A Fire in the Kitchen

Last night we had some company over and then another unexpected guest so I thought to make food go further I would make some banana bread for dessert. I forgot that I was already using my one casserole size dish which I usually put the banana bread in, so I decided to use the muffin pan and a bread pan for my doubled size portion of banana bread mixture. I knew it was going to be tight but banana bread doesn't rise that much so I thought filling the muffin pan almost to the top as well as the bread pan wouldn't be a a big deal, but it was.

About 10 minutes into the banana bread baking I noticed a little smoke from the oven. We have a spill pan that came with the oven and it was smoking, I thought (because things here are cheaply made) it couldn't handle the heat and the actual pan was burning so we just took it out.

All the kids (6 of them) were eating dinner at the table only a foot away from the oven. I started working on something else when Paul our 6 year old started saying fire fire fire. As I turned around I was about to say only say fire when there is a fire, when I realized there WAS a fire! I called for Luke while Sheryl and I grabbed the kids and pushed them all out side and left the men to deal with it. They turned off the gas and got the fire out easily, although there was quite a bit of smoke left in the kitchen.

I am just amazed at the grace of God. Nothing was harmed, not even the partially cooked bread. Apparently the butter in the bread melted and when it boiled in the bread it boiled over and dripped right on the open gas flame after we removed the spill pan. Had the kids not been watching and alerted us to what was going on it could have been very bad and very dangerous.

We decided to take our dinner outside to eat. The kitchen aired out quickly with 7 windows and a screen door. I wiped the oven clean and recooked the bread this time with no accidents. Luke said it was the best banana bread ever, hopefully it was the recipe and not the whole adventure. I would hate to have to repeat that one.

I'm so thankful that God was looking out for us and prevented a huge disaster, now we just have something funny to laugh about while eat the delicious bread that doesn't even taste like smoke!