Cooking WITH an oven!

After living with Eric for almost a year, yesterday, we finally got an oven. It was a Christmas present from his Mom and although they wanted to get it the Wednesday before Christmas, apparently Sears was very busy delivering all the other appliances people got for the holidays and we were put on hold until January. It was worth it. Friday night, Eric's mom called and told us that it would be delivered between 8:45am and 10:30am. Friday night, surprisingly, Eric was the one who had problems sleeping. I was confident and happy and didn't want to get too excited, but knew exactly what we were having for dinner on Saturday night. My mother's pork chop and rice recipe! A recipe I used to make once a week and now hadn't had for probably over a year.

Around 9:30 or so, Eric went outside for a cigarette and to help his Mom unload groceries from her car. Just as he was closing the trunk I heard the "beep! beep! beep!" of the delivery truck backing up! Even though I had awoken with a horrible toothache, I had a big smile on my face. The delivery guy came upstairs to see how to negotiate the stairs and where the oven was going and then proceeded back to his truck. Eric looked off the balcony and said "It's in a really big box." I assured him that they would probably take it out of the box before they brought it upstairs, which they did. This new oven is stainless steel and had some protective plastic on it, so when they brought it upstairs and we first saw it through the back door, Eric looked at me and said "It's GREEN?" I assured him that no, it was not green, we do not live in the 70's. They brought it in and placed it in its position. Then they connected it to the gas, turned on all the burners, explained to us that we needed to run it for 30 to 40 minutes before we used it to bake off a protective coating and that was that. The oven was home!

Eric invited his mom up to see it and we all just stood around the kitchen in awe. Then we kicked her out and headed to the grocery store for things to put into our new baby. We got a very large take home pizza from Dominick's to bake for lunch and we also got all the ingredients for pork chops and rice. I had also spent the morning watching Food Network and Tyler Florence had a great recipe for panko crusted, rosemary and garlic chicken legs that could be baked in the oven. So we got the ingredients for that as well. Plus Eric's birthday is tomorrow so we got stuff to make him a German Chocolate cake.

When we got home, I turned on the oven and let it bake off its protective coating for the alotted time and then slowly slid the pizza in. After 20 minutes we had an evenly baked, perfectly golden pizza. Yeah! Plus, since it came in its own tray, we didn't even get the oven dirty! I was very happy.

I moved into Eric's with a lot of stuff. I had previously lived in a 3 bedroom house inherited from my parents with a full basement, a 4 bedroom house in Florida, and a two bedroom, rather large apartment in Lake Zurich. So downsizing to an older, smaller two bedroom apartment in the city was a little hard for me. Luckily the apartment across the hall from us is empty and I was able to store all my stuff that didn't fit, which is quite a bit, over there. After lunch Eric and I went across the hall and I began opening my pots and pans boxes to find all my casserole dishes, my baking dishes, my cake pans, my bread pans and the rest of the things I didn't need while I wasn't cooking with an oven. It was like finding old friends. I found my dish towels, my Cuisinart mini-prep, my good cooking utensils and my immersion blender so I can make fantastic soups. I was so happy and excited. We started to bring all this stuff over to our apartment and realized that we didn't really have a place to put it. However, my parents not only left me the love and the joy and the recipes of their culinary lives, they also left me their french bakers rack. We moved the small table that the microwave had been sitting on, went back across the hall and moved the bakers rack over here. It looks really good. I now have a place to put my pots, my dishes, AND some of the hundreds of cookbooks I have. It was almost like bringing in the new oven brought us a whole new kitchen. (We also found my refrigerator magnets and put those up). It now looks like it is a kitchen people use rather than a place people pass through on their way to the bathroom or the bedroom.

I practically sang when I put a pat of butter in the middle of my saute pan and it didn't slide to one side of the pan. I loved the smell of the pork chops and rice coming from the kitchen. It probably wasn't my best pork chops and rice, but it had to be one of the best times I had preparing it and eating it. Today the oven has been used to bake biscuits for breakfast and to make Eric's birthday cake. It will get a rest tonight when Eric gets taken out for his birthday dinner, but tomorrow, I can guarantee you I will be punching the button to heat it up, setting the timer and putting something inside it and smelling the wonderfulness that comes out of it.

I am truly happy.

As for my book progress, unfortunately I am still on the second book, "Amateur Barbarians." I really don't like it. The story doesn't interest me, the characters don't interest me and the man who wrote it, obviously doesn't know how teenagers talk because the scenes in the book with the younger characters are very poorly written. Also, this book was advertised as a book where two middle aged men's lives intertwine. Well, I'm about 50 pages from the end and they are only now getting intertwined. I will finish the book today probably and still don't have my next two yet so I am falling a bit behind on my goal. Ok...I am falling far behind on my goal. But all of you who know me, know how determined I can be and I will succeed. I'll let you know in the middle of the week how I'm doing.

What's in a Name?

Would a blog called Cooking Without an Oven still be a blog if it's name changed? Of course it would. Would it be the same blog? Of course it would. Just because something changes it's name doesn't mean its any different. Didn't Shakespeare teach us that a rose by any other name would still smell as sweet?

So, why am I contemplating a change in the name of my blog? Basically, I have to. This Christmas, Eric's mom decided to get us an oven. One that works on top and inside. One where I will be able to make tuna noodle casserole, and cheesecake, and german chocolate cake and my mother's pork chops and rice recipe and beef bourguignon. We aren't getting the oven until the middle of January though, so I still have a few weeks to contemplate what is going to be the first meal I cook, and what I am going to rename my blog. I can't really call it Cooking Without an Oven anymore since I will be cooking with an oven. Lots. My life is still not totally in control and I'm still taking it one step at a time and still learning and I don't expect an oven to change all that, although it will stop us from having to be so creative with ramen noodles.

I've already told you about my resolution to read every one of the 100 books on the NY Times Notable Books of 2009 list, so I thought about changing the name to "So Many Books, So Little Time" but that's rather commercial at this point. I was also thinking of calling it "Literally Literary" but I can hardly pronounce it myself, so maybe alliteration is not the way to go. I thought about doing a "Julie & Julia" type blog and type every day about how the books are going and then call it "A Year in The Life..." but that's not very clever either. I did briefly think of calling it "Damn You Bill Gregory! (among others)" in homage to my sophomore year English teacher for extolling the virtues of writing in margins of books, taking notes, and journaling every day, even writing the same word over and over and over and over until you thought of something else to write. But then I'd have to spend more time explaining and introducing you to all the English teachers along the way who have helped me to write and read and not only to do that, but to actually think about what I am writing and reading. I also thought I might call it "Horses, Death and Scenery" which was going to be the title of the biography I was going to write about Robert Redford, or the way I described my favorite movie, "Legends of the Fall." Horses, death and scenery have also played a big part in my life. But again, I would have to spend at least a couple of entries explaining all that. Finally I moved away from the literary and thought I could call the blog "If You Can't Stand the Heat..." and try to do a reading/cooking blog. One year I resolved to either eat at a new restaurant or try a new recipe every week. That would be 52 new experiences in a year. That worked for about 3 months. Don't know why I stopped, but I assume it's because life got in the way, again.

I'm not even sure if I can change the name of my blog without creating a new one, so this whole discussion may be pointless. But my original sentiment remains true....no matter what I call my blog, I hope that people will read it and enjoy it.