What If...

What if you're making barbeque sauce from scratch, and at the very end you put it in the blender to puree the onions and garlic so its just a nice smooth sauce and then... What if the blender starts making a high-pitched noise and smoke comes out of the bottom? Obviously I turned it off and unplugged it right away, but can I ever use it again? Just wait for it to cool off (for a day or two), or do I have to throw it out? I guess I know what I want for Christmas this year. A blender that can withstand my Freezer Experiments.

Oh wait, you haven't heard? A Freezer Experiment... A little term that David and I use to describe a project in the kitchen that causes a big mess with doubtful results. As in, I'm trying a new recipe, making a big mess, and really not sure its going to be edible. The origins of this term go back to long long ago, maybe even before David and I had kids. Before we could comprehend how something like this was even possible. How could you leave a young child alone long enough for this to happen? We walked into Scott's house where Heidi was babysitting Nick and Christopher. Nick was... three? I don't know, little, but big enough to do some serious damage. He was mixing flour and whatever else he could find, and he called this concotion his Freezer Experiment. Heidi was in another room, unaware. The biggest problem with Nick's experiment was its location. The kitchen sink. What David and I didn't realize at the time was that Nick was actually washing the whole mess down the drain. And as we all know, large amounts of flour with a little (or a lot) of water cause a big, gooey, sticky BLOB. Inside the pipes. So when David and I brought this up recently at a family gathering, and we were laughing at the memory of cute little Nicholas making a big mess in the kitchen, Scott did not have such a fond memory. He, of course, was the one who had to deal with the aftermath. (For the record, I have since been educated on how that sort of thing could happen. I no longer think to myself, "I would never let my kid do THAT!" Because I probably already DID let my kid do that.)

So, back to the Freezer Experiment of the day. Barbeque sauce. A burned out blender. And the question... should I try using that same blender again? Or is it too much of a fire hazard now?