As you may remember, Owen became obsessed with finding potassium nitrate—which wasn't as easy as we thought. Eventually I ordered it online for him because I'm a Class A sucker, but with vacation, etc. he had never gotten around to it. When I got home from work last night however, I found that he and their friend Travis had been working on it. There was an odd black peanut brittle looking kind of thing on the kitchen counter.

Finally….the moment was here….

 

As you can see it was quite exciting. 

They decided they wanted to create another one. We said, "what the hell" and returned to watching our DVR'd Top Chef while they readied the ingredients. We came in to watch and the process was going well.

Owen stirred:

Leo Minecrafted, Travis observed:

Things began to heat up. It was a slow process and I almost nudged Owen to turn the heat higher (I'm an impatient cook) but he was being careful and responsible so I shut up.

The mixture began to get liquidy (the sugar was carmelizing as Owen explained to me) and we went into high alert status….we readied the experimental toilet paper tube and duct tape smoke bomb dispenser, I installed the funnel into said dispenser so we could pour the mixture in where it would then cool and harden before we lit it outside.

Things didn't quite go that way however.

Just a moment later, as Owen stirred, a bit of the mixture went over the side of the pan and landed on the electric burner.

Uh-oh.

It immediately started to flare up. Owen started to tap it down with the wooden spoon and we all began talking over each other saying God knows what, giving the poor guy a million different instructions….  Suddenly the whole mixture in the pan was lit….flames went higher and higher and it began to smoke like the devil. Everyone began screaming. I grabbed the pan and then didn't know what the hell to do with it. Ernie yelled to put it in the sink. Then evidently he thought I was going to put my hand right over the flames and smoke to turn the water on. HA! We all began yelling louder and louder as smoke filled up the kitchen. I kept screaming, "don't we have a..a…a…THING?" I meant fire extinguisher but damned if I could think of the word. (side note: we do and it was by the back door….just steps away….could any of us figure that out in the 'heat' of the moment? No!) Ernie managed to reach into the sink and turn the pan upside down and then he could run water on it. It flared and popped. A flying bit of it landed on my shoulder and burned a hole in my favorite white shirt damn it. The fire began to sputter out but its last gasp was a bellow of the thickest black smoke you can imagine…

It looked like this:

Then it got thicker…but I don't have pictures of that.

Owen ran into the dining room hysterically upset over the disaster. Travis followed and kindly comforted him and then I grabbed him and told it was all o.k. The smoke bomb had REALLY worked and nobody was hurt. I grabbed Travis' glass of water and gave it to him as he coughed. We pushed the boys outside and flung open the windows and put up fans. Through the whole thing there was much hysterical laughter, yelling and just a few tears. Mostly Ernie and I laughed…because really….what else are you gonna do?

This is what it looked like outside:

Ernie pulled my Grandpa's fan out of the basement and set it to pushing the smoke out of the house. It's an old metal fan from the 60's and it's loud as hell but pushes air like you wouldn't believe. The guys went upstairs to play with Lego (now I know how to get Leo off Minecraft….SMOKE him out!) and Ernie and went and sat on the front porch. We had a bit of a fright when we heard sirens but they went on past.

We sent Travis home as it was late and then we all kind of looked at each other. We hadn't even eaten dinner. I had some partially cooked food but damned if I wanted to go cook in that kitchen. We all kind of scavenged food and then I collapsed.

No more potassium nitrate.

Of course last night Owen told me he was going to stay away from the stove for WEEKS. By the end of the evening he'd amended to that to "maybe a couple of days."

We'll see. We'll see.