Jake and I were given this really great pizza stone at our wedding, and it’s really come in handy as of late. We’ve been using it all the time. (And no, not JUST for pizza.) In fact, we’ve been using it so much that it’s gotten quite dirty these past couple weeks. (Well, ok, it has been a lot of pizza.)
We also recently got a new oven. Which is great for cooking all that pizza. So much so, that there are a fair share of cheese mounds on the bottom from bubbling over said pizzas. What does that leave us with? A dirty pizza stone and a dirty oven. And what do you do when you have a dirty pizza stone and oven? Well, the logical thing to do would be clean them. Right?
At least, that’s what we thought. So we shut the pizza stone in the oven, locked the door, and set it to self clean. I was excited not only because it meant we’d have a clean oven and stone, but also because it was particularly chilly the evening we decided to do it, and I knew the oven getting a million and one degrees would give a little extra heat to the house, too. Jake was excited because he had heard the oven gets so hot that the stone can set on fire. (Men, I tell ya.) So we pushed the self-clean button, sat down on the couch with our dinner trays (yes, dinner was pizza), and turned on the latest episodes of New Girl. Jake would get up every few minutes to see if stone was on fire, but after checking about 5 times, he gave up.
Well, about an episode and half later, we suddenly realize it’s gotten extremely hazy. Confused, we turn around to find the source of the haze, and it’s COMING FROM THE OVEN.
Not just haze, either… SMOKE is now pouring out of the oven faster than my dogs chasing their favorite ball down a field (which is fast, in case you were wondering). Jake ran over and looked inside to find the pizza stone fully engulfed in flames. After being momentarily thrilled, he realized the house was still filling with smoke. In an attempt to let the smoke out but continue the cleaning, we threw open all the windows and turned on all the fans. (So much for warming up the house.) Next thing we know, the fire alarm begins screaming at us. Using an old trick my mom taught me, I grabbed a towel and started waving it violently back and forth in front of the fire alarm in an attempt to clear the smoke. It stopped, but only for about 10 seconds. As soon as I quit waving the towel, the alarm started blaring again. I continued to wave the towel around for a couple minutes, at which point my arms began screaming at me as well. Then my eyes started to sting from the smoke. Soon after, my futile attempts at the fire alarm/towel trick stopped working altogether. Jake came up the stairs, looked around at the smoke, looked at me wildly waving my arms, and then said loudly over the ring of the fire alarm, “At least we know it works!” And then we did the only thing you can do in a situation like that… we died laughing.
In the end, we finally just turned the oven off. It took a while for the smoke to clear out enough that we could close the windows. And then house smelled like smoke for about a day and a half. And neither the oven or pizza stone were totally cleaned. Definitely not the most conventional way to test your fire alarm. But laughing for a good half hour with your husband about how ridiculous of a situation you got yourselves into? Yep, I’d test it that way again. Every time.
And on that note, here’s a mellow little number to get your week off to a cheerful start!
Happy Monday :)
