My oven hates me
My oven hates me. It really does. Imagine an evil Herbie in oven form (except there is no split-in-two happy ending).
To everyone it’s just a standard built-in oven in a rental property.
To me, it has become my nemesis.
My issues have become such, that I have been banned from cooking in my own kitchen.
It has won and I don’t take defeat well.
When you bake you discover the character of your oven, you understand its foibles, intricacies and variables. You know the temperature differences, the hot spots, the time it takes to heat. You can, if enough baking is done, develop a synergy with your appliance. I have used ovens, which no matter how many mistakes I made, would turn out perfectly baked goods every time. I could cry thinking about how easy they made my life.
My oven makes me cry for very different reasons.
It has three dials. None of which have any bearing on what it wants to do.
It takes about 2 hrs to heat up – then it goes from 50°C to 240°C in seconds, regardless of what temp you actually set it for.
You can have various heat settings – oven, grill, fan – all of which involve the same element and the same fan doing exactly the same thing. Which is whatever it wants to do.
Cakes bake unevenly, roasting times count for nothing and it makes a mockery of any pastry based goods.
So that’s it. It’s won. I have been banned from entering into culinary warfare and banished from my own kitchen.
I shall enjoy my enforced cooking sabbatical – until I move somewhere with a cooker that has a more egalitarian outlook on cuisine.
In the meantime I shall pursue other interests, I will take up gardening.
Except my garden isn’t too keen on me…
It’s shifty looking that oven of yours. I don’t like the cut of its jib. What’s that weird little face on the bottom left of that right hand dial? Looks like a very cranky face to me. Best take up lounging. I think you could do that well.