We’re here on the dining terrace with the chef of Houston’s hottest new restaurant.  Trey has a growing reputation for boldly expanding the classics with new cooking techniques and flavor infusions.

P @ P:  Trey, thanks for visiting with us.  It says in my notes that you first started cooking at age 2.  Can that be right?

T:  Actually it was a few days before my second birthday.

P @ P:  That’s very young.  Could you even reach the stove top?

T:  Barely.  But it was easy to reach the broiler oven.  It was just at my height.

P @ P:  Oooh-kay?

 T:  My dad had a Williamsburg peanut basket on the kitchen island.  I was entranced with the idea of a rich, deep, smokey infusion for the peanuts.  So I put the basket in the lower broiler oven to slowly absorb the flavors.

P @ P:  Was this a success?

T:  Hmmm, not so much.  The next day Mom turned on the upper oven to preheat and the basket caught fire.  There was a lot of smoke and flames.  It was really cool, but the peanuts had to be tossed.

P @ P:  Oh my.

T:  Well, Dad has always been a better-safe-than-sorry kinda guy.  We had fire extinguishers everywhere.  Okay, not everywhere, but definitely one in the kitchen, and he made sure everyone knew where they were and how they worked.  Mom is very level-headed and calm in a crisis.  So she yelled for my sisters to get out of the house, grabbed the extinguisher, and put out the fire.  Then there was this really cool foam everywhere.

P @ P:  How did this first cooking experience influence your later work?

T:  I think perhaps I’ve been seeking that same thrill for 30 years.

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This did happen.  Well, the basket and the fire and the extinguisher part—later we’ll see what direction our grandson’s career takes.  If you’ve noticed an uptick in First Alert stock over the past week or so, that may have been the result of our family rushing out to buy kitchen fire extinguishers.

I tell anyone who will listen about how wonderful our daughter-in-law was in a crisis.  With a two-year-old on one side of the flames and a four-year-old on the other, and a six-year-old upstairs, she didn’t panic.  Well, she probably did, but she acted calmly.  No one would have blamed her if she had grabbed the kids and run, but all the conditions were right to try to put the fire out.  And she did.

We’ve also taken a pledge never again to tease our son about his propensity for preparedness and nagging educating his family about it.  The truth is being prepared at the least prevented serious damage.  As hot as the fire was, it may well have saved the house or even saved a life.

October 7-13 is Fire Prevention and Fire Safety Week this year.  I’m celebrating by buying a new kitchen fire extinguisher.  Now if they only came in more colors.