Cooking

Cooking is man's work.  I cook a little, and improvise.  It was necessary when I wanted to feed the girls--and myself for that matter--I'm the King of the Kasserole, and make a mean beer bread.  'Course, the beer bread is a little different every time, because I toss in a wide variety of interesting stuff that happens to be in the pantry or fridge at the time.

Most recently, I found a half cube of derelict butter in the refrigerator, so I melted it, then poured that liquid onto the unbaked bread dough that was already in the loaf pan.  Then I put the loaf pan into the 375 degree oven and retired to my upstairs office to watch Married With Children, cruise the information superhighway, and otherwise prepare to consume the buttery, heavenly delight. 

Some of the loaf would be used for dinner--my Bride works as a teacher, and I stay home where it's safe whenever I can--but I would eat part of it while puttering.  No sooner had Al Bundy begun complaining about his Red Head, I smelled, um, not really an aroma, but more of an odor, if you get my drift.  I went downstairs only to find the oven smoking.  And we all know that smoking's bad. Opening the oven door, I waited for the smoke to clear and found that the butter had been forced out of the loaf pan by the expanding dough, fell upon the bright red-hot heating coil, and had caught fire.  Crap.  Well, at least it happened early.  The possibilities still existed that I could save the bread and fumigate the house before anyone found out.  The house is huge.  It was a frosty 40 degrees outside.  I opened the house and turned on every fan.  I froze.

And that's exactly how it happened that Mrs.Young never found out I set the oven on fire.  Ever.

Not only that—the bread was pretty good.