed by a skunk than have to smell this again.
The underside of the pot... note the marks left by the burnt carpet. The center burn marks match the lack of burnt marks on the stove top upstairs. Bleh.
The morale of this tale is: Don't leave pots cooking on the stove unattended. It really doesn't take too much time for things to get out of hand.
I arrived home about an hour early, and went round to my door as usual. As I was getting my keys, I noticed a rather odd smell. Thinking that my friend and landlord was simply cooking something exotic, I pushed it to the back of my mind, walked downstairs, turned on my computer, and began taking off my coat. All normal activities...
Then that strange smell assaulted me like Mike Tyson in his glory days, and he wasn't leaving til he had a piece of my ear. Burning, something was burning... It might bring a smile to my room mate's face to know I checked his room first, and sequestered his cat into the bathroom. It wasn't my room, nor was it our kitchen...
Dashing upstairs, the smell near knocked me over, so powerful was its stench. Upon the stove upstairs was a smoldering pot, the stove element set on 5 (halfway). A small flash of orange light indicated the contents of the pot had just gone up in flame... grabbing a tea towel, I yanked the pot off the stove, noting it seemed ... a little stuck to the stovetop. Then came the momentary panic as I had to set the pot down to unlock and open the back door (I lock outer doors out of habit). There's a nice burned circle on the carpet there now. Heh.
So I get outside and plunge the pot into the snowbank, which vaporizes instantly. I yank the lid off the pot, and start throwing in handfuls of snow... then I have the presence of mind to use the shovel by the door... After a quick dash about the house to make sure that's all that was burning, I opened nearly every window in the house, usher the dog outside and leash him...
My clothes smell like burned plastic... what was burning was some beef stew... ugh.
I'm out for the night to try and find a place to sleep.
EDIT: Now with pictures.
Here's where I put the pot down so that I could open the door. Notice the upper part of the circle is burned, the lower part is melted. The upper carpet is a natural fiber, I believe, while the grey carpet is a high traffic office carpet, and synthetic. One burns, the other melts first, then burns.
Here's the pot sitting outside, the day after. In the bottom of the picture is where I originally dropped the pot. The snow there vapourized instantly when I put the pot there.
If you look closely, you can see the carbonized wooden handle.
Here we have the mess inside, with the snow mostly removed. That thing in the center of the pot is the remains of the end of the spoon.
A closer inspection of the inside. That black mess at the bottom is the remains of a beef stew. It used to be at least four or five inches deep... but has bubbled and boiled and burned down to about a half inch. It looked like bubbling tar when I grabbed the pot to put it outside, and the smell was really... indescribable. I think I'd rather be sprayed by a skunk than have to smell this again.
The underside of the pot... note the marks left by the burnt carpet. The center burn marks match the lack of burnt marks on the stove top upstairs. Bleh.
The morale of this tale is: Don't leave pots cooking on the stove unattended. It really doesn't take too much time for things to get out of hand.