So, I'm home with the tag end of mild food poisoning, and since it is a very mild day I decided to bite the bullet and run the oven self clean cycle. I had convinced myself a while back that any teflon in the coating would have burned out on the first couple of cycles way before we had birds. So I opened all the windows, turned on all thr vent fans and ceiling fans, ands closed myself in with the birds.

Started to smell it in there, freaked out and now we are all out on the front porch. They both look puzzled, but I think they are fine. I wonder if I'll ever stop worrying so much?

I'm also kind of wondering why there is a helicopter circling overhead? Hope it's the freeway and not an escaped lunatic!

you do seem to worry a lot...lol


dusty

Well I was kidding about thr copter, although I used to live in a neighborhoods where you didn't go out if one was circling. Here it's usually triassic or a wildfire.

The oven really did worry me. I often feel the birds are so fragile, and so many people are much more cautious than I am.

That would be traffic. Not triassic. Gotta love the spell cheever. Thing is still there, been going almost three hours.hY

Oh on an intellectual level I have the whole thing analyzed, it's just that I don't have that much practical experience. Hence the freakout.

I think the deal with self-cleaning ovens is twofold -- one is that coatings on heating elements and oven parts may outgas, and I the manufacturer told me that my particular model does contain teflon. The second is that it's basically a big fire, burning off the food and grease, and the smoke from that is inherently an irritant and to be avoided. I figured the outgassing would have done most of its thing in the first couple of uses. Specifically the Teflon should not have survived at those temperatures which are WAY higher than what we usually worry about with stovetop use. So that left "normal combustion" which I figured was an issue of degree of exposure, not instant death, so it seemed safe enough to open all the windows, close off the bird room and fire it up, and move the birds outside if necessary. In practice, once I started to smell it, I got emotional about it. But in fact, it's done doing its thing, everybody is fine, the house is aired out, and we're back in residence.

As for being sick... I'm fine as long as I don't eat. I've just had a bit of lunch and we'll see how that goes... cleaning via pushing a button seemed benign enough.... c'est la guerre!

The puppy eyes don't work very well around here except when he uses them...

Your spose to clean your oven??

Oven?? is that the thing you store the big pots in? Oh you just don't know about me and helicopters,too much time poaching fish in S. Fla.,Know just how the North Vietnamese felt during the Viet Nam War. I can hear those blades thumping miles away.Boats weren't made to out run helicopters equipped with FLIR. BTW those spotlights aren't just bright, they're hot! PS i guess it's OK to add the next verse to my signature now.

Roz, that made me LOL on both accounts!!!