Well this morning I woke up to the most aweful smell. It caused me to jump out of bed and make sure the house wasn't on fire!
As I walked into the kitchen, I found Missy Moo calmly reading a book at the kitchen island counter eating some yummy frozen homemade pancakes. I noticed the window fan was on low, the inside airflow directed outside and the 25 degree air from outside was coming in from another open window.
I said, "what happened?", she said, "I put my ham and cheese croissant in the microwave for what the package directions said: 10-12 minutes. I then said, "10-12 MINUTES?", mentally scratching my head. I told her the time should be 45 seconds. And my tired brain couldn't figure out what she could possibly have read that would say 10 -12 minutes for a refrigerated croissant?! I just stared at her not sure what to say next, because I could tell she knew what she did was not a good thing. After the few moments of silence, she must have sensed my temporary loss of what to say, and said, "Well I learned not to put anything in the microwave without you around." I said, "Yes, that would be good", still groggy from just waking up. Then being glad no one was hurt and that the house wasn't on fire, I went back to bed.
Mr. Sweetie asked what happened and I told him Miss just had a learning experience this morning, and then quickly opened the windows of our bedroom and bathroom, throwing our towels on the floor of the walk-in closet and shutting the door, so the smell wouldn't stink up our clean clothes and towels I had just washed yesterday.
After officially rolling out of bed (about 10 minutes later than the first wake up call) Mr. Sweetie found the crispy critter in our pantry garbage and immediately put it outside on our backdoor stair railing. Miss was shreaking how aweful the smell was and asked him what he was doing. Mr. Sweetie politely told her she needed to take the foul smelling object outside, so it doesn't continue to stink up the house, for future reference. I, however, having a hard time breathing, started spraying down the house with linen fragrance room spray, to possibly tone down the foul smelling air, but to no avail and after almost a whole can of freshner gone, we were no better off. I even desperately sprayed 30 seconds or so in front of the intake vent in the mud room to somehow help the air. Mr Sweetie soaped down the microwave and I sprayed it with Febreeze. I then found some odor eliminator spray and that at least allowed us to breathe in some type of fresher air. I even looked online and it said to boil 2 cups of vinegar to 1 quart water to absorb the smoke smell. So I boiled 2 quarts water and 4 cups of vinegar! It also said to boil lemons or vanilla (and I am assuming extract). I let that boil while I took my shower.
After getting out of the shower, I had high hopes of the smell being completely gone......ok, well, mostly gone. As I walked closer to the epi-center, I didn't hit the usual wall of burning food smell and it actually smelled a little bit better, but now it smelled like we had colored a million Easter eggs!
So, as a last resort I dumped out the vinegar mixture, filled our biggest pot with water... put it on the stove, dumped a whole 1.5 oz bag of cinnamon sticks, an old bag of allspice pellets, the rest of my container of cloves, orange extract and half of the lemon from last nights dinner in and turned on the stove and the fan over the stove. Within about 15 minutes the aroma spread through the kitchen and that is where the pot has stayed the whole day. I only had to add extra water a couple of times.
Almost 12 hours later, I can still smell the smoky 'aroma', in the pantry and select moments when I turn my head fast to look at something, but all in all we survived. I just hope the other mom's at the play group today didn't think I was a heavy chain smoker. Some of the adults did look at me and make eye contact more than they usually would, but I'll hope they were just being more friendly.
P.S. I found out later the 10 to 12 minutes was for the oven.
This cake was to make up for the kitty litter cake we made for her 12th birthday! Ouu, ah, ah, ah!
