Hot Sticky Napalm

Let me start by saying that I love America's Test Kitchen and its affiliated publications. Cook's Illustrated, Cook's Country, it doesn't matter. I buy their cookbooks, get their magazines, watch their TV shows, and actually make their recipes on a fairly regular basis!

As evidence, here's a picture of our cookbook collection. Almost half of our shelf space is taken up by ATK:

With that said, today's story begins on New Year's Eve 2017. My hubby and I were getting ready to host a fabulous NYE party. I had made a New York Cheesecake from the CI Baking Book the night before, and we had a Prime Rib Roast from the Meat Book roasting away in the oven. 

Around mid-afternoon, I decided to make the Caramel Sauce from the ATK Family Cookbook to spoon over the cheesecake. I've made this caramel sauce several times before and it is DELISH. Unfortunately, I got distracted while the sugar and water were bubbling and scorched the caramel base of the sauce. No big deal, I thought, I'll just pour it out and start over. But as I was pouring the burnt caramel from the saucepan into another container just moments after pulling it off the burner (at which time it was climbing above 350 degrees), it spilled over the back of my hand.

The pain was shocking. I shouted and my husband came running from the other room. Fortunately I was standing at the sink and immediately ran cold water over my hand, but caramel of course is sticky so it didn't just run off immediately. We decided pretty quickly that I needed to visit Urgent Care, so off we went.

The doc was very sympathetic and helpful but basically said, "I can't really tell what kind of burn this is going to be at this point, so take some Advil, put some aloe on it, and call us if anything changes." So at that point I went home and we had our lovely NYE party. The food was great! 

 I innocently posted this pic that evening with no idea of what was do come...

Fortunately the cheesecake was fantastic even without homemade caramel sauce.

The next morning, I had some serious blisters and my thumb was pretty stiff where the burn was. These were red flags that the urgent care doc had told me to watch out for, so we went back for another visit where he wrapped my hand in a much larger bandage and referred me to the specialists at a burn center.

Nancy Drew with Marshmallow Hand

The next day (it's Jan. 2 at this point) we visited the burn experts who recommended surgery. Apparently it's hard to tell just by looking at a burn how deep it goes and what the damage is, so they said it would be at least one surgery, maybe two, depending on the severity. 

Surgery #1 went well. They abraded the wound and applied some cadaver skin to act as a kind of scab to allow the skin to heal as much as possible on its own. But I would have to go back for a second surgery a week later for an autograft, which meant they would take my own skin and graft it onto the burn. Good times. We worked hard at keeping our sense of humor through it all, with mostly good success.

Surgery #2 was also successful. I definitely had a rock star surgeon. I'll spare you the gross post-skin-graft photos, but it was pretty fascinating and also horrifying to see. I felt like one of the Walking Dead extras.

The healing continued and after a couple of weeks I was able to start moving and stretching my hand. I was pretty excited by the progress:

OCTAVES!!

Now here's the funny part: At about this time, exactly one month after my first surgery, I happened to get my latest issue of Cooks Illustrated in the mail. Imagine the howls of laughter when I saw this on the inside cover:

Upon closer reading, I discovered the "No Fear" Caramel was not exactly the same as the recipe in the Family Cookbook that I had made, but the irony was still pretty wild. Oh Cook's Illustrated, if only you knew how spot on you were. 

As I write this, I am now about 7 weeks post burn and healing nicely. The wound is basically just a scar now, but I'll be taking care of that scar for a loooong time. Here's what my hand looks like now:

To be clear, I absolutely do not hold ATK or CI responsible for my burn. It was a freak accident. But come on, the timing of that article is pretty amazing, right?