Hotter than a breadbox…

…and that’s what I need to stop using my oven as, or else post little reminder notes on the door of it!

I’ve been stashing things like the brownies I bake in the oven, because it keeps them out of the way of the cats and off the counters, and it’s usually room temperature in there. I don’t want to put everything in the fridge.

The catch is, I keep forgetting that they’re in there.

I use the oven to stash things and sometimes to dry things that the cats would play with if they were accessible. Not long ago, I completely melted a few of these little foam earplugs I wear because I’d washed them and had put them in the oven on a paper towel to dry–and then forgot all about them. I have a pastry brush that I use to brush on oil or egg whites or other things that you occasionally need to brush on, in cookery, and I wash it out and put it on the oven rack to dry. That’s been toasted so many times, it’s amazing I still have it.

So today, I turned on the oven to heat up some frozen food, and forgot that I had a pan of brownies, inside a Zip-loc bag, in the oven. By the time I remembered it, the bag had entirely melted! Fortunately it was that sort of plastic that shrinks and hardens when exposed to heat, not liquifies, so the brownies were salvagable and the plastic just peeled off the pan. But, sheesh! Did I feel stupid! I guess I’ve been very preoccupied lately.