COOKING WITH A HANDICAP

Most people wouldn’t figure baking as an athletic activity but the Christmas goody-making season in this house has likely been responsible for wearing off more calories in steps and stair climbing than in creating them in the first place.  Throw in the aggravation of discovering – YET AGAIN! – that the oven had decided to call it a day before its work was done and you have a peek into my December.  It’s been a (half-baked) slice.

I guess I should have seen this coming.  For a couple years now (or more, I have no concept of time) my oven had taken to informing me that it didn’t have certain functions.  Just out of the blue when I went to use it I would be informed on it’s little message screen that it didn’t have the ‘bake’ feature.  Or the ‘broil’ feature.  Or the ‘convection’ or ‘self-clean’ features.  Being as these things are why I have an oven I found this very annoying.  It graciously offered me its clock feature and was happy to let me turn on the oven light, but other than that it would not obey my commands.  This is very frustrating when you have a batch of buns ready to bake.

The first time it happened there was a lot of button punching, a certain amount of off-color language, and a short time trying to decide which friend would be most likely to offer me their oven for half the buns before I remembered a time-honored, never fail computer that fix might work.  There had been a power outage not too long before and maybe this was a computer brain-fart problem.  Sure enough, a trip downstairs to the breaker box, a flip off and then back on, and I was back in business.  The buns were saved and I did a little victory dance because I had thought of this on my own.  A repairman’s milage and wages would have cost in the $200.00 range.  Yay me!

Time went on and many more things were baked and roasted and broiled.  Every-once-in-a-while my oven would try to play this trick again, stubbornly insisting it didn’t have the regular heating features that I bought it for.  It always happened after a power outage so I recognised where the defiant attitude was coming from and I knew how to get it back on track.  We carried on.

In the beginning the trip to the breaker box took longer, but with practise I could do it in half the usual time.  There was no need to look for which breaker it was on the panel, I knew it by heart.  It’s #19 and #21, left side, almost at the bottom; in this past month I’ve visited them so often we’re like best friends.

For the longest time it kept playing the same trick (again, I have no idea of how long this has been going on), but looking back I realize that the frequency of its ‘job actions’ had increased.  Still, I knew how to ‘fix’ it so I let my mis-guided confidence assure me I was in control. 

Meanwhile my oven plotted against me.

In the middle (literally) of baking Christmas tarts my oven came up with a new game.  I would give it my commands-  BAKE-350-START  - and away it would go, preheating just like it was supposed to; its little message center keeping me abreast of its accomplishments.  When it reached the desired temperature I would put my tarts in the oven, set the timer, and go about multitasking like women do.  At some private moment my oven would then say to itself “That’s enough for today.” and decide 250 was its new favorite temperature.  It wouldn’t inform me of this though.  Oh no! I would return when the timer buzzed to find a warm-ish oven and half-baked tarts.  With no time for this nonsense I used my old fix on this fresh problem and took on an unanticipated fitness program in the middle of my Christmas rush. 

It wasn’t all bad – there was very little guilt about extra butter tarts with the amount of flights of stairs I was doing.

2025 dawned clear and bright.  We barbequed steaks for supper (the barbeque isn’t computerized and does what it’s told) and early the next morning I called an appliance store.  I had thought we would fix the old one but when their records showed that this one was 11 years old we had a change of heart and ordered a new one instead.  It’s been ordered and should be here by midmonth.  I see a lot of crockpot meals in our future until then.

 I really should keep up with the exercise though.