Taking Cooking To Explosive Levels

Over the past few months, it’s become clear that I’ve gone from being a woman known for her inability to cook to someone who can now create some fantastic meals – with the help of meal kits. I was starting to feel pretty confident in the kitchen, but perhaps that confidence swelled a little too much. The “chef power” within me grew to such epic proportions that the mere touch of my hand on our electric oven’s digital panel caused an explosion!

Oven digital panel that exploded
This is my oven’s digital panel that exploded when I touched it.

Seriously. I touched the oven’s digital control panel last night, and the box thing jumped out of the hole, sending my arm flying backwards. The sound was just as you’d expect from something that blew up – a LOUD BANG. Sparks flew, and as I watched them land here and there, I was certain I was about to see our house go up in flames. (It didn’t).

Gail was 40 or 50 feet away in another room which isn’t in a direct visual line with the kitchen, but she swears she saw the bright light from the explosion from where she was.

I was emotionally shaken, but physically fine, which continues to surprise me. As I stood there, mouth hanging open, Gail quickly took charge.

“Help me pull the oven out from the wall, so we can unplug it!” she yelled.

Honestly, although I know the oven is electric, I never really thought about the fact that it would be plugged in somewhere. I mean, out of sight, out of mind.

So we pulled the oven away from the wall so we could unplug it, and this is what we saw.

Oven plugged in under house
Oven plugged in under house

If my mouth was hanging open before, it opened a little more upon seeing this. Gail looked equally confused.

We couldn’t unplug the oven because the electric cord went through the floor and under the house. The oven was plugged in under the house!

After that little surprise, I ran to the circuit breakers inside a closet to find the right switch to flip so we could cut off the power to the stove, without having to crawl under the house – at night, no less.

You know the old saying, “it’s always the last one…”

After flipping every switch without success, there was only one left to try. Gail was hesitant to have me flip that one because unlike all the other black switches, this one was bright red, and was a “double-switch”.

“That must be the master switch,” she said. After a moment of thinking about having to crawl under the house at night, we decided, what the heck. Flip the dang red switch and see what happens.

Sure enough, that giant red double switch was the right one to flip to turn off the power to the oven. Nothing else was affected.

So yeah, we live in an old house built in the 1940’s. I know the wiring was redone at a later time. I’m sure there must be a good reason for the under-the-house plug and the accompanying big red breaker switch, but at the moment, the reason is not yet known to us.

What I do know is that:

  1. I am super-human.
  2. My mere touch is explosive.
  3. We need a new stove/oven so I can continue my cooking journey.
  4. I plan to buy the more old-fashioned kind of oven that has a manual dial, rather than a digital panel.
  5. I am super-human. My mere touch is explosive. Did I mention that?
  6. I still haven’t gone under the house. This super-human is chicken-shit.

Hopefully, by the time my new meal kit arrives at the end of this week (hint: it is a completely different service I’m trying), a new oven will be in place.

The adventure continues.

P.S. Don’t even get me started on why there is a coax cable behind the oven. I imagine it was something along the lines of, “Oh look! There’s already a hole in the floor, so let’s put the cable through it.” “Done.” Useless, but hey, no new hole in the floor, right? Shrug. Who knows why people do the things they do.

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