I have a 2nd degree burn on my primary hand! Do you want to hear the story? You shall hear the story!
I was making pizza in the cast iron skillet last night – like deep dish, but less saucy in the familiar sense, and, as it turns out, much more saucy in another sense. (Bad skillet! Naughty skillet!)
As I removed the pan from the 420/215 degree oven, I had my spatula ready to separate the pizza from its sides, but the pizza came entirely TOO free (may have been excessive with the olive oil earlier – my bad). My oven-mitt hand tipped the skillet back and set it down quickly on the oven…but in my haste I failed to put it all the way on the oven. It started to slide off, so naturally my oven-mitt hand shot forward into the pizza! Ooops!
More oops? The whole skillet was still sliding off the oven anyway, since the mitt was sliding around in sauce & cheese instead of holding on firmly to something, like a handle.
But lo! There was indeed a handle on that cast iron skillet fresh from the 420/215 degree oven! And your friendly, neighborhood Crip Dyke even had a hand that could grab that skillet handle in an emergency. My body ticked down the list of emergency criteria, decided this qualified, and without checking in with my brain dropped the spatula & grabbed the skillet handle.
And can you believe it, but I firmly caught the thing! Disaster averted! And as I looked down at my hand grabbing the skillet handle my brain, still not communicating with my body, was shocked to find that my hand was not burnt, my hand was not in pain, and the handle itself was not even hot!
“Phew!” said brain. “That was close!”
“What are you on about?” asked body.
“The skillet!” replied brain. “No hurt! Not even a hot!”
“Are you shitting me?” body demanded.
“Of course not. Shit is your job,” countered brain.
“Did you even stop to feel this?”
“Feel what? Oh. OH! Oh, my, that is actually hot! My goodness, that’s even OWWWWWWWW!” concluded brain after a thorough examination of the evidence.
“Fucking right, that’s OW,” body retorted, impatiently. “Do I have to keep holding this thing?”
“No, no. Drop!” said brain, suddenly sounding less intelligent.
Body, not at all reluctant, obeyed.
And that is how I awoke this morning to an oven mitt coated with hardened vegan cheese and a hand with mostly first degree burns and a few small second degree burns, all wrapped lightly in sterile gauze.
Fun Times!
Owie.
Oh yikes. 🙁 May it heal quickly.
Ow. Still, don’t leave out the most important part — was the pizza at least yummy?
Me while reading: Oh! Oh, no! No! Owww, that’s gotta hurt!
Ouch! …Recover quickly!
@Brucegee1962:
As it turns out, when I dropped the skillet on the linoleum, the pizza remained inside. Though the toppings were smooshed around quite a bit, dinner survived the fall and ultimately would have been fine, save for the many subsequently-inflicted bite wounds.
Ouch. Let’s hope for a quick and full recovery.
In the shop, I had to learn to NOT try and catch things when the fall from my hands when working with some machines, especially the belt-sander, since it is inherently unsafe. But it takes an effort to quell the impulse “its falling->catch it, quick!”.
A friend once posted a comment “A falling knife has no handle.” I had to ask her to explain. See, I used to juggle, and I am well aware that falling knives do indeed HAVE handles. So what did she mean?
She meant that she used to work in a kitchen, and this phrase reminds cooks to never try to be jugglers.