That shrimp scampi was so good, I hardly care that I caught the stove on fire.

It should've been straight out of a comedy.

I was making shrimp scampi tonight for dinner. I had made a hot toddy first, to sip on while I cooked; bourbon and lemon and sugar and cloves and hot water stirred with a cinnamon stick, oh my. Anyway, I had two eyes going on the stove; one with the melted butter and sauteed onion and garlic and various spices, and the other with a pot of water on its way to a boil for the angel hair pasta. And I started to smell something not right.

Then I realized there was smoke pouring up from the burner on which I was trying to boil the pot of water, and from the burner next to it that I wasn't even using. This was me:

Uh-oh, what's that?

That much smoke doesn't seem good.

Maybe something little just spilled on the burner before I started cooking. It'll burn itself off, whatever it is. Where's my drink?

Ahhh, this hot toddy is yummy.

Sniff sniff, hmm, wait, is something actually burning? The onions, maybe? Man, this hot toddy is good.

Wow, that's a LOT of smoke. Ummmm ....

Oh, wait, .... are those FLAMES licking up around that pot of boiling water?

OH HOLY FUCK, THOSE ARE FLAMES! What do I DO?

Move everything off the stove, quick! Fire coming up out of the burner! Oh shit! Should I pour water on it? No, no, for some reason it seems like I've heard you're not supposed to do that with a stove fire. Fire extinguisher? No, surely not, right? Dish towel! Dish towel! In movies and tv shows when you see someone who's a terrible cook trying to use a stove and end up setting it on fire, don't they always slap at the flame with a dish towel? Where's my fucking dish towel?

And so a dish towel saved my life.

Ok, yeah, that's overly dramatic; I don't think there was any real danger with the stove-top fire tonight. But it really did freak me out; that has never happened to me before, ever, and fuck did it have me jumping around like crazy when it happened. But truly, snapping the dish towel at the flames coming up out of the burner really did do the trick; that put out the flames quickly. Good to know, huh?

Oh, and by the way, right after I got the flames out? This was me:

WHERE THE FUCK IS MY DRINK??????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


(Btw, I had to start the scampi over ... thank goodness I hadn't gotten to the shrimp part yet, so they were still in the refrigerator, uncooked ... but man, it really did turn out well. I love shrimp scampi.)