dominican journal

I attempted to cook a lasagne for the frenchies today. It was all going very smoothly and as we were finishing off I started pre-heating the gas oven. Ten minutes later I checked to see if it was hot enough but the flame had gone out. Being a reasonably well educated chap (and having watched many an episode of 999 Lifesavers, back in the day), I turned the gas off and left the oven door open to air it out and let the gas escape before attempting to light it again. What I conveniently forgot was that between the flame and the rest of the oven lies a metal panel which I had forgotten to remove. So, a few minutes later I got the lighter out, lifted the metal panel, lit the lighter and BOOM!! A raging fireball came flying out of the oven as I leapt backwards to avoid burning my eyebrows off (again… some of you may remember that embarrassing story which I won’t go into here).

Luckily no one was seriously injured and my eyebrows are still in tact. I burnt my fingers but not too badly.

So what did I learn from this experience?

1. Always try to use an electric oven, if possible. If you have no choice but to use gas, never put it on maximum as this will cause too much gas to come out and actually put the flame out.

2. If you do get burned, don’t bother putting ice on it, use Vicks (yes, the stuff you put on your chest when you have a cold. It works!)

3. If you can’t cook, don’t cook.

It has to be said that the end result was actually quite tasty but the making of was frankly very dangerous. Next time I’ll stick to electricity, although they don’t seem to know what that is in this country.

Other than that, I’m having a wonderful time but I miss you all very much. Also, the blog officially reached 4000 hits today so thank you very much to all of you who are keeping up with my progress.

Happy reading and buenas noches!