Foil Roasting Pans are the Devil

I love roast. I love it just as much as the next person when it's done correctly. All tender and juicy...just that melt-in-your-mouth type of meat. My roommate Calvin made a very small one for himself the other night. He made it in one of those $3 foil roasting pans you get at Walmart that are likely to be bent into some sort of almost painful-looking shape before you even get them to your kitchen.It cooked, we sniffed, and my soul, along with that of my boyfriend Greg, wept in despair that we would not be partaking in this succulent slab of joy that was basking in our oven heat.

The roast came out of the oven around 6 pm that night. Calvin ate, Greg and I watched, and the roasting pan, left forgotten and full of grease, sat precariously on the edge of the stove. I noticed this, but decided that if, by some unforeseen chance, the cats managed to knock it down, we would hear it fall and I could rescue everyone from the mess. If I only knew then....

We sat in the living room for maybe an hour, the boys watching the old Marvel X-men cartoon that bores me to tears on netflix, me reading Savor the Moment by Nora Roberts, enjoying a slow evening and just kicking back and relaxing. Little did we know, that all hell was about to break loose.

As previously stated, I was under the impression that a roasting pan (yes, even a foil one) full of congealed grease would make enough noise as it fell to the linoleum kitchen floor that it would alert me that something was amiss. I did not, however, take into consideration that with the TV on volume levels high enough to entertain people in Dublin (Ireland), and that me being 100% engaged in my book, would cause me to perhaps...miss the light whump it apparently makes, as opposed to the CRASH! BANG! CLANG! I was expecting. And thus, our story begins:

Calvin got up, wandered over in the general direction of his bedroom, then immediately came back into the living room informing us that "someone," meaning either my dog, Layla, or one of my two cats, had thrown up "hardcore." Resigning myself to the fact that "my pets, my mess," I got up to go see what the fuss was about. Sure enough, as I rounded the corner, I saw a puddle worthy of a Saint Bernard spreading itself across my dining room floor. I have a Corgi. She weighs eighteen pounds at most. Call me crazy, but a dog that small should not be able to flood your house with puke. Turning to look at her, my jaw hit the floor. My little tiny dog had bloated up like a hot air balloon and was quickly reaching sizes similar to the "Great Skittle Episode." But that's a different story....

(this was once the bloating had gone down a lot)

 

As I was standing there, staring at my dog, something warm and wet started sloshing around my foot, reminding me that I had a rather unpleasant task ahead of me. Jumping back and letting out a stream of words to make a Russian sailor blush, I leapt over this flood of gross like you've never seen and ran to get all the clean dog towels I could find. It took every single one of them to stem the flow. On the way through the kitchen to toss the towels outside, I happened to look over into the corner, and all my questions were answered. There, on the floor, was a foil roasting pan with about half as much grease as there had been when I'd last seen it. Needless to say, I was not amused.

I'm a worrier. It's what I do. If something goes wrong, my mind immediately jumps to the worst possible conclusion (hey, at least that way nothing ever gets worse than what I was expecting). So when I came storming back into the house and saw my dog swollen to the point of exploding (again), more lethargic than I'd ever seen her, and shaking so hard it was closer to a seizure, I immediately think "well shit, my dog has developed pancreatitis in thirty minutes." With trepidation creeping up on being full panic, I hurried her into the bathroom so I could keep an eye on her (and, maybe, because linoleum is easier to clean than carpet), and stayed up until around midnight just in case she croaked (told you, I assume the worst).

The next morning, she still looked more like a watermelon with legs than a dog, but she had more energy. The face explosions seemed to have stopped, so I was getting myself all prepared for the ass ones. All that day I watched her like you would a time bomb (if you were stupid enough to be standing next to a time bomb) just waiting for it to start. And it never did. I was starting to think that maybe we were in the clear. Then I got up yesterday morning. I stepped over the baby gate that keeps Layla out of our bedroom and got a nice little splat as my foot hit the ground. Praying that it was just pee, I turned on the light and looked down. No such luck.

The ass explosions had begun, and my bathroom floor, which is usually white, looked like someone had just splattered white paint onto the dirt. It was EVERYWHERE. It was all over her bed, splattered on the walls, and drenching my socks that I'd left in there (which are now in the trash). And there she stood, right in the middle of it, almost back to normal size, looking at me as if to say "I feel better, now will you clean up this shit and feed me?" My answer was another very colorful statement that would shame my mother.

After a long day outside, she seems to be feeling much better, though I'm not sure her intestines quite agree with her yet. The morale of this is simple. If you have three animals and want to make a roast, make it in a pan that will make a REALLY LOUD NOISE when it is knocked to the ground.