Why Cooking With Oil Is Bad For Your Health

I'm not entirely stupid--I've read lots of nutrition articles and watched loads of Food Network shows. I know as well as the next guy that cooking with oil is not the wisest nutritional choice. But I completely disregarded this knowledge two days ago when I decided to make my kids scones for breakfast. Scones! What a perfect Spring Break treat!

Mormon scones aren't like the baked scones that the rest of the world enjoys. Ours are really just deep-fried roll dough, served with honey butter. Mmmmm--so tasty. I'd never made them before, just tasted them, but on a lazy spring day with a chill still in the air, there was no time like the present.

Now I'm no expert in cooking with oil. I've made egg rolls a few times and done corn tortillas for enchiladas, but I don't even do fried chicken. I've never owned a deep fryer and bake french fries in the oven. Oil scares me a bit--so unpredictable, flammable, and painful. But what's the worst that could happen? I'm always careful in the kitchen.

Apparently, not careful enough. I made a few scones, and they turned out great. At some point I must have hit the pan handle with my elbow or something. Oil splashed on my right hand, and as I jumped back it somehow ended up soaking the sock on my left foot. The pan didn't fall off the stove, and I did manage to turn off the gas burner before we all blew up, but I'm still not sure what actually happened there. I poured cold water over my hand, but the sock was still burning into my foot. I managed to rip the sock off, and had Kitty Boy drench a dish towel in cold water that I could put on my foot. I was screaming hysterically while simultaneously teaching Kitty Boy a whole new vocabulary. Well, he says I was--I'm sure he's heard it all before in middle school. Elvira said all she could hear was "Oh God!!! The pain!!!!" combined with incoherent animal sounds. I remember thinking, "Oh poor Joan of Arc!!! What a horrible way to go!!!"

Tinkerbell handed me a paper bag because I was hyperventilating, and one of the kids called Sweetie. I had the car, so his secretary ran him home even faster than I usually drive. We headed up to Instacare where they treated my many 2nd and 3rd degree burns. Wrapped up like a mummy, I headed home with pain pills and a sheepish expression.

What a moron. I know the difference between a healthy breakfast and a non-healthy one, yet I chose the latter and lived to regret it. I'm through with oil. Enchiladas will be made with plain tortillas, not cooked in oil. Egg rolls are right out. Scones--well, they're still yummy but so not worth it.

I've unwrapped my hand, and while it looks a bit scary I needed to let my fingers bend. Hopefully there won't be any scarring. My foot might have a bit of nerve damage, but thankfully it's just on the top and not the bottom. Probably a little scarring on it as well, but I'm more of a running shoe girl as opposed to sandals so who really cares? In the end, I think I got very lucky, and just as importantly I've learned a valuable lesson.

The ironic thing is that I've been watching Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution for the past few weeks, and really shouldn't have been thinking of feeding that to my children anyway. Lesson learned. Onward and upward.