Guardian Angel

Hi all!
This would be our first blog posting too. It took me a little bit to figure out how to do it, but here it is!

We just thought we'd share a little event that happened a couple of weeks ago. Rob and I were preparing some fresh perch for supper that was caught in Mitchell's Bay. We were both breading the fish while a cast iron frying pan was heating up the oil on the stove to fry the fish with. Without knowing yet that anything was going wrong, Rob turned his head and noticed there was black smoke billowing from the pan. In the time it took us to think "wuh-oh!", the oil burst into flames with a big "whoosh" sound. I opened a drawer, Rob grabbed an oven mitt and I rushed to open the back door. Rob was right behind me and hurled the flaming fry pan into the snow in the back yard. It hissed and sizzled as it sank through the snow. The house was already filled with smoke and an acrid smell by then and it only took about ten seconds. We opened all the windows to let the smell out, but I still smelled it on the clothes for the next couple of days.

I called the post "Guardian Angel" because there's no other way to explain why we didn't have the whole house in flames and why we weren't hurt at all. Why did Rob look at the stove when he did? How did we have the presence of mind to not grab the pan with bare hands? What made me remember to not throw water on a grease fire? Why did Rob throw the pan out over the deck railing to be doused with snow? Why did we still have snow in Chatham at this time of year anyway?

I attached a picture of what the deck looks like now - a little bit of hot oil dropped as it was being tossed. We didn't take a picture of the pan in the snow. After it cooled, Rob brought it in and I cleaned it since it's my favorite one. We're all ok now - and so's the frying pan!