Susan walks into the kitchen, reaches for the handle on the oven door, and...
just before she touches it -- BOOM!
She jumps back. "What in the h - e - double toothpicks was that?!
The oven door had just been blown partly open and then snapped back shut right before her eyes.
She again cautiously approaches the oven and gingerly pulls back the door to peek inside.
OMG! It's an IEV.
In Iraq, American forces faced the threat of IED's (Improvised Explosive Devices) hidden beside common roads. And here on the home front, we too were taken by surprise in our very own kitchen by an IEV - an Improvised Exploding Vegetable.
The damage was done by a 2.8 pound spaghetti squash. Sue professes to enjoy eating these stringy, tasteless vegetables as a substitute for gluten pasta. I had warned her about the dangers of the spaghetti squash, but my culinary warnings went unheeded.
Look! I clamored, it is proof of vegan terrorism, an assault on my plate and palate. Those innocuous vegetables can not be trusted.
She just laughed at the carnage. Oh! the humanity! All from roasting a squash. This is how kitchen unrest on the domestic front begins, I solemnly warned. My wife just chuckled, "I should be much more upset at this mess, but this is just too funny".
"Look, that sucker got blown clean in half. Wow! Amazing."
She went about cleaning and scraping and scrubbing all of the smithereens of tiny, stringy strands of squished squash from the baking racks and the oven's interior with a gleam of wonderment in her eye. She salvaged much of the well-roasted interior goo, (that was now obviously on the exterior) and cleaned up the rest the best she could.
I told her the battle of the clean oven was lost at this point. I think we will have to use the nuclear option. Yes, no one has ever felt called to press the red button before, but this time we have no choice but to give the "Self Clean" command and clear out.
She agreed, and I dialed in the code and the 4 hour count-down to total obliterating clean destruction began and we went to bed.
The self-cleaning work was expected to end at 02:35 hours. I awoke at 02:55 and wondered what was going on in my kitchen at this point, so I pushed open the closed kitchen doors and inside the kitchen it must have been 100 degrees and the acrid smell of victory permeated the whole house.
With the morning light and the cooled kitchen environment visual inspection of the interior was possible to view where the IEV had been planted. There was nothing but a fine power residue of gray ash inside. Later in the evening, Sue returned home from work and quickly wiped down the ash-covered interior and proudly showed me our spotless oven's insides.
It was a thing of beauty.
I got a clean oven, and Sue got a kick out of making a lunch that was the bomb.
just before she touches it -- BOOM!
She jumps back. "What in the h - e - double toothpicks was that?!
The oven door had just been blown partly open and then snapped back shut right before her eyes.
She again cautiously approaches the oven and gingerly pulls back the door to peek inside.
OMG! It's an IEV.
In Iraq, American forces faced the threat of IED's (Improvised Explosive Devices) hidden beside common roads. And here on the home front, we too were taken by surprise in our very own kitchen by an IEV - an Improvised Exploding Vegetable.
The damage was done by a 2.8 pound spaghetti squash. Sue professes to enjoy eating these stringy, tasteless vegetables as a substitute for gluten pasta. I had warned her about the dangers of the spaghetti squash, but my culinary warnings went unheeded.
Look! I clamored, it is proof of vegan terrorism, an assault on my plate and palate. Those innocuous vegetables can not be trusted.
She just laughed at the carnage. Oh! the humanity! All from roasting a squash. This is how kitchen unrest on the domestic front begins, I solemnly warned. My wife just chuckled, "I should be much more upset at this mess, but this is just too funny".
"Look, that sucker got blown clean in half. Wow! Amazing."
She went about cleaning and scraping and scrubbing all of the smithereens of tiny, stringy strands of squished squash from the baking racks and the oven's interior with a gleam of wonderment in her eye. She salvaged much of the well-roasted interior goo, (that was now obviously on the exterior) and cleaned up the rest the best she could.I told her the battle of the clean oven was lost at this point. I think we will have to use the nuclear option. Yes, no one has ever felt called to press the red button before, but this time we have no choice but to give the "Self Clean" command and clear out.
She agreed, and I dialed in the code and the 4 hour count-down to total obliterating clean destruction began and we went to bed.
The self-cleaning work was expected to end at 02:35 hours. I awoke at 02:55 and wondered what was going on in my kitchen at this point, so I pushed open the closed kitchen doors and inside the kitchen it must have been 100 degrees and the acrid smell of victory permeated the whole house.
With the morning light and the cooled kitchen environment visual inspection of the interior was possible to view where the IEV had been planted. There was nothing but a fine power residue of gray ash inside. Later in the evening, Sue returned home from work and quickly wiped down the ash-covered interior and proudly showed me our spotless oven's insides.
It was a thing of beauty.
I got a clean oven, and Sue got a kick out of making a lunch that was the bomb.
