A Cautionary Tale, and a Success

I love parchment paper. I use it pretty much any time I put something in the oven*. It saves so much pan scrubbing. Last night, however, I had a little lesson about parchment paper.

It's flammable.

I know! Paper! Flammable! Who would have thought!

See, what happened was, I put some pork chops on a parchment-lined baking pan and stuck them under the broiler. But one corner of the paper was sticking up, so when I went to pull the pan out of the oven, I just brushed the super-hot heating element with that edge and HELLO FLAME.

It was a very small flame that I just blew out, but it reminded me to be a lot more careful with the position of that parchment near the heating element. I could just see the whole thing burning up in the oven without my even noticing.

And now for something I did that did not result in inadvertent flame.

I bought this puffed corn cereal that was all healthy and organic and blahblahblah. No sugar! No salt!

No taste. Literally nothing but puffy corn.

So then I thought, "Well, I'll just add some stuff to it." Stuff like maple syrup. And melted butter. And salt. And peanuts.

After baking, this makes something akin to Cracker Jack. Yup.

So I pretty much failed on the healthy cereal thing, but I win at an extremely addictive dessert. I'll take it.

* This may be a totally obvious thing to everyone who has ever used parchment paper, but the best way to get it to lie flat on the pan is to spread a drop of water on the pan first, then lay the parchment over that and press down. Kristin's Kitchen Tip of the Day. Or, uh, decade.