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It’s no secret that I love challenges. I love trying new things and seeing what I’m capable of accomplishing. That’s why I think I was successful in the lose 20 pounds in six weeks challenge (you can read about experience here).
How it usually works out though is that I seek out those challenges and decide if I want to participate. My newest challenge, the one I’ve just embarked on, was bestowed involuntarily on to me.
My 3-5 Week Challenge
What is it, you might ask? I get to cook healthy meals with no oven because my oven finally died. To be honest, I’ve known for awhile this poor old thing is on the fritz. It shut off on December 23rd. Two days before Christmas. My menu’s were planned, my grocery shopping already started. I shouldn’t have been surprised though because this oven of ours prefers making a BIG statement. No, no going out on just some random Tuesday. The first time, the very first time it failed us, turned off and locked our food inside was last Thanksgiving. Yep, right at the end of cooking. Homemade rolls were baking at the time and got trapped by the temperamental oven.
Fast forward a little over a year. We have no oven over Christmas. I had to redo my entire Christmas Eve and Christmas Day menu.
Of course, it started working just fine the day the repairmen came out. And after that, it became a game of when will it PF (power failure). Thankfully, our oven plays nice most of the time and would allow us to cook our food BEFORE the dreaded PF took over the electronic screen.
We have a home warranty on all of our appliances and have to jump through the hoops they set forth. Well, after a month of daily PF showing up on our oven, the repairmen returned and left letting us know we’d probably have to get a new oven. A few days later the home warranty followed up with a call to tell us that the circuit board will be sent to Whirlpool for up to five weeks. FIVE. No new oven for us!
When we questioned them regarding the reasonable expectation of being without an oven for five weeks, they laid out two other options for us.
One, we could try to find someone to rebuild it quicker
Two, they’d refund our initial call out fee in order to purchase a convection oven. That’ll take up to fourteen days for us to get the fee. Of course it will.
How I am Surviving
Here we are, two days into my new challenge. In some ways, I imagine this to be a big, tedious pain in the butt. On the other hand, I own enough other kitchen gadgets that it might not be too big of a problem. What do I have?
Two slow cookers – one is about 20 years old and this newer one Crock-Pot SCV700SS Stainless Steel 7-Quart Oval Manual Slow Cooker, 7 Quart
Stove Top (our oven is in the wall…so we still have our stove top)
Microwave
Gas Grill
Trying to Plan
In theory, it shouldn’t be too difficult. There will be no baking, but that might not necessarily be a bad thing.
The challenge is that it’s one more thing to look for when trying to figure out what to cook for the week. A simple dinner solution is to throw things on a sheet pan and roast them in the oven. There’s none of that. Buying quick heat and serve meals at Costco can’t happen because they need to go in the oven.
Although this might get frustrating, there are a few positives to take away. One, it forces me to use our other kitchen gadgets. Second, it’ll help me set a game plan for this summer when it is WAY too hot to even think about using our oven or stove top. Since our house faces due west, we get drilled with afternoon heat and adding any heat from our stove is that last think I want to do.
Overall, I’m embracing this new challenge and we will see how it goes. We were recently gifted an air fryer and I look forward to seeing what I can make.
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