Wackyfish

Last summer when my parents came to visit me they gave me a present of a glass Pyrex knock off baking dish for my kitchen. It wasn’t cheep (for here) as far as household goods go but it has been very useful and much much appreciated. I have made countless cakes for the Aunties and baked all kinds of wonderful food for my guests in it.

Several months ago I sent my grandmother an e-mail requesting my Grumpa’s Banana Bread recipe, because it is simply the best banana bread/cake I have ever had. And banana’s are plentiful here. So I though I might give it a try. My grandmother gladly passed along the recipe and a few weeks ago I finally got around to trying it out. It turned out great and was a hit for everyone I made it for.

In fact it was such a hit that my Auntie Lia offered to bring me Fai (banana’s) from her plantation to make her a cake. Which I gladly agreed to do.
Last Thursday morning she showed up to Coffee with a HUGE shopping bag full of Fai. I was delighted. That evening (after a trip to the gym, and making dinner plans with the Mikaele and the girls across the street) I mixed up a huge double batch of banana bread batter. The recipe calls for 2 cups of banana’s and I doubled it so it had 4 cups in it, which means a lot of gooey batter. It also calls for some melted butter so during the mixing I melted the butter in a sauce pan on the stove. While it was melting I turned on the oven to pre-heat. Shortly thereafter the butter was melted, and like an idiot I turned off the power switch to the whole oven unit, instead of just the burner. (Most electronics here can be turned off at the plug in switch, which is nice for saving power.) Which of course meant I turned off the pre-heating oven.

I then proceeded to finish mixing up the batter and putting it in the large glass baking dish. I then proceeded to take it over to the stove and place it on the front burner (the one I had just used to melt the butter) and realized that the oven was off and not at all pre-heated. So I flipped the switch set the oven to heat and then left the room to go do something else while it heated. Thinking all the while to myself “Dorie, you can be such a spaz sometimes” for turning off the oven.

Several minutes later… while sorting laundry in my room Mia and I heard a loud popping noise followed by a shattering noise. It startled us so we went to investigate. What we found was a gloopy gooey mess on the stove. A mixture of banana glop, shattered glass, and baked onto the electric burner cake.
It seems I never actually turned off the burner that I had used to melt the butter.
It was a HUGE disaster that took me the better part of an hour to clean up.

By the time I was done, I was even more exhausted and rather upset and frustrated with myself. (And now missing my large glass baking dish.) Fortunate for me Mikaele came over and took me across the street for dinner, with friends who saw I was exhausted and cranky and made me laugh and enjoy myself. He also then later came back to the house with me and re-made a banana cake using my recipe and a smaller metal baking dish, so I had something for the Aunties the next morning. He is a very good boy that one.

I haven’t actually made anything more complicated than rice since then…