I CAN'T cook

At day's last light I am cooking New York steaks on the grill for our dinner. (Our being Paw Paws and me). He's an even more eager companion than Maureen, and much less opinionated. We've been relegated to the grill, not by choice, but rather that the city of Glendale and Southwest Gas has deemed me "unfit to cook" after my adventure with carbon monoxide poisoning last evening. A few years ago, in a fit of Y2K planning for disaster mentality, I found it necessary to install Co2 detectors in the house. Never gave it a second thought until the damn thing sounded it's alarm late last night. I assumed it was a mistake but read the box that said "move to fresh air" with alarm! What does it mean? What do I do now? I googled it. Google will know what to do. But the information was horrific and described all of the symptoms of Co2 poisoning and as I read on, I began to develop them one by one. The words on the screen said call 911. I thought that a bit of overkill, so I called the police non-emergency number and asked their best advice. They in turn, turned me over to the fire department who called the gas company who arrived an hour later. The representative from the gas company was a kid from Alabama with no hair and a Geiger counter strapped around his neck. His meter's reader informed him that yes, we had a problem. My Co2 levels were indeed out of whack. He was excited to get to the root of the problem. He scanned everything starting in my bedroom, where there is very little gas and so that seemed odd to me. I didn't want to point out that the alarm had been installed there to wake me up if needed. He eventually made his way to the kitchen and to my stove where his Geiger counter topped the charts. His investigation entered my oven where ah ha! he'd located the problem being food spillage blocking the ducts causing a gas leak. The fact that my dirty oven nearly killed me was mortifying. I blamed it on the caterer's and then the old oven. But the truth was glaring. I was given a citation by Alabama and the gas to the kitchen has been manditorily disconnected. I am no longer fit to cook and not quite sure what it's going to take to get my privileges back.

So tonight steaks, finished off by Oreo Cheesecake right out of the box, leftover from Michel's birthday party. Tomorrow, some crock pot magic. By the way, cheesecake gets rubbery after day three. After that, I am going to be looking for dinner invitations as my kitchen is now............... closed.