Something Squirrelly this Way Comes

I have a gas stove. It's my first experience with one (not counting the four or five days I spent at friend's house in Italy some years ago). I think I have a pretty good feel for it. I'm sure there are little tricks and tips that I have yet to learn or be informed of, but I get by. I haven't set the house on fire (technically this is true) or made myself sick by thinking I had the gas off, but really didn't, thereby filling the place with gas.

Yesterday, or maybe Saturday.. Sometime this weekend, I was making popcorn. Not the bag in the microwave variety but the oil in a big pot, cup of kernels over a burner on your stove. I've made it numerous times this way without incident. I'm standing there, gettiing ready to shake the pot (to prevent popped corn from burning) and I think I need to be careful, I could catch the towel on fire. Apparently I wasn't careful enough, because I did catch the towel on fire.

See, when shaking the pot on the burner, sparks form. Spark hit towel. Towel started burning. Kudos to me for not shrieking and for putting the fire out by smacking towel on linoleum. In retrospect, this probably wasn't the best idea as I could've caught the rug on fire. But it worked out well, flames died as did the sparks that leapt from the towel when it made contact with the floor. I turned off the burner and finished making my popcorn. Not a burnt piece in the batch. Also the towel barely looks burned, which is amazing considering the amount of flameage coming from it.

I was going to entitle this entry Cooking: Rachel's Way but figured she'd beat me up. No, I'm not talking about Rachael Ray from the Food Channel. I'm talking about my friend Rachel, from TN. She's a squirrelly kind of lass in cooking and countless other things. I'd tell yall that she has also set a towel on fire whilst cooking (think it was an electric stove, hello talent!) but again, she might beat me up. So I opted for the title likely to give me less bruising.