Burnin' down the house!

Monday after the flooring contractors left, I decided to cook a nice dinner (chicken, pasta and mushrooms in sun-dried tomato Alfredo sauce) so I pulled out ingredients and necessary pans. It was too early to get an ETA from Alan so I was going about my preparations in a desultory manner. I'd dice a shallot, rake it into the saucepan*, then go check my e-mail. I'd mince a couple cloves of garlic, then go watch a few minutes of television. Chop some flat-leaf parsley, then go back to the couch, read a few pages in my book, return and chop a few mushrooms. Repeat.

*I digress from my fiery narrative to mention that the saucepan in question is a large Calphalon covered sautee pan which was a bridal shower gift from Nancy's mother. I thanked her for it at the time and followed up with a thank-you note, 'cause that's what one does, but if I had known how much I would use and love to cook with that pan, to the point that it gets washed and re-used several times within a 48-hour period, I'd have been far more effusive. I use that pan for EVERYTHING.

So anyway, I was chopping everything in a kind of disjointed way and tossing stuff either into the pan or the Big Bowl Of Items To Be Added Later or the Magic Bowl Of Fresh Herbs To Be Added Later Still, instead of starting the shallots, onion and garlic in olive oil while I chopped the other things in phases like I normally do. It was because of this, and a particularly interesting bit on ESPN about that evening's upcoming Red Wings/Sharks game, that I sort of lost track of what I was doing and when I finally went into the kitchen to really start cooking, I just turned on the burner. I completely spaced and forgot that I'd only set out the pan to throw ingredients inside; I hadn't removed the decorative burner cover.

I returned to the den and ESPN and after a while, I thought, "Gee...I can't even smell the shallots and garlic. Is it THAT bad of an allergy day?" and I looked over into the kitchen to see if I'd turned the burner on. I saw a tiny spire of white smoke so I thought it was okay. A few minutes after that, it occurred to me that it was really weird that I couldn't smell anything cooking and I headed to the kitchen, wondering in dread if I'd turned on the wrong burner and fried a burner cover. No, I'd turned on the correct burner, just hadn't bothered to remove the cover from it!

The burner cover was smoking away, and made a big metallic BWANG! sound when I took it to the sink and hit it with cold water. Here is a photo.

But you know the worst part? This isn't the first time I've done this. The first time was even less my fault, but Alan just arrived home and we need to run some errands, so - the FIRST burnin' down the house adventure will have to wait.