The Voice, that lives in my head, was flying around the kitchen like a Cesna 152 Aerobat, complete with two sky writing canisters strapped to the wings. I ignored it, as usual. Good grief, it was carrots, what could possibly go wrong. I opened the back door and watched as the Voice made a sharp bank to the right and flew out the door.
This was going to be easy. Not only was it going to be easy, it was going to be different. That's what I was after, different. My creativity for meal planning was in a rut. It seemed we were eating the same boring dishes over and over again. Although carrots, especially cooked carrots, do not always get a standing O from the audience, I was willing to try it anyway. Besides, this was not the usual boiled, boring cooked carrot, this recipe was using carrots as a healthy alternative to the potato......carrot fries.....AND...they were baked, not fried.....doubly healthy and doubly easy.
The oven temperature needed to be set at 425 degrees, so while it was preheating, I gathered the ingredients. All I had to do was peel the carrots and cut them into fry-like strips, put them in a bag with some olive oil and seasoning, shake them up, spread them on a baking pan and pop them in the oven for 30 minutes. It does not get any easier than that. Why, I even got clever and lined the pan with parchment paper because I figured while I was on easy street, I might as well make clean up easy too.
When the oven was ready, I walked over to open the door and about that time the Cesna buzzed the house. The skywriting canisters were leaving a trail of smoke and as I glanced towards the window, I could have sworn I saw the letter "r" floating past. With prepared pan of carrots in hand, I opened the oven door and the Cesna began do do a nose dive.
Did I mention the skillet? The skillet that I have pampered and seasoned for many months? No? Well, I shall mention it now. Having a seasoned skillet means it rarely needs to be washed. Simply wiping the skillet out with a paper towel is usually all that is needed to clean it. Having a seasoned skillet usually means having a unique place to keep it when it is not in use. I keep mine in the oven. Luckily the skillet is entirely made of metal, including the handle.......not so much the spatula that I also leave in the skillet. There it was, the handle to my favorite spatula, lying on the bottom of the oven, no longer attached to its working part. The smell of baked plastic began to fill the kitchen and the Cesna pulled out of the nose dive just in time to buzz the house again.
At this time, I'm not a happy cooker. I'm still standing with the prepared pan of carrots in one hand and the oven door in the other. The handle looks to be all in one piece and sort of, still has its original shape. I open the oven door a little further and thought I saw the handle move. It did move. One end of the handle had landed against the backside of the door and as I opened the door the handle began to stretch, the molten plastic following the direction of the door.
Realizing that the evening meal was going to be postponed, I set the pan of carrots on the counter. I looked for some utensil that could sacrifice its usefulness by becoming a scraper of melted plastic. I have a certain attatchment to all my utensils, the choice was not going to be an easy one. I finally picked a small, short handled metal spatula that does not get used often. As luck would have it, the disfigured handle was not adhered to the bottom of the oven and came out in one piece.
I left the oven door open for a while to be sure the plastic fumes had dissipated to some other part of the house. I went to the back door and opened it just in time for the Cesna to glide in and make a perfect landing in the front room. As I shut the door, I noticed the words, "danger, danger, danger" hanging in the sky.
The carrots turned out to be very tasty with no black plastic after taste and the spatula......well, that's another story.
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