Cooking is like love; it should be entered into with abandon or not at all. ~ Harriet Van Horne

I think I first discovered my love for cooking when I was about 7 years old. I would take Play-Doh and shape it into tiny little make-believe hamburgers and french fries and cookies and coerce my father into actually taking a bite. Seriously. I did that. I loved my Easy-Bake Oven, too, but was constantly burning myself on that light-bulb cooking device.

Well, now I cook in a grown-up oven using real food and real fire. Sadly, I still burn myself on the oven and stove. I do it so often that I don't even feel it anymore so I guess you could say I am kind of like a super-hero in the kitchen.

A few weeks ago, I actually lit myself on fire - I kid you not.

You see, when the front and back doors are open at the same time in our house it provides for this lovely cross-breeze that moves from the back deck doors through the kitchen and into the living room. Because of this,we almost ALWAYS have the front and back doors open.

This one fine evening I happened to be cooking some delicious Filet Mignon steaks in a grill pan on a high-heat gas burner when that lovely breeze I mentioned before whooshed in through the back door with such finesse it grabbed hold of that flame under my steaks and attached it to the sleeve of my sweatshirt!

Now I am not a screamer, so I made a couple of ooh and ahh sounds which I guess were enough to alert Brian that something was wrong in the kitchen. He asked what was going on and I answered somewhat nonchalantly, "I lit myself on fire".

The next thing I knew, Brian was throwing a small blanket over me to extinguish the flames. He is MY super-hero! But the only thing going through my mind at the time was "Oh, crap, the blanket is going to burst into flames and this is going to suck big time!"

Well, like some love stories this one had a happy ending. Miraculously, the flames went out and I escaped unscathed save for a very charred special, fire-proof shirt I happened to have on underneath my sweatshirt. Good thing I keep that fire extinguisher handy next to the stove for situations like this! Ha ha.

Now, that is what I call cooking with abandon!