Oven blunder

I screwed up today with the oven.  Our larger oven has a setting where it circulates air to help thaw out meat.  Before we left this morning, I tossed some chicken breasts from the freezer into a 9x13 pan and put it in the oven and set it to the "thaw" mode.  At least I thought I had set it on the thaw mode.  But I didn't.  Instead, the dial was turned to one notch further than it should have been, which was some type of convection cooking mode.  This oven is really nice, but not exactly intuitive, and requires reading of the manual to understand all the features and what the knob pictures mean.  I am not surprised I flipped the knob to the wrong feature.  I have used this thaw feature before and it was really slick.  Another knob that sets the temperature of the oven was set to "off", and I thought only this circulating air fan was running.  My plan to was to grill the chicken for lunch using a special glaze Dave and I picked up in Galena a while ago.

Well...that plan didn't happen.  Apparently this convection feature it was accidentally on made the oven super hot somehow.  It was left like this from 9-12:30.  We got home from BBC and Violet was the first one to enter the house (no surprise there).  She opened the door a crack, got a stunned and disgusted look at her face which quickly turned to terror, and started yelling "THE HOUSE IS SMOKEY!" Calvin was right behind her and started yelling too.  Violet and Calvin proceeded to dramatically plug their noses and lament at the awful smell coming from the house.  Vanessa and Eli were still buckled in the van.  Dave and I ran in the house and were about knocked over from the smell.  We discovered the oven smoking from all crevices and the top half of the main floor saturated with smoke you couldn't see through.  The smoke alarms were beeping loudly and it felt like mayhem for a few moments.  Dave got hot pads and put the pan on the deck, I shut off the oven, and started fanning the fire alarm to get it to stop beeping. 

The raw chicken that once was had turned into a solidified 9x13 pan of CRISPY BLACKNESS.  Dave ran around the house to open up every single window - the garage doors were opened, doors opened, and a big fan plugged into in the kitchen to get the smoke moving out. 

Oh my are we thankful the house didn't burn down.

We left the doors/windows open and the fan running for a good hour, and we all started to feel very cold.  I was thinking about a back up plan for lunch and instead, Dave suggested we just leave the house for awhile and go somewhere for lunch and let the house air out for awhile.  No question there...we headed to the mall to get some pizza and came home with a couple of yummy smelling peppermint twist candles.  It was better when we got home, but very cold.  We shut the windows, turned the heat back up, lit the candles, and all seemed to be a little better.  Later in the day I made a pan of baked oatmeal with cinnamon/sugar in the smaller easier-to-use oven and that made the house smell yummy to...the baked oatmeal was supper.

This is a pic of the black chicken...gives a whole new meaning to "blackened chicken" if you ask me!

Dave thinks the pan can be revived, I do not.  We picked out the larger chunks of black stuff and have it soaking with hot water and Dawn right now.