Much discussion over the solution to our suicidal oven door problem, including the helpful suggestions in yesterday’s comments [thanks!]. I think we’ve come up with a good response.
This is the main cooking corner of the kitchen as it is today:
The cooking corner
To the left is the cupboard housing what was our (inherited) electric double oven. The lower portion, with the foil, is where the exploded door to the lower, larger oven was. The upper portion is a combined small roasting oven and grill, where I do almost all of my oven cooking. To the right is a shelf where we lodge our microwave, coffee maker and coffee grinder. Then, the doorway into the study. Finally, the counter housing the ceramic/halogen cooking hob (also inherited).
When we get round to remodelling, the inherited ovens and hob will be ripped out and a stand-alone two oven gas cooker installed, including a ‘wok ring’ for stir fry and such.
So our preferred solution to the ‘disaster’ is to blank off the existing large oven and make do for a year with the small upper oven–it’s big enough to roast a medium chicken and to cook a large casserole. If I find myself struggling we’ll splash out on either a cheap ‘disposable’ toaster/oven or a new multi-function microwave oven. I think I’ll be able to manage perfectly well with the hob and the small oven. After all, I cooked for many years in bedsits and rented flats in London, using a succession of ‘Baby Belling’ electric counter top cookers, and regularly producing a full-scale dinner for eight!
Baby Belling Counter Top Cooker
Graham says we’ll get a door-size sheet of MDF, painted cupboard brown, to cover the old broken door, saving us from having to explain the strange appearance to his mother.
I say she’ll never notice unless we tell her but he wants to be safe rather than sorry.
So, another emergency passes, and we emerge smiling. As usual.
Oh. The weather. Bitterly cold and getting colder. Down here in our little valley almost all the snow is gone for the moment but there’s no telling what may be round the corner in this cold ‘snap’. The road through to the supermarket in Swansea is clear.
I remember the last ‘cold snap’ with the weather systems in a similar configuration. It was in 1963 and I was in the last year of my RAF service, up in Lincolnshire. That ‘snap’ lasted through from Boxing Day right into early March. That was a cold snap to remember.
