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The Cost of Cooking

The other day I was making ziti for my nephew (it's his most requested dinner) and prepping garlic toast and cucumbers on the side and in general cooking as usual when I turned on the oven to preheat while I was walking the dogs. Yes, I still multitask. Only when I got home from walking the first dog the oven was still preheating. I slid the ziti in the oven and walked the other dog, but when I got home the oven was still preheating. It wasn't coming up to temperature; in fact it barely got above 250F (we have a temp measuring gun that my guy used to confirm this.)

I cook every day, and I use my stove every single day, so this was mildly distressing to me. I also take good care of the appliances and regularly clean them, so it wasn't from neglect. I finished dinner in the microwave (ziti turned out fine) and air fryer (ditto on the garlic toast) and let the oven cool enough for my guy to check the heating elements. The broiler was fine, but the baking element broke the moment he touched it.

Some food had spilled on that section recently and the constant heating and cooling had acted like acid and burned through the metal, baking it to death, apparently.

Although my stove is 16 years old this was an easy fix, my guy assured me. My nephew ordered the element with his Amazon prime to arrive the next day. Still, for an entire day I had to do without my oven and imagine life without a stove if this didn't work and we had to buy a new one. I hate all the new stoves too, by the way. The glass-topped ones are terrible to cook on, and I'm sure the ones with the sensi-temp coil burners are just as bad. They don't make stoves like mine any more.

The new element arrived the next day and my guy installed it and I made the boys a batch of chocolate chip cookies as my thank you. Oven worked perfectly again. Stove can stay. Yet in the back of my mind I'm already thinking, better make peace with the new styles and find one I can tolerate . . . .

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