Picture of the Day

A picture says a thousand words, or so they say. Unfortunately, they don't have mouths and we can't hear them if they're really talking, so I'll have to translate what I think this picture is saying:

That's not a hamburger inside of the toaster. That's a poptart. A chocolatey, gooey, unhealthy, completely American poptart. It was Amy's birthday poptart, to be exact. She turned 26 yesterday, and one of our friends (an English friend, at that!) gave her something that would remind her of home for a gift.

So after having one of those glorious Sunday afternoons where you stay in your pajamas, watch a movie, and at some point realize maybe you should eat today, Amy chose to break out the poptarts. In the name of conservation (we tend to "hoard" our stashes of American stuff), she put one of the two-pack in the toaster and went in the bedroom for 2 minutes at most. I, having my own glorious Sunday afternoon playing sudoku on the computer in the office/studio, was completely oblivious to kitchen activities.

Suddenly, I hear "Ohmygoshthere'safire!!!!!!" from the other end of the apartment. I filled in 2 more spaces on the sudoku puzzle before it registered and I ran into the kitchen. Sure enough, 6 inch high flames were leaping from the toaster.

Now our toaster was sitting on a wooden shelf--not a solid one, but the kind with slats at the bottom so it's all really open. In hindsight, this might not have been the best place to put the toaster, especially considering that wood is, well, flammable, and that the shelf above housed plastic bottles of olive and sunflower seed oil, which are also flammable. The bottoms were melted from the bottles, and oil dripped everwhere.

The first thing I did, believe it or not, was to remove the Aunt Jemima maple syrup (imported from the U.S.) from the shelf before the bottom melted out of it, too. Forget safety or dealing with the flames. No one messes with Jamima. Then I checked to see if the toaster had been unplugged (it had--good job Amy), and proceeded to throw an entire pot of water in the general direction of the toaster. I didn't know if this was a good idea or not, but in the moment you don't have time to check online and see what to do about a toaster fire. It worked, anyway. The fire disappeared with a hiss and a nasty smell. (As did all hopes, if Amy had any, of salvaging the pop tart).

We then spent the next hour or so mopping the floor, wiping down the shelf, and washing oil off of every exposed surface in the kitchen. I still feel oily. I bet my keys are going to be oily from typing.

We still don't know exactly what caused the fire. Here are the 3 options I'm working with:

1) Toaster Malfunction: Amy and I would like to think that we had nothing to do with causing the fire. Considering that we bought the toaster from a store called Super Hogar (superhome), which sells everything from toasters to baskets to generic barbies to purple porcelain Buddhas and lots of Jackie Chan posters, this could very well be accurate. Also, Victoria said it had been burning her toast lately for no reason.

2) Poptart Malfunction: The poptart is longer than the width of most pieces of bread here (which are ridiculously small) so maybe it freaked the toaster out and caused it to explode. Or, maybe it decided to throw it's own little "poptart tantrum" and catch itself on fire. Not likely, since poptarts don't have emotions, but hey, you really never know, do you?

3) Cultural conflict: This is the first American product that we have tried to put in the toaster, and frankly, they just didn't get along. Instead of talking out their cultural difference (again, things with no mouth have a hard time talking), they decided to fight to the death. And they both died. They were buried together in a nearby garbage can.

Anyway, all jokes aside, I'm really thankful that the wood didn't catch fire, that the oil didn't catch fire, and that the fire didn't spread near the propane tanks that are hooked up to our water heater. Thank God for that!

Now we're all hungry, and we sure as heck don't want to cook tonight.