This is in response to my sister-in-law's blog entry where she talks about how she melted a frozen ziplock bag of soup to the bottom of her pan. As she puts it . .bottom of hot pot + plastic bag = big hole and ruined soup.
I had a similar domestic casualty. I made some pasta noodles, strained them, and decided that it would be fine to rest my plastic strainer back on the stove while I finished making the other stuff. (We have the old school coil burners stove) Niels and I ate our entire dinner without realizing what I had done. We soon realized this destroyed burner when we started to clean.