18 Months Without An Oven

WHEW 18 months guys. 18 months without an oven. We made due with a set of burners and the grill all the while desperately waiting for the day we could get a new one. If you aren’t familiar with our story 18 months ago our stove top broke. Apparently keeping a large dutch oven on your glass top isn’t a good idea. When I removed the dutch oven I think there must have been a crack because I used that burner with a pyrex pot and a piece of the stovetop fused to the bottom of it. Needless to say this was quite the shock. I had no idea that was even possible. A few weeks later the oven stopped working. We did everything in our power to diagnose it and couldn’t figure out what was going on so we gave up. We always intended to replace it anyway so we decided to wait until we could do the kitchen remodel. 18 months later we were no closer to that goal than before and some very nice friends of ours were upgrading their stove which they offered to us.

Unfortunately our house is 38 years old and the previous owners did not install plugs for the appliances. They were hardwired into the electrical. The space used to have one of those old 80s drop in stoves. When they installed a newer stove they cut the cabinet and counter to fit it. So we had to hire an electrician and cut some more of the cabinet and countertop. Don’t worry it will all be redone and replaced later down the line! 18 months, 2 good friends, 100 dollars and a sawzall later we had a fully functioning oven!!

This is a huge jump in our quality of life. Homesteading is great, making things work to save money is an amazing skill but at some point you have to consider morale. Not having an oven severely limits what you can eat, especially when you make all your food from scratch. Bread was the one thing we eat all the time that I was no longer able to make myself. Let’s just say we ate A LOT of chili but only with rice or noodles because cooking rolls on a grill is a huge pain! I only managed to do it perfectly once or twice.

I am extremely excited to get back into bread making (I still have to prefect the sourdough loaf). I also have a ton of recipes I want to try out!! I am grateful for the experience even if it was thrust upon me. I learned to cook a number of things over fire and how to start fire without an accelerant. These are skills that are likely to come in handy in the future!