Holiday Cookie Baking: A lost lid, oven flames and 5 pounds of baking soda.

I have a rather minuscule home.  I don't mind it.  I really don't.  I do have to store some baking pans in the oven.  In there I have my Pampered Chef stones.  I pulled the baking pans out, pulled the stones out, turned the oven on and went about my business.  I came back in a few minutes later, K working on getting baking things ready and I see flames-- flames in my oven.

Crap.

Hubs is behind me yelling something.  K is starting to panic.

"I've got this.  No big deal."

Hubs kept yelling to put water on it.

"This isn't an electrical fire, but it is small and enclosed in the oven.  You don't want to put water on it.  I have baking soda.  It's all good." Y'all-- it took 5 lbs of baking soda to put it out.  I swear to you.  Hubs did make me put one glass of water on it.  By the way, it did nothing.

So what went aflame in the oven?  It was a 13 x 9" cake pan lid.  A plastic lid.  Stinky.

Once I got the fire out (and I do mean flames) I carted the oven rack outside and doused it with water to be extra certain I wasn't going to light any of the wet leaves on fire.  :S  It was easy to get out since when I was busy trying to put the fire out and calming K at the same time, Hubs was running around opening every window and door he could find.  The back door was propped open, the smoke detector screaming, K crying, Hubs insisting I use water and all the while, I stand there with the Rapunzel plastic drinking cup and a 13 1/2 pound bag of baking soda, flinging cupfuls of baking soda at the flames.

Good times.

We only lost the cake pan lid.  (K was rather distressed.  I told her it was better than burning the house down.  A lid is a lot easier to replace.  That's what Black Friday is for!)  I scraped the pounds of baking soda back out of the oven, Hubs swept it out with the shop vac and I wiped it all down.  We fired it back up as high as she could go with the oven door open so that we could burn the remaining plastic off of the element while the the winds would carry the evil plastic smell out.

I'm happy to announce that the cookies are baking just fine with no plastic smell lingering.  Well, that is until I place the involved rack back into the oven and rock it out in heat as high as I can make her roll.  Hubs saved it.  He pulled all of the plastic off that he could and scoured the rest with Scotch Brite.

I was that mom who used this as a teachable lesson to K.  "What do we do if there is a fire?"  "Don't panic and if it is small enough, the fire extinguisher or Mom's giant bag of baking soda may take you where you need to go.  If not, exit the house, call the fire department and let them take care of business."

For those of you wondering a few things-- I clean with baking soda, which is why I have such a large bag.  I also had the bag on my kitchen table from dough day yesterday.  You can purchase the Arm & Hammer 13.5 pound size at your local Sam's for around $4.00.  It's handy to have around!