I haven’t thought about this in a long time and some of the details are hazy in my memory, but there is one epic cooking fail that jumps to mind, partly because it was a sort of public event.
I can’t remember if we were still living in the Duplex on Ashland Ave, or if we had already bought the house. Was it before or after Fall of 2010? I don’t know. I think it was in the old place. We invited our friends Larry and Nawal over for a cookout. The plan was for me to try to cook chicken breasts on the grill for the first time ever. Jen and I found a recipe online for a marinade that sounded really good so we went for it.
We whipped up the marinade and let the chicken breasts soak it in for however long the website said. Then, with our friends already on their way over to us, I popped them onto the grill in the back yard and followed the grilling instructions to the letter. I may have the timing off, and I may be over dramatizing the events, but I seem to remember needing to open up the top of the grill to flip the chicken for the first time coinciding with our guests pulling into the driveway. I could be wrong about that.
There was a healthy amount of smoke billowing out from under the closed grill’s cover, but nothing that seemed unusual. When I opened the top though… the entire interior of the grill was engulfed in a conflagration the likes of which I had never seen before. There was so much fire and so much crushing heat that I expected the very universe itself to start melting. The four gloriously marinated chicken breasts were burned to black cinders, though I do recall they still smelled really good. Our friends came into the back yard and saw me staring blankly at the inferno, unable to process what was happening.
I believe we ended up ordering pizza that night.
Inside the Red Head's Head 