Overprotective, Much?

Tonight, I had stir-fry for dinner. Some nice chicken, some stir-fry-ish veggies. Some little flavor packet from Kikkoman (spelling?). I turned the fan on over the oven, because my little spastic smoke detector went crazy one night over a baking pie. After only 5 minutes in the oven.

In fact, every single time I use either range or oven, I turn that fan on. And I've only had one incident where there was much towel-waving and window-opening. That was the first night I cooked anything in this apt, the pie mentioned above (which really hadn't yet had a chance to so much as get warm in there).

This time, the fan wasn't enough. So between stirring things around on a hot skillet so they wouldn't burn, I had to stand under the smoke detector and wave a dish towel. Which in turn, meant I wasn't stirring the skillet to prevent burning.

My veggies didn't burn, because after the first alarm, I turned the heat down to medium and sort of alternated between waving and cooking. Not stir frying, which involves high heat to keep veggies crisp but cooked. I mean cooking, where some veggies are limp and others are crisp. It was disappointing.

I'm beginning to think that I'll need to resort to tag-team cooking whenever I want to make something fun. Something along the lines of 'Hey, I'm making [dish here], would you like to come over and wave a towel? There'll be leftovers!'

All in all, though... I'd really rather the dang thing be wound extra tight than lax in its protection. I won't be the girl woken by alarm at midnight to smoke hugging the ceiling. I'll be the girl woken at midnight because a match dared to cross the threshhold and make googily eyes at the candles.

Love and Peace (and waving of towels)