Right before my boyfriend moved into his new apartment, I accidentally set his toaster oven on fire.
I was broiling strips of fake bacon, otherwise known as “fakon” (or “facon”), and due to my Asian thriftiness, I used an old foil sheet I hadn’t changed for quite some time. As a result, previous residing oils and fats caused my fakon to become extremely flammable, and halfway through a conversation with my best friend Jenny, I turned around only to notice the inside of the toaster oven engorged in crackling flames.

I’m Bonnie and I’ve burned rice in a rice cooker before. I know, you must be thinking, how did you manage to screw up something so easy, but it happened back in my college days, when I lived in my first off-campus apartment with a kitchen. I’m not proud of my former culinary catastrophes, but I have learned a lot from my mistakes. So if you are even a fraction as heinous as I was in the kitchen, then I am writing here today to let you know that …