A friend at work brought this in – a New Yorker cartoon by Robert Weber.    Now… contrary to popular belief I’m not quite this bad in the kitchen.  Yes, I have set off smoke alarms and had the fire department show up – on Christmas Day in a snowstorm – and the blender top has flung off covering the ceiling with whatever and the mixer has flung flour everywhere because that first speed just isn’t slow enough…  but these generally are the exception, not the rule.

The stove (and the oven, for that matter) is another story.  Anything and everything splatters.  A simple saute can make a mess.  Rice slightly boiling over… that one stray pea… The stovetop is generally a bit of a mess.  We have a sealed cooktop.  It’s the nature of the beast.  Everything stays just where it fell.  And the knobs should never have been on the side the way they are.  It all seemed like a good idea when we bought it, but if we knew then what we know now… You know the drill, 20/20 hindsight.    Oh well.  My dream cooktop would be six burners and grates over them – and drip pans way under so everything fell down onto them out of sight – traditional commercial stuff.  Alas, that ain’t gonna happen in this kitchen.  Oh well, again.

So…  I come home early today because Victor had a landscaper coming over to talk about the nightmare that is our front yard and I notice that Victor has cleaned the cooktop.

Actually, it was kinda easy to notice he had cleaned the cooktop.  Subtle is his middle name, after all.

I was thinking of a grilled steak with a mango sauce for dinner tonight, but I suddenly have the urge to deep-fry something…..