Cooking Lesson

Last night I broiled a ham steak for dinner. The steak was from the half hog Duane bought and it was quite easily the biggest ham steak I have ever seen. Cooking it took a little longer than normal and while it didn't come close to burning, a little bit of smoke was created as I tried to get the edges of fat nice and brown.

As a result, the smoke alarm went off.

Wesley must be paying attention to fire drills at school because he sprinted up the steps from the family room. 

"What's that?" he asked. "Is it a fire? We need to go! We need to get out now!"

I explained that it was the smoke detector, but that there wasn't a fire - just a little bit of smoke from cooking dinner. But we did use it as a teachable moment to talk about where our family should go if there is a fire (we decided the street sign across the street).

A little bit later in the evening, I was making some more bacon candy.

Wait. You don't know about bacon candy? Take some nice thick bacon, dredge it in brown sugar and bake it until caramelized and delicious. Feast your eyes.

Anyhow, Wesley came into the kitchen as I was checking the bacon candy.

"Why did you only set the time for two minutes?" he asked.

Duane explained that the recipe says the bacon can go from yummy to burnt in just a couple of minutes so we needed to check it often. Wesley took that lesson to hear. Whenever he heard the timer go off he'd say, "Mom, you need to go check the bacon!" 

Guess he didn't want to hear the smoke detector again.