"D'you think there's a blog post....

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... in this?" I asked him as he put the frying pan onto the BBQ.

"Um, yeah, pretty much", he answered.

We were up at the cottage Thursday evening. It was cold outside. I was preheating the oven so I could pop in the garlic bread.

A few minutes later I went into the kitchen to do the garlic bread popping thing. There was a bright light in the oven.

That light, it was Close Encounters bright.

"What the (insert your favourite swear word here, preferably the one beginning with F for total veracity)", I wondered. OK, I screeched.

Mr. Jazz arrived, intrigued, no doubt, by my hollering and carrying on. It was a bit too much carrying on for garlic bread. Even for me.

Then I opened the oven. The heating element was burning. No, not just burning.

On. Fire. On bright-white-soldering-iron-flame-with-sparks-flying-left-right-and-centre fire.

What's a girl to do? Turn off the oven obviously, right? Well, nope, not quite, 'cause it just kept on burning, the flame slowly - well actually not so slowly - advancing along the element. It had a hellish life of its own. When the oven is off, so should be the fire, dammit!

Rather than just wait and see what would happen, which maybe would not have been the best of ideas all in all (though it was fascinating to watch, actually), we moved the stove and unplugged it. Yeah, I know it would have been quicker to just unscrew the fuses, but by that time, impressed as I was by the flames I wasn't quite thinking straight. I got this thing about electrical fires burning inside the oven. Go figure.

So now we have the perfect cottage stove. Only 3 out of 4 burners work and now the oven is shot.

The next morning we tried to unscrew the element and it crumbled in our hands... That is just weird. Seriously. A heating element crumbling in your hands is beyond bizarre. But I digress.

Still and all, we had to finish cooking dinner. Hard to sautée pasta (yes, you read right, and it's delicious, add lots of cheese) without a working stove - we hadn't cottoned onto the idea of plugging it back in and unscewing the fuse for the oven yet. That only came up the next morning.

Note to all readers: A BBQ doesn't heat a frying pan enough to sautée pasta.

Nope, it doesn't. And to think we had just bought a new gas BBQ this summer. And figured, meh, no need for a side burner, when will we really use it? Cheapness isn't great when you'll be facing a stove fire within a few weeks.

Because you'll definitely need that stupid damn burner then.

The morasl of this story: You need the side burner and sautéed pasta beats the hell out of microwaved pasta.
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