Is something burning?

Last week was fire prevention week.

To celebrate I was up late one night and hungry and I decided upon some corn chips that were in my pantry. The only problem is that they were really, really stale, and have been for months.

I stuck a plate of them in the toaster oven in the hopes that it would restore some of their crunchiness. But as I often do, I forgot that something was in the toaster so when I arrived back in the kitchen, flames were already licking out the edge of the door and plumes of black smoke were wafting across the room.

I opened all the windows and turned on some fans but it wasn't enough to stop the smoke alarm and unfortunately for me the alarm is hard wired, and not the battery kind you can shut off. And also unfortunately for me, it's a really touchy and sensitive smoke detector too so it wouldn't turn off for the longest time.

You'd think I would have noticed earlier because I can see my toaster clearly from my desk but no, apparently not. Remember this is me we're talking about here.

The end product was that the inside and some of the outside of my toaster is covered in thick, black soot.

I should clean it but I kind of like it the way it is.