Burnt Eddy's

For most of my life I've been known by family and friends as the woman who can ruin anything in the kitchen.

I've had so many cooking mishaps that everyone I know has at least one or two stories about something I've cooked that went horribly wrong.

In fact, the Island King's Uncle Kris was sitting in our kitchen one night and after being served a plate of burnt meatloaf he told us that he wanted to open a restaurant, name it Burnt Eddy's and let me do all of the cooking.

"It will be a hit" he said. "People will come from all over just to see what kind of disaster ends up on their plate."

And from that point on my kitchen has become known as Burnt Eddy's.

My children have all learned the fine art of scraping the burnt parts off with a knife - which in our house is a necessary skill.

But I didn't realize just how complacent my kids have become about burnt food until last night.

I put a tray of garlic bread under the broiler and then immediately forgot about it.

The smell of burning bread reminded me but by the time I got it out of the oven it was too late. The bread was burnt.

And then the smoke detector went off, which it does several nights a week, right about dinner time.

The Island Girl was on the phone and in response to her friend's question about the loud noise the Island Girl said "Oh, that's just the smoke detector."

Then she said "No, I don't need to go - everything is fine here."

Followed by "It's just my Mom cooking dinner. The smoke detector goes off almost every time she cooks."

Which is when I realized that instead of thinking "Fire!" when they hear the smoke detector, my kids immediately start opening all of the doors to ventilate the house and then head for the dinner table because they know supper is ready.

So at dinner I asked them what they would do if they heard the smoke detector in the middle of the night.

And to my dismay all three of them said "We'd come into the kitchen to see what you were fixing for a late night snack."

Damn.

We're going to have to have some serious fire safety talks with these kids but I just don't know what to tell them.

Because if they went running outside every time the smoke detector went off they'd miss dinner.

Obviously, the standard family fire safety plan isn't going to work at our house and I'm going to have to come up with some other plan.

Which doesn't surprise me since we've never been what you'd call a "standard" family anyway.

And if you were lucky enough to be dining at Burnt Eddy's last night this is what you'd have found on your plate.

Along with a knife for scraping.

Bon Appetit!

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