The Great Chocolate Explosion Of 2018

So, TINS©, TIWFDASL©…. Well, alright: I wasn’t FDASL© in this story, I was in my kitchen, fixing to cook some fudge.

The women in my office (where I was a mid-level in an urgent care) had been teasing me about my domestic abilities, and so I had threatened them with offered them home cooked fudge.

The recipe I selected required that I melt baker’s chocolate and butter in a double boiler. Of course, I did not have a double boiler. Instead, I selected two pans, poured some water onto the one, and settled the other into the first, and turned on the range. I noted, in passing, that the fit seemed a bit tight, but, whatthehell, I did not act on this insight.

Remember that thought.

So, I arrayed my ingredients on the counter, and then checked on the progress of my chocolate melting. Experimentally, I wiggled the top pot. At that point I noted a seemingly tight friction fit, and told my wife, washing dishes behind me, that I was starting to be a bit concerned about that. My words were, prophetically enough, “Boy! I sure hope that this top pot doesn’t suddenly loosen from where it is stuck, here! That could be messy!”

My wife came over, gave it an experimental wiggle herself, and concurred with my assessment. “Yep, might want to turn the heat off!”

Of course, I did not. Bright idea, right there!

I diddled around in the kitchen for a few minutes, and then went back to my double boiler/pressure cooker (without release valve). I was explaining to my wife how I planned to safely extricate the top pot from the lower, when my explanation was interrupted. By the top pot ABRUPTLY separating from the lower. At speed. With force. And, with a considerable “BANG!”

The next thing I knew, I was holding the handle of the top pot, with molten chocolate running down my face. I turned from the stove, depositing the pot into the sink, and noted that more liquid was running down my face. Wiping it, I discovered that it was blood. Nice. I returned to the stove, and my wife saw the blood herself.

“Ohmigawd! You’re bleeding! You’re on blood thinners! We have to take you to ER!”

“Let’s turn off the stove, first, ok?”

She was fixated on my bleeding. “You have to go to urgent care! You’re bleeding!”

I was still sorting out what had happened, and what ought to be done, first, and then next, etc. “Honey? I sort of do this for a living, right? Let’s sort out what’s happening, and then decide what we indeed have to do, first, okay?”

“But, you’re bleeding!”

“I’ve already figured that much out, thank you. Now, let me take a second to see how badly I’m bleeding, and what else, if anything, is going on, before we panic. Once we know what’s happening, THEN we can panic, Okay?”

She hustled me into the bathroom, and handed me a towel. I sponged off the majority of the blood and chocolate, and saw a superficial appearing wound in the center of my forehead, approx 2 cm long. The blood appeared to be sluggishly dripping from it, and I did not see any other injury. Palpating, I did not feel anything suggesting a depressed skull fracture. My vision was at baseline, I had no numbness or tingling. My ears were sort of ringing (some of that was not new, some of that was readily attributable to the explosion). Otherwise, aside from chocolate EVERYWHERE, I appeared to be unscathed.

I applied some direct pressure, and the bleeding stopped after a couple of minutes.

The Darling Wife and I re entered the kitchen, and set to cleaning up the largest chunks.

A day or two later, my wife and her daughter in law were detail cleaning the kitchen, and discovered a large chocolate chunk behind the stove, and another on the top of the refrigerator. How the heck did they wind up there?