"Beep Beep Beep"

About a week and a half ago I made a Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cheesecake for our small group BBQ. I hadn't made a cheesecake in awhile and I forgot that it tends to drip out of the springform pan while it's baking. So I didn't put a cookie sheet under it. Big mistake.

Part way through the baking our house filled with smoke. Completely. Thankfully, the cheesecake didn't start on fire (which did happen once in college). It was just fine. But when Carl (who had to work late that night) came home, instead of being greeted with a nice, "Hi, how was your day?" he walked into a house full of smoke, with smoke alarms going off all around and me yelling "Quick, help me before Tyler wakes up!" Thankfully our heavy little sleeper did not wake up, even with the smoke alarm blaring right outside his door. He may not look like me, but he certainly sleeps like me!

After clearing the smoke out with fans and opened windows, you would think we were done with that, right? Wrong. I guess none of the meals I made in the next few days required the oven and I completely forgot that there was black charred stuff all over the bottom of it. Until I used it again. And part way through cooking, smoke filled the air and smoke alarms started going off in every room upstairs! This time Tyler was awake and the one in his room went off too. And Carl came home from work to a house full of smoke, smoke alarmss beeping, and me running all over the place tring to stop them! And once again he came to my rescue and helped clear out all the smoke. Then we ate dinner and when the oven was cooled down, we forgot about it.

Until a couple days later, when I was making dinner. And guess what? The house filled up with smoke and the smoke alarms started beeping again!

Poor Tyler. For the last few days he's been randomly picking up books and waving them in the air saying, "Beep, beep, beep." He's gotten quite used to the beeping, and has become an expert at helping fan the smoke detectors with his books!

Finally, yesterday when the oven was actually cool, I thought to scrape everything out and set the self clean. Also, not my best idea. I did it just a few hours before a house showing, and then regretted it the rest of the day as our house was suddenly about a bajillion degrees and smelled like oven! Oops. I managed to get the place mostly cooled down, but it definitely still smelled a little funny when we left for the showing. 

Moral of the story? Always put a cookie sheet under your cheesecake when baking.