TALES FROM THE BOBBI LAMA

Sometimes things just can’t be explained as I have said before. This time I was making a couple of dishes for a gathering I was going to…barbequed kielbasa and a chicken dip. I put the kielbasa in the preheated oven on 350, and set the timer for thirty minutes. I was annoyed with myself that my chicken dip wasn’t assembled to go in at the same time and at the same temperature, but I just wasn’t thinking (or I was busy thinking about other things.)

Anyway, when the timer went off, I opened the oven door bracing for the blast of heat, took out the kielbasa, and put in the dip checking to make sure the oven was still on 350. I went to set the timer, but wasn’t sure if it was to be heated up for twenty or thirty minutes, so I went to my box of recipes, and sat down to look through the cards to find the one for the dip. And that’s when it happened. I got distracted. I was digging through some old ones that needed to be thrown out, and pulling out ones I thought would be good to make again, and so on, totally forgetting the time and the dip in the oven.

About an hour later, my memory flashed and the “Oh, no!” couldn;t have been a more disappointed groan. I suddenly remembered the dip which now was most likely burned and ruined, and I would have to go back to the store immediately because I had promised this dip to the hostess. As I raced to the stove and opened the oven door, only a barely detectable, luke-warm temperature came from inside the oven. I looked up at the temperature indicator on the control panel and it was not lit. The oven was not on. In fact, it hadn’t been on for a while since the oven was not even a little hot. I went to take the dip out, and that casserole dish was way to hot to touch, so I had to grab the potholders to take it out. The dip was perfectly cooked with the cheese on top melted exactly as it should be. The oven had been hot enough, long enough to heat up the chicken dip, and then it went off. Now how is that possible? And it has worked ever since so the oven did not break.

After two years of these incredible happenings, whenever I feel “saved” in some unexplainable way, I have to guess my late husband’s spirit is watching over me, even if I don’t know how. I just know how grateful I feel, and I thank him over and over.