Exploding Carrot Surprise!

No, this is not a new recipe for you. To be honest if a recipe has the word "surprise" in it, you should do two things:

1) laugh sadly, with one hand pointing to the offensive recipe & the other covering your brow, as you shake your head sadly in, shame.

2) Make a special "note-to-self" to NEVER make it.

I vote that the word "surprise" be stricken forever from recipes. If there is one thing you do NOT need in your meal it's a "surprise"! Believe me!

I have digressed quickly.

So one evening I'm patting myself on the back feeling like a real pro whipping up this yummy whiskey glazed carrots recipe. I made it once following the recipe & this time I decided to just wing it. Of course everything was going great guns until I got to the whiskey part. The truth is I have a tendency to use " too much of a good thing" when it comes to alcohol in the cooking, if you know what I mean. And in my vigor to quickly whip up the final touches on this meal I liberally doused my butter/brown sugar mix with whiskey and gave the frying pan a massive shake. (anyone who has the tendancy to act like their frying pan is a Chinese wok will know what I mean)

I know what you're thinking, "I can tell you what's going to happen next". I'm betting somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew it was going to happen too. But I was expecting a sort of cute little blue flame. You know the kind you get when you light the Absinthe soaked sugar cube on fire. "Awww, look it's a fire." But I ended up with something a bit bigger.

A burst of flame shot up all the way up into the exhaust & ignited the already greased soak exhaust cover. Thankfully it only consumed the cover & put itself out in a few seconds. I swear.......someone should have taken a picture of me at that very moment, it would have been classic.

You know how my hair looks when I wake up in the morning? Or when I'm standing there at a soccer game trying to look cool but my hair has an agenda of it's own (to make me looks like I was electrocuted) or when I'm trying to talk to you about something really dear to my heart & your trying to not notice the aura/fuzz of life bursting forth from my brow. Well, not my brow, but near my brow? Come one you know what I'm talking about? I'm sure there's a name for it and I'm sure it's not complementary. Well, anyway, for once my hair matched the scenario perfectly. For 2 seconds I was the cover girl for Kitchen Hazard Magazine, AGAIN!. My exhaust ended up looking like this.

It was actually quite interesting. BUT........instead of snickering about it like a pubescent pyro, I shall do the mature thing & tell you to BEWARE! Yes, beware of the use of whiskey or other alcohol in your cooking! AMEN?

As for the carrots themselves, they were unharmed and were quickly devoured by my 6 hungry munchers. And that's pretty much the end of the story.


PS. On a totally different note. I'd like to give a shout out for variations/suggestions & "pssssh....I could do better than that" comments on my recipes. There are two readers who often give me suggestions or other recipes to try. One is Aussie, the other is in Aussie. (could this be a pattern?) I LOVE THIS BEHAVIOR!! If you do it different, lemmie know please. I am a vacuum for cooking knowledge from which there is no escape. This is not a blog to celebrate culinary sucess (quite obviously) but to share what I've tried & how it went). So hope to see you round!


Thank you!!