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Fire up the dinner by Gail Boysen Martha "Stewart" Strom is off dealing with a death in the family (a story all by itself, believe me) but our own Gail Boysen managed to... uh... cook something up in her absence. The moral of the story: Don't do like Gail does. It is true that life is stranger than fiction and so I add this silly bit to your water cooler fodder as you sit and discuss stupid things people do.... While trying to prepare my first full home cooked meal for my fiancé and his daughter, I managed to make a lasting impression. Though not quite the way I had intended. A secret recipe meatloaf, butter and garlic baby red potatoes, fresh green beans, and strawberries with pound cake for desert. Of course a nice salad and all the trimmings, which ended up including the lovely aroma of melted plastic and SMOKE! Yes, 'tis true! In one of my more blonde (sorry to those of you who are actually blonde) moments in life, left the stove unattended and it proceeded to melt the knobs right off the stove while managing to turn the white cabinets and oven hood a lovely shade of smoky gray. Filling the house, and I mean every room with the white haze and bouquet of plastic al-la melted. YIKES!!!! Amazing what two tablespoons of butter can look like after a few extra minutes on the stove; black ash that slid non stick right out of the pan. "The wedding is off!" I was sure was ringing in Rodger's mind, after such a lovely mess I had made, but it was not so. We all busied ourselves cleaning (coughing and choking all the way)and pitched the too close peanut butter jar that had melted and spewed its contents between the stove and counter. Wiped soot from the cabinets and later our own bodies, managed to remove the globs that had once been surface control knobs and put all the pieces back together again. (very humpty dumptyesque) Needless to say, we ate delivery pizza that night and after the tears (well, at least my tears) were able to get a chuckle out of the entire thing. I told him this was not a ploy to redo the kitchen, though I am not sure he totally believed me. Consider yourself forewarned, if I decide to cook for you....don't let me out of the kitchen until I'm done! Your ever galloping gourmet Gail