When I was about 18 (late forties now) my boyfriend and I really liked breaded, deep-fried mozzarella cheese sticks. I thought, "how hard can these things be to make?" Mind you, I had rarely cooked at this point in my life.....grilled cheese, french toast and scrambled eggs was about the extent of my cooking experience. Anyway, I whipped up some breading (I wasn't following any receipe....still kind of cook off-the-cuff sometimes) dropped the breaded sticks in some hot, hot oil and presto......black logs emitting a thick dense smoke flooded my apartment. It looked like some kind of 4th of July firework. The oil was probably about tens times hotter than what it should have been. I tossed the whole mess out into the cold snow and later threw the blackened pot away.