Trip Down Memory Lane

I had a flash back while I was at my mom's yesterday doing applesauce (6 bushels of apples, 6 hours, 5 adults, 7 kids, 115 containers...also see Wendi's blog). Anyway, in the midst of all that, Wendi made cookies, and I had to think back to that one very memorable cookie baking experience...

It was May 2006 (or possibly June) and school was out for the summer. It was beautiful summer evening, but I (along with my siblings) was bored. Jenny was also bored, so she came over. Sometime during the evening, we decided to make cookies to take over to my future husband because he had just purchased our future first home (yes, it's kind of weird to think about now).

We pre-heated the oven, and happily mixed everything up. When I placed the cookies in the oven, it was smoking a lot, which wasn't uncommon for oven to do. What I didn't realize was that that day, my mom had baked a cheesecake, and some of the butter had dripped out of the spring form pan.

While baking, a burnt smell, and smoke began to come roll from the oven. I opened the oven door, only to discover that the butter on the bottom of the oven was on fire. The smoke detectors started going off, and everyone was shouting something at once. Jenny asked for a fire extinguisher. I thought we had one, but nobody knew where. So I grabbed a cup of water, and threw it in the oven. The fire was extinguished.

The cookies were a little burnt on the bottom, and tasted a little smoky, but weren't too bad for all they'd been through. We weren't able to turn the smoke detectors off because they were too high up.

My parents arrived home 15 minutes after the drama to find 5 sheepish looking people, a house filled with smoke, all the windows open, and the smoke detectors screeching.