Fat Ballerinas

i have just witnessed the grossest, scariest, most appalling thing ever…i am not exaggerating. i rate this more gruesome than a horror film. i tried to wash the grease trap from the kitchen of our rented apartment. -shudder-

i should explain that in Spain the most common ingredient in cooking is olive oil, fry with it, grill with it, marinade with it. so it gets on everything in the kitchen. i think that the filter over the stove had gone untouched since the day it was installed. when i removed the hood and the single screw that held it in place, oil started dripping from everywhere. it oozed from the hole where the screw had been, trickled from the fan, and moved over the filter as if it was alive. i was having flash backs to the elevator scene in “Shining”. the oil was slowly making its way across all the surfaces of the kitchen. once out, what the hell do i do with it? anyone got any industrial degreasers on hand? a very deep grave to bury it? maybe some full arm length rubber gloves and a pair of goggles? what the hell did i think i was going to do? the voice in the back of my brain screamed it isn’t your apartment, it isn’t your problem just put it back and walk away…ahhhhhh. but i went looking where i shouldn’t have and now i was stuck. i had to try to clean it.

round one…soap. i felt like one of those volunteers using dish soap to clean a poor helpless bird after the exxon valdez. it was an exercise in futility. i scrubbed, and scrubbed, and scrubbed. soapy foam everywhere. when i picked it up to look at my progress, it looked the same as when i started. not even a dent. well 10 years of grease build up against a light weight like soap. it was not surprising.

next…i tried coke. strange i know to send your husband out to the store for a few liters of coke and then have him watch you in digust as you pour it into the sink. what a waste. well after you read this you may never want to drink the stuff ever again. the stuff’s main ingredient is phosphoric acid. i have heard that it has many “wonderful” uses from cleaning the ring around your toilet, dissolving blood stains from asphalt, and cleaning engine parts at Coke bottling plants. not sure if that any of them are true but what the hell i will give it a try. it actually worked but the tiny two liters of coke were no match for that much grease. they went flat and left the filter half finished. there was no way i was going to convince my husband to sacrifice two more ounces of coke to my sick deed, and no way i was leaving the house. at this point i was covered in grease and colorful cleaning agents.

as my last ditch effort, i grabbed the “oxy-clean” crap that is supposed to be an additive for cleaner laundry. it has found its rightful place in the cleaning world. it ate through every little last ounce of putrid grease on the filter. the filter looked new. not a single sign of its most gruesome past. my husband asked if we had left it in there longer would we still have a filter? i replied probably not. i think oxy-clean would eat through the sink if we left it long enough.

so the grease is gone. the filter is back in place and the kitchen smells a little bit better now. (well except for the crappy u-bend – no water seal sink that is leaching toxic sewer gases into the apartment. but that is another story.) i am just glad that i was still suffering from a bad sinus infection at the time that had rendered my sense of smell completely useless. i shudder to think if i could have also smelled it as well as seen it…the horror, the horror.