By Trent Rosser
A long time ago, a redneck heard that most accidents happen in the home. So he picked up his family and moved. We had an incident not too long ago that made me remember this old joke. I talked with quite a few people and most agree that most of accidents happen within the kitchen. I really didn't know how dangerous the kitchen is until recently. My wife will find a recipe on Facebook every now and then. Most of the time they turn out great. One of the ones that i really love is her chicken pot pie. We ended up buying a special dish just for the pot pie. Even the kids will come over and eat with us when she has the pot pie. A few weeks ago, she made the pot pie. spent all day at work, come home, and make the chicken, mix the broth, put it all in the dish and put the crust on. She put it in the oven and I could almost instantly smell heaven. It is one of my favorite dishes. The kids were over and the grand kid was playing in the kitchen. My wife called me to pull it out of the oven for her. She was trying to shoo the grand kid out of the way so she could finish everything and I just pulled the pot pie out and put it on the stove top. I walked back into the living room and she asked for more help. As I walked back into the kitchen, she informed me that the stove top was hot but she thinks she did not burn the bottom of the pot pie. I bent down to see if I could see through the glass pan and without any kind of warning, it exploded. The glass did not just crack and fall apart, no it exploded like a bomb. There were pot pie and shards of glass all over the kitchen and into the living room. My wife and I were both in shock. Of course the grand kid wanted to come and see what happened so I picked him up and took him to the living room before he could get burned or cut. When I looked at my wife, she was just about in tears. Not because she was hurt, but because all that time working on supper and within a blink of an eye, it was gone. I spent the next hour picking up glass and pot pie. The pizza we had that night was good, but it still left a bad taste in our mouths. Everyone was expecting a delicious chicken pot pie and ended up with a meatlovers!
Many different kinds of accidents can happen in the kitchen. From cutting fingers and hands to small fires that end up burning down the house. Grease is a major culprit. I have heard stories of where grease has dropped on the floor and people slip and fall because of it. Grease fires can get out of control within just a few seconds. This is one thing that I know for a fact. Some of you might remember me almost burning my grandparents house down when I cooked chicken nuggets in a cast iron skillet and forgot to turn the burner off, nor did i move the skillet from the burner. When my friend and I stood up to put our plates up, the entire 4 bedroom house was filled with smoke. When I picked the skillet up to throw it outside, it burst into flames. Luckily no one was hurt, and I didn't catch the house on fire. We opened all the windows in the entire house and tuned on all fans to try to get the smoke out. They were out of town so luckily I had a couple of hours to get it done. This happened in the middle of summer so naturally the house became infested with flies. After all the smoke cleared I kept the fans, shut the windows and started killing flies. When my grandparents did arrive, the first thing my grandmother said when she walked in the door was, “What did you burn?” and my grandfather said “What the hell is with all these damn flies!” Yep, I was busted. Another statistic in kitchen accidents.
One of the accidents that used to happen all the time in the kitchen involved pressure cookers. A pressure cooker is a large pot that has its contents sealed air tight. The pressure builds up and it is great for certain foods. A good example is beans. I remember my family cooking beans with a pressure cooker many times. Now here is where the accidents come into play. The pressure cooker has a release valve on top to release pressure if it gets too high. Every now and then, they become stuck and do not work properly. When this happens, the pressure cooker becomes a homemade bomb. Many people have heard the explosion and walked into the kitchen to see beans and bean juice splattered across the kitchen. The lid of the pressure cooker is embedded into the ceiling. It was a dangerous times back in the days of pressure cookers.
Unfortunately the kitchen is not the only dangerous place in the house. Every room could be dangerous under the right conditions. Another example is what happened to me last Saturday morning. I woke up to take my wife to work and was just inside the closet getting a shirt, suddenly out of nowhere a sneeze snuck up on me. Now sometimes when people have a large, hard sneeze, their entire body lurches forward. My head jerked violently at about 100 miles per hour and I head butted the closet door. I nearly knocked myself out cold! So be careful of your surroundings and always be careful. An accident could happen at any time to anyone, so don't put a pot pie on a hot stove top, make sure the pressure cooker is working properly and for god’s sake, don't sneeze next to anything that you don't want to smack with your head.
Yesterday, I heard that most car accidents happen within 20 miles of the home, guess it’s time to move!
