Life without an Oven

While I was in the middle of cooking dinner on Saturday night, there was an intense flash and a zap-zapping noise that came out of the oven.  I winged my utensil across the kitchen and opened the oven door to find the heating element sparking and smoking.   Paul came running as soon as he heard my loud cussing cries for help and helped me extinguish the flame.

Luckily there was enough residual heat in the oven that I was able to finish baking my cheesy-onion biscuits and the stove top was not affected (effected?  I could never figure which one to use.) so I finished making supper with only a slight biscuit-hitch.  The meal was consumed, dishes washed & the evening went on as normal.

Sunday morning we called the local big box stores, but nobody carried oven heating elements and the smaller family-owned store was closed.  By Sunday afternoon, I was just dying to bake something!  We didn't need any bread as there was still a half loaf left as well as two in the freezer.  We definitely didn't need any cookies (gett'n a little too squishy along the midsection) and it's not like I had to bake a birthday cake or holiday pie or anything.  And even if we wanted potatoes with supper, they could go right in the microwave.  But just knowing that I couldn't use the oven was driving me bonkers.

The wood stove had been turned down as the weather was warm(ish) so I raked the coals around, put my old baking pan in the coals upside down to provide a potential baking platform and put the oven thermometer in there to check the temp.  It was a toasty 425 degrees.  Perfect for baking bread!

Except that I really, really didn't need to make any bread.  I guess if I let the stove cool off a little bit more I could get it down to "cookie-making" temps of 325 degrees.  But again, I didn't really need to be making any cookies.  

Last year I baked some cookies on top of the stove (using a upside down baking pan on top of them as a mini-oven) and a few loaves of bread and they turned out fine.  

So after all the fuss about just having to bake something, I guess just knowing that I could bake in the wood stove if I wanted to was satisfaction enough.