I’m pretty sure I should give up on the idea of cooking. Ever.
I understand that it’s not uncommon to get injured while cooking. People get cuts and burns all the time. Sometimes the injuries are even fairly serious. Thankfully my injuries have stayed out of the, trip to the hospital, variety. They’ve also stayed out of the, oh yeah everyone’s done that, variety. In fact, they’re generally down right embarrassing. Honestly, I’m not sure it’s my fault though.
Kitchen appliances are out to get me.
Remember when the hand mixer tried to take my hand off? Absolutely ridiculous right? I mean, I didn’t even know it was possible to get your hand crushed by a hand mixer. Who knew it’s name could be taken so literally? Seriously, who does that?
Actually, there was one other person on twitter who said the same thing had happened to them. That’s the brilliant thing about twitter. You can always find someone who has had at least a similar, if not the same, experience as you. Makes me feel much less alone.
It does not, however, make me feel any less stupid.
Last night someone ordered one of our hand made sodas. It’s lemon basil flavored and is actually quite good. It’s really refreshing and just a little different. Kind of neat twist on a lemonade. We make our own ingredients at the store and mix it as it’s ordered.
I told them no problem, had them sit down and went to the fridge to grab the ingredients. I found the basil syrup but we were completely out of lemon juice.
Crap.
Thankfully I work at a grocery store so I just had to run to the produce section to get lemons. I thought I’d speed things up (and waste less juice) by grabbing the lemon juicer from the kitchen. I was obviously in a big hurry since the customer was just sitting around waiting for their drink.
We have two lemon juicers at work, one that’s a little hand juicer like you’d by at the grocery store. The other is a heavy, commercial juicer. Which one do you think I chose?
It looks very much like this one.
I rushed back over to my cafe area and started cutting and juicing the lemons. I only needed a few lemons so I was slicing and squeezing at a very rapid pace. I stuck half in the juicing area, pulled down the lever, pushed it back up, tossed the juiceless lemon and cut another. I had a nice little rhythm going.
What I didn’t realize was:
1. That lever is quite heavy.
2. I’m just the right height that the lever is eye level.
3. Gravity likes to bring heavy things down at a rapid pace, especially when you’re in a hurry and aren’t being careful to make sure said heavy thing is locked in an upright position.
Next thing I knew I was reaching to cut a lemon when that stupid heavy lever slammed down right into my nose.
Ugh.
As with any nose injury my eye immediately teared up. Unluckily for me my coworker (who was off work at the time) was sitting at the counter watching the whole thing. He, of course, thought it was hilarious.
That made me less annoyed at the blinding pain in my nose.*
I was in too much of a hurry to really react though so I just said ow and went on with my day. I was a little terrified that I’d end up with two black eyes and a bruised nose. Wouldn’t that have been fun to explain. At least I had a witness?
Thankfully so far I only have a little red mark on my nose. It hasn’t turned into a big ugly bruise yet. It definitely feels like it should be black and blue, especially if I accidentally make any kind of contact with it. But so far it’s nothing that can’t be easily covered up with a little foundation.
If it turns into something uglier I’m not sure how I’ll explain things. I might be tempted to say I got in a fist fight.
That’s way less embarrassing than saying I got beat up by a lemon juicer.
*sarcasm