Lessons

Some lessons you have to learn the hard way.

Like the way that you shouldn't cook cookies on a non-microwavable plate in the microwave.

So I arrived at home, looking for something sweet, and to my delight I remembered that I had made cookie dough the day before and still had some leftover in the fridge. I needed to get going, so I decided to try my luck with the microwave..

I got out a little plate from the cupboard, and stuck some dough on the plate and stuck the plate in the microwave. I set the timer for 2 minutes, and then took off to the bathroom to take care of some business.

Unfortunately, although I heard popping, I wasn't too alarmed.

Until I smelled smoke. I ran into the kitchen and discovered that even though the timer hadn't gone off, the kitchen was filled with smoke.

Normally this wouldn't have been a bad thing, but in an effort to keep the heating bill down, our apartment has sealed all the windows.

So I opened the front and back doors, and for once in Boston the wind wasn't blowing. I tried to turn the heater fan on, but it always takes so long to kick in...

I learned two lessons from this experience:

1) don't cook cookies in the microwave in non-microwavable plates.

2) our smoke detectors don't work.

To remind myself to avoid cooking the rest of the cookie dough in the microwave, I have taken these pictures:


Note the excessive smoke and combustion reaction that took place in the cookie.


I told my brother about it, and noted that my little sister had tried to cook cookies in the microwave, too.

Unfortunately, she had put them in for 12 minutes, as the recipe directed.

In my defense, in the decade that I have been on the earth longer than my sister, I had developed the intuition to only put them in for 2 minutes.