Schnitzels
Well, sort of. Perhaps just evil frying things in hot fat - let me explain.

I do a lot of cooking. This is partly because I'm a good little new wifey, but really it's because I love cooking and making stuff I can then eat, plus Mr Squared's cooking is...shit, really. So a couple of weeks ago I was shallow frying some schnitzels in a pan - we were having a couple of people round, they're easy to cook and keep well, people like them, and students can get meat-starved. All well and good. Unfortunately, one of the schnitzels was obviously a little wetter than the rest. Some of the batter underneath the ever-crisping breadcrumbs had become exposed, and hot oil and watery things do not get on very well. They get on very badly indeed.

Most people who've fried things know that you usually get tiny spats of oil which hit you on your hands, possibly your arms if you haven't worn long sleeves - the most any of these cause is a slight flinch if anything. However, liquid and boiling oil was welling up under the schnitzel and suddenly

SPLUT!

A large spurt of oil explodes out and hits me directly in the face. My instinctive reaction is to put my arms up to my face and ball up.

"Argh! I've been burnt with boiling oil in my face! Wow, this really hurts - um, what to do, quick - burns, uh, run under cold water for 10 minutes."

a few seconds pass

"Ah...I can't stick my whole head under running water...oil...still...burning...get oil off face and gah! The hot fat's still on the cooker! I can't leave it or it could catch fire and burn the house down. Must...finish cooking..."

So I grabbed a jay cloth, shoved some frozen peas in it and dabbed. Now, the problem with things being on your face is you can't see where they are. I knew that there had been individual drops of oil that landed on my face - I'd briefly seen them before my eyes automatically closed - and thank goodness nothing went in my eyes, but where were the oil burns? I hopefully dabbed with one hand at the parts of my face that hurt the most, and with the other hand completed the cooking, then turned the gas off. Time to go upstairs and assess the damage.

As I'd known, it had missed my eyes - by about half a centimetre on each side. What I had instead was a line of...well...burns and now becoming shallow holes going in a neat diagonal from my chin, over the bridge of my nose and ending at the top of the forehead. The realisation that 'Oh...I have holes in my face" finally kicked in, and combined with the pain I started crying gently. I then realised this was very stupid and desperately tried to stop the salty salty tears getting into my wounds! At this point, Mr Squared got home. And asked if everything was ok. I told him to come upstairs. He panicked a little but then went and got some burn cream from a neighbor.

Over the past few weeks I've gone from looking like a smallpox victim to looking like I have bad acne to looking like I have less bad acne to looking almost completely normal again - I have a slight welt on my left cheek but it's fading fast. How? I went onto teh internets and looked up how to reduce scarring, and found that the people who seem to know the most about this are self-harmers! It's all so logical. Look kids, vitamin E cream really does work, and take some vitamins too. Saved from losing face by Emo kids, who'd have thunk?

I haven't made schnitzels since, and when I lightly fried some fish in practically no oil I still held the lid of the pan in front of my face (it's glass) just in case.
( Hampster Squared has stuff at www.tilla.co.uk, Fri 11 Apr 2008, 0:03, 4 replies)

you need this.

www.amazon.co.uk/Chefaid-Ch21372S-Splatter-Guard-24cm/dp/B000TAU1YG

oh and by the way, there's no P in hamster.
/pedant
( calibrax loves teh hamsters (not in that way), Fri 11 Apr 2008, 0:07, closed)

I was going to suggest what that guy said ^^^
But I'm too slow. Spatter guards are wonderful devices. What's really bad though, is dropping a large lump of metal into 180 oil, and having said oil up your arms.

Or putting your arm onto a fry basket that's just come out of the 180 degree oil. I have quite a large scar from that.


Fuck working in McDonalds :(
(Ethong is enjoying Cardiff. Especially Bogiez., Fri 11 Apr 2008, 0:16, closed)

Calibrax
You astonish me! *Sigh* what happened to a QOTW where we all explain why we have out sig. names? Hampster is deliberate, a reference to an ex of mine who constantly spelt things wrong but insisted he was right, he was the Trotskyist who wanted to take over a country when he grew up. The squared thing is because he and a couple of friends decided that the question to the ultimate answer of 42 was "What is Hampster(sic) squared?" Hence the name.

Ooh, I was thinking of just wearing my lab visor though...
( Hampster Squared has stuff at www.tilla.co.uk, Fri 11 Apr 2008, 0:21, closed)

JUST your lab visor?
Now that would be a sight to see. Hot oil spattered over your naked skin...

*goes to get some tissues*

(to wipe off the oil, of course...)
( calibrax loves teh hamsters (not in that way), Fri 11 Apr 2008, 4:59, closed)