Weekend Pool Party A.K.A. How not to burn down the house

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Over the weekend, my aunt organized a pool party at her boss's house. Her boss was out of the country, so she was looking after the house for a few weeks. We had permission to use the pool and have a barbecue party there.

We arrived at my aunt's boss's house with all the ingredients for our barbecue: tilapia, chicken, hotdogs, and pork liempo. However, we couldn't grill the pork liempo on the poolside grill because my aunt's boss is a Muslim. In Islamic law, it is forbidden (haram) to eat pork or have any cooking utensils come into contact with it.

To accommodate this, we brought our own electric grill to cook the pork. The chicken was grilled on the gas grill by the pool, although it took us a while to figure out how to turn it on. However, we made a big mistake when we decided to grill the fish on the electric grill right after cooking the pork.

The drippings from the pork liempo became extremely hot, causing the tilapia juices to ignite and start an oil fire on the electric grill.

As expected, panic ensued among us.

But amidst the panic, I remembered an episode of Mythbusters I had watched about oil fires. When someone suggested throwing a bucket of water on the flames, I knew that would only make the fire worse.

Instead, we quickly covered the electric grill with wet rags. This effectively cooled down the oil and extinguished the flames.

Whoever said you can't learn anything from watching TV?

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