Christmas Brunch Disaster

As is tradition, I invited like 23 people for Christmas brunch at 11. It is something I love to do! Especially if the people don't happen to have family around. I truly wish I could invite more, but there is only so much space in my house! The traditional menu is breakfast burritos and biscuits and gravy. We got up and started cooking at 9 AM. I did 4 pounds of hash browns - done up just right. I put them in the oven to stay warm. Got the bacon in the oven to heat up, and got the biscuits baking, too. We had a crock pot full of gravy heating up. Rod was browning the sausage and I was cracking eggs into a bowl - I had put the hash browns in my huge glass Pyrex casserole pan, covered it with foil to stay warm, and set it on the stove so I could bake the biscuits in the oven. I turned on a burner to heat a pan to scramble the eggs. As Rod was doing the sausage, there was this HUGE explosion! There was glass everywhere! I had turned on the WRONG burner and the Pyrex casserole full of hash browns exploded from the direct heat of the burner. It was a disaster! Just 15 minutes before 11, and the first guests were arriving!

Rod hurried to the store to buy more hash browns and Allen and Nick helped me clean up this awful mess! And I mean it was awful! Just picture 4 pounds of steaming hot hash browns totally infused with shattered Pyrex glass sitting on top of a hot burner. Yikes! I didn't know where to begin. First I turned off the burner (duh). I grabbed a broom and dust pan. Allen started looking for some insulated gloves, and ended up with our good hot pot holder mittens that Rod uses with the sun ovens. They worked great! He scooped the hot mass into the trash can. Really, there was glass all over that kitchen! In places you wouldn't even think of. Nick and Allen scooped and swept and wiped. They used Clorox clean up cloths, which were actually quite a good magnet for all of the little glass shards stuck all over. During the clean up, I punctured one finger with glass, and burned the top of my left hand with hot potatoes.

When Rod got back, we decided not to do the breakfast burritos - it was just too stressful to try to cook 4 more pounds of potatoes and no sausage. We decided not to use the sausage as there were little glass shards all over the kitchen and we felt it would not be safe as the sausage was right next to the exploding pan. We did not want to endanger anyone from our food being infused with glass pieces! We ended up serving biscuits and gravy, scrambled eggs, bacon and fresh squeezed orange juice (thank you to Rondaleen for many bags of fresh oranges!). There was plenty of food, too. I do have some pretty good blisters on a couple of my fingers (can't wear my wedding ring for a while), but I know the burns will heal up just fine.

Thank you so much, Nick, Allen, and Rod. I don't know what I would have done without you! You were all so helpful and supportive. I love you all! I was so shaken and stressed that I didn't even take any pictures! But my wonderful guys were there to help me through it. And the stress really was unnecessary, though very real to me.

So that is my Christmas Brunch Disaster. I'm sure we will laugh about it in years to come, but it was rather stressful (as I mentioned) as it happened! Lots of the people came, and they didn't seem to mind that we had no breakfast burritos! They all had plenty to eat and there was much friendly visiting and conversation. I'm so thankful that we have many wonderful friends and neighbors that would grace our home on Christmas Morning.