Yep. Burning flesh, fire, obscenity…. it’s Thanksgiving time!

Before I decided to finish my Sochin goal tonight, I had committed to making some pumpkin pies for my D&D group for tomorrow night. Of course, as fate would have it, I have a 7 am meeting tomorrow morning.

In order to make up a little time, I made my pie crusts last night which left tonight for assembling and baking the pies themselves. One of the steps in making my pies call for parchment paper to be placed inside the pie crusts as they are baking, weighted down with pie weights. Having no pie weights, I strategically used some Longaberger ice cream dishes turned upside down to keep my pie crust from bubbling up too much.

The trouble with this method was as follows: in order to fit both of the two ice cream dishes into the pie crust, I had to turn one upside down. This presented a problem when I attempted to remove the now 375 degree upside-down rounded pottery from the pie crust with my oven mitt. A smarter man would have removed the pie entirely from the oven, but since they had to bake for five more minutes that would’ve just been wasted effort. I lifted the parchment paper up by the sides, at what point I heard a small “FOOMP” and yep… I had caught the parchment on fire.

So here I am, trying not to drop my wife’s molten expensive pottery while trying to get to the sink to extinguish the flaming paper. I got it out without too much difficulty, but it was a little scary for a second.

Now I had to do the other pie. This time, however, my non-oven mitted left hand was more careful in lifting the parchment from the edges, as not to ignite it. In my concentration, I neglected to notice that my right first knuckle had contacted the heating element of my oven. Thanks to karate deadening my nerves it took a bit before it hurt, long enough to sear my flesh in a quite nauseating manner.

As I write this my kitchen is not on fire, my pies are now baking happily in the oven, and in 20 minutes they will be finished. I hope these are damned good pies.