"Ma'am, you'll need another pizza."

That was what the fireman said as he finally coerced my oven door open.

It started so normally, Shannon and I were sitting at the kitchen table, scrapping away. (Told you it was for real Tim!) Eventually we got hungry so I whipped together a homemade pizza and popped it in the oven. All seemed perfectly normal. We went into my scraproom for just a couple minutes to make a couple die cuts and when we came back to the kitchen my nose told me there was something wrong. I went to the oven and tried to open it, LOCKED! Locked? Locked??? LOCKED??? I couldn't believe it. Why had it locked itself? I tried to override the system, no luck. Smoke began to seep out. Yikes, this was getting serious. My dad has always taught me how to flip breakers and to keep my breaker box well labeled. Thank you Dad!!! So, I flipped the oven breaker (clearly labeled OVEN) to OFF. Back inside I went to try and get the burning pizza out of the oven. Still locked, more smoke now. Well, I thought it would be alright since I had shut the thing down so Shannon and I went out onto the porch. We even ordered a pizza. A few minutes later, I went back inside the kitchen. Waaaaay more smoke and now the exterior of the oven was beginning to turn the most putrid shade of brown. That was it, that was the point where I decided to call 911. The firemen finally got the oven door open, the pizza out and then determined that the oven had malfunctioned somehow and the top burner was stuck on HIGH. I asked them what would have happened if I hadn't been home and they said, "Don't go there."

 

 Before

After

My tip of the day: NEVER leave your oven unattended.