burn, baby, burn

I set a bulb of garlic on fire tonight.

Because Hal has been working a little later during this busy season, I have been making dinner some nights.

Cooking is bad for me. Oftentimes Rachel Ray's 30 minute meals take me more than an hour. When I cook, I usually feel as though I am running a marathon -- and I cannot cook without a recipe!

Tonight we realized that we had an eggplant that needed to be cooked, so I set about making a roasted eggplant pasta dish. This dish included, among other things, an entire bulb of roasted garlic. This is just the kind of dish we like!

Now, I have a terracotta garlic roaster. We got this awhile ago. I have a long-time love for roasted garlic, one that first began at Andriolla's restaurant -- a now-closed FABULOUS Italian place in Erlanger. The restaurant had a antipasta that came with many cloves of roasted garlic to spread on bread (or just eat whole, which I often did).

So I dug our garlic roaster out of the cabinet (thankfully, it wasn't in the closet like most of our kitchen stuff). Unfortunately, I have no idea where all of our directions are. We have them somewhere, but I didn't feel like looking for it.

I prepared the garlic like I was supposed to and put the thing in the microwave. Now, you CAN put these things in the microwave. I remembered that to cook them in the over, it took about an hour, but in the microwave, like everything in the microwave, takes a lot less time.

I set it for 10 minutes. Then I checked it at 3 minutes. It wasn't finished. So I left it in the microwave and sat in the dining room.

At the 7 minute mark, I smelled a bad smell and noticed smoke. I opened the back door quickly (we have a very sensitive smoke alarm) and approached the microwave.

Burning garlic stinks. I didn't see flames, exactly, but the garlic bulb was very burnt and stinky. The whole roasting pan was giving off dark colored smoke.

Thank goodness I caught it or I would have had to use the fire extinguisher!