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Ever heard of a coil on your stovetop exploding?

It happened to me. I was cooking regular ol’ comfort food: chocolate pudding in a saucepan on one of the burners. Whilst I was stirring, luckily with a non-metal stirrer, in the quiet solitude of a meditative evening, the pot exploded and sent boiling chocolate pudding to the four corners of my kitchen. The shock of pudding erupted into a geyser of white light to the ceiling, breaking the sound-barrier. The ceiling looked like a monochromatic Jackson Pollack painting. All surfaces, contents of all opened cabinets, etc. Floor too. Chocolate residue.

Luckily, the saucepan had a non-metal handle, too. After I washed it, I discovered a seared, ragged a gaping hole the size of my little fingernail in its bottom. Perplexed as to the origin of this occurrence, I googled. Not the first time this has happened, they say. I called one of my wizard/ inventor electro-knowledgeable friends. The coil is ceramic, encasing two wires; a positive and a negative. When there is a hairline fracture in the ceramic, as will happen over time, the two wires make contact and boom. The sound was like a shotgun. I almost had a heart attack. My heart was racing, I was short of breath: I was petrified.

I felt lucky to be alive. What if my son had come home from college a few days/weeks later and found me on the floor, Dead By Chocolate?

I got a new stove.

Beware.

Footnote: The saddest part of the whole experience was that I couldn’t even eat the pudding — it had become distastefully texturized by little tiny black pieces of charred potmetal. Sigh.

I still love m’ chockit’ puddin’ tho.’

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5 Responses to “Near Death Experience by Chocolate”

1. katcoz says:

   October 12, 2009 at 12:15 am

   I always knew cooking was a dangerous enterprise…if God had wanted us to cook he wouldn’t have given us microwaves and take out. Thanks for the heads up in case I ever do venture into that strange room in my house with all those appliances.

   Reply
2. Kathleen R. Gegan says:

   October 12, 2009 at 2:47 am

   Amen! I like to cook ~ when I don’t have to. Thanks for your comment, katcoz.

   Reply
3. Jenny says:

   October 12, 2009 at 6:41 pm

   You can avoid disaster by cooking your pudding in the microwave. At least, that’s what I do with the packaged kind – not so sure about scratch pudding. And what a great excuse to get a new stove. Best wishes!

   Reply
4. William Hedgepeth says:

   October 13, 2009 at 12:06 pm

   Kudos for Kathleen for finally putting (pudding?) it right down there where the cats can get at it. There have been far too few stories these days in the MSM about exploding stoves, or things exploding on stoves. It takes a fearless news source such as “Like The Dew,” on the razor cutting edge of the Fourth Estate, to reveal these events that the rest of the media sneeringly overlook. Much of the problem, I think, has to do with the fact that more people these days have switched from gas to electric stoves, and when something goes really wrong with one of those it creates not an explosion but a fire in the electrical wiring that simply results in the house burning down–and where’s the fun in that?
   I’ll never forget the time my crazy aunt called my equally crazy mother–both of them plantation-born Mississippi princesses, fundamentally unschooled in the details of domestic science fiction–and said, “Ann Lee, I just came into my condo and there’s a terrible odor that smells just like gas.” And my mother immediately shot back, “Oh Elizabeth, you’re so silly. Just light some incense.”
   We all definitely need more stories about exploding stoves. University surveys have shown, for example, that radical Islamists, given the opportunity and encouragement to write about exploding things, are 64 percent less likely to engage in the actual act.
   I loved Kathleen Gegan’s explosive chocolate tale. It was a real blast.

   Reply
5. Peggy Roney says:

   October 14, 2009 at 10:17 pm

   Forget the chocolate pudding, Kathleen. It’s high time we hightailed it to Mary Mac’s to demand the return of Mrs. Lupo’s famous Boiled Custard, a staple there for its history until…..the new-oo-oo people bought the place and..um…modernized the menu!

   Reply

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