Expensive lesson learned

I never blogged on this when it happened, mostly because I didn't have time. Now, I am bummed that what seemed like an accident is now costing more than I bargained for.

A month back, I was preheating the oven to make some dinner. I hit preheat and walked away waiting for the buzzer to tell me it was time to cook. When I heard the buzzer, I walked into the kitchen to find my oven on FIRE!

I didn't know what I should do. It wasn't spreading out of the oven, but they were full blown flames. I didn't think the fire department needed a call, so I called my neighbor in a frantic about the oven being ablaze. As I was talking to her, I turned the oven off and left the door closed, remembering from some fire safety class I took at one point that if I cut off the oxygen a fire can't continue. As my neighbor and I talked about options it smothered itself out. WHEW! When I opened the oven, a billowing of black smoke rose out it and stunk of something horrible. I continued to play forensic scientist wondering what in the world could have caused this, I realized one of the little gems in our home had placed something plastic in the oven and that object was now covering the bottom of my oven and dripping form the racks.

Over the next couple of days I worked to get all the melted hardened plastic off the bottom and sides of the oven. In the process I noticed a small hole on the bottom of the oven. It looked as if it was suppose to be there so I didn't think much of it.

We attempted to preheat the oven again to cook a pizza last weekend, out of that little hole came the black smoke from the fire. The plastic must have seeped into the hole and now will burn out any time we turn on the oven, therefore, we have NOT used our oven in a month. Cooking is getting little boring using only the stove top and microwave.

We thought we could fix problem by sealing the hole, but after some research today with a couple of different "oven experts", it looks like a tiny hole not bigger than an 1/8" is going to cause us to need a new oven! AAAHHH! Not what I was hoping for!

The lesson in all of this... Check the inside of the oven before you preheat it!