Tonight was slated to be a busy night. So, I put some soup in the crockpot and asked Dear Husband to make some sandwiches for with it.
Miss Language helped him. Somehow between the two chefs spoiling the proverbial broth, they set a (Corelleware) plate on the glass stovetop. And turned on that burner, instead of the one for the tea kettle.
A few minutes later, Dear Husband smelled something "woodsy" (Husbandese for burning), which turned out to be the sandwich roll on the plate - the roll now resembling a large chunk of charcoal, and smoking. He got some hotpads and removed the plate from the burner in time for it to shatter into several million pieces, which covered about a 4 foot radius from the center of the explosion.
The pieces that dropped to the vinyl flooring have left interesting burn patterns.
The pieces that flew into the open packs of food have resulted in a lot of perfectly good as-long-as-you-don't-mind-a-little-glass-in-your-sandwich-kind of food being thrown away.
And for sheer artistic touch we liked this addition to our tomato: (sorry the photo isn't crisper but I had a hard time convincing the photographer that a chunk of tomato with a shard of glass in it is photo-worthy at all)
BUT: nota bene: due to Dear Husband's quickly and firmly taking charge of clean up (with clear orders such as "Everyone get shoes on NOW! Stay out of the kitchen!") no injuries were incurred in obtaining a much cleaner corner of the kitchen. And due to God's mercy, no shards entered any body part of any human in the vicinity of the crisis.
And the analysis has begun about what was the best thing to do under the circumstances... what if we had left the plate there and just shut off the burner? Would it have cooled without shattering? would it have still shattered and the resulting explosion blasted into the freon tubing on the back of our fridge? Dear Husband has nixed "trying it again in the interests of science." | 
