This morning I met with my cooking club in Xenajtajuyup after two weeks apart since they were unable to get hold of me until I had my phone number replaced last Friday and since all their number were lost with my stolen phone.  We met at the house of my student Petrona because we planned to make coffee cake and she is the only one of the students in the group who has an oven in her home.  The oven, which they explained to me that they never use, was located in the bedroom of a sister-in-law.  The oven was a very nice new one, although seemed a little misplaced there.  My regular four girls were present, along with Maria Celestina’s little brother José, and several small children who live in the home where we met.

After measuring and mixing ingredients for quite a while, we were ready to bake.  The sister-in-law and I lit the oven and a little while later popped the cake in.  Soon thereafter, the oven was spewing smoke, and I could see little flames lapping up inside the oven.  I immediately turned off the oven.  It continued to smoke and burn.  I called for the nearest adult in the home – there were two women there, the sister-in-law and an aunt – to turn off the gas.  They did this then left the house running.  I made the kids evacuate the room and was scared the whole oven would explode or burn down the room.  I poked my head outside to see the women running back with a male family member who had been at work down the street.  At this point the room was filled with dark clouds of smoke.  First he removed the gas tank as me and the children watched from outside the room.  Then he opened the drawer under the oven (typically used to heat food), and said, “Dios mio! Hay zapatos al dentro!”  Translation: Oh my God, there are shoes in there!  Apparently someone had been using the oven as an extra closet.  He threw buckets of water to relinquish the flames, then began removing pair after pair of shoes – sneakers and several pair of heels.

Only Jose refused to try the cake.

I could not control myself.  I just burst out laughing and everyone else did too.  Even funnier, is that no one seemed as shocked as I did, and even the people who lived there didn’t seem too disturbed that they had just burned someone’s shoe collection, that the air in the bedroom was non-breathable, and that this room now had a completely blackened wall.  The guy who got stuck putting out the fire and taking apart the oven seemed less than thrilled, but everyone else had a good chuckle.  The best part is that the girls still ate the cake!  The inside had the perfect texture, fluffy and still a little moist, but the top part was a little crisp with an unsavory, inedible flavor (in my opinion).  The girls did not seem to mind – they said the cake had “el sabor de ceniza y el olor de zapato” – the flavor of ash and the smell of shoe – and was still good.