The memories of the Swedish pancakes are vivid. One of the best parts of waking up at grandma?s house was knowing that your favorite breakfast would be waiting. The batter was always mixed the night before: three eggs, two cups of milk, one cup of flour. So thin, the mixture needed to be refrigerated over night and would have been called crepes by most people. The thinness also meant that the preferred way to eat the pancakes was to fold them in half and them roll them into a tube, never forgetting to include some butter and homemade syrup before you roll.
Those are the good memories.
The scary memories are as haunting as the good memories are vivid.
Some mornings the breakfast eaters would not wake up to the smell of pancakes, but to the smell of smoke and the sound of the home fire alarms. Grandma?s sense of smell did not work as well as it once had and the smoke from the too hot skillet increased so gradually she didn?t notice that either. Everyone would bolt out of the bathroom, out of the bedrooms, open the front and back door and wildly fan the smoky air away from the alarms. In the end, grandma would often shout above the chaos, ?Just unplug the smoke alarm. That?s what I do.? Once the giggles and the excitement settled down, the group would realize how scary this situation would be if grandma were home alone.
The family decided the next upgrade to grandma?s house would be a new range, one with an auto stove shut-off feature. The following frightening facts indicate that it is not just grandmothers who would benefit from the auto stove shut-off option:
- 29% of consumers admit they have intentionally disabled smoke alarms while cooking.
- 35% of consumers admit they have left the kitchen while food is cooking to check email on the computer.
- 42% of consumers admit they have left the kitchen while food is cooking to talk or text on the phone.
- 45 % of consumers admit they have left the kitchen while food is cooking to watch television or listen to music..
- 60% of kitchen fires are caused by unattended cooking.
All four of these groups of consumers would benefit from a cook top with an auto stove shut-off feature. Whether a cook is deciding between gas stoves, electric stoves, making a selection with an automatic shut off feature can prevent kitchen fires if food is less unattended for too long.
Unfortunately, fire fighters in America respond to fires every 24 seconds, many of which start in the kitchen. Could an auto shut off stove top keep your home from being a statistic?