Friday, March 10, 2006
Oven Disaster
Costco has the best deal on meat, it's a fact. The thing is, though, is that although they offer the best price per pound, you end up spending twice as much as you would at the supermarket because you end up buying a 3 lb. brisket (the smallest they come) instead of one of more normal (I should say, better for someone living alone) weight of 1.5 lbs.
Earlier this week I dropped $14 on a package of two flank steaks, whose total weight was 3+ pounds. I was super motivated to cook both on the same night, after each had marinated overnight -- one in a "Tunisian marinade" and one whose marinade was going to turn into a "red wine and orange glaze," so I'd have enough food for the rest of the week. I attribute to doing all this partly due to my aversion of freezing large pieces of meat, since they take forever to defrost in the fridge, and partly due to the fact that I'm always expecting people to come over to dinner (let's not talk about how that didn't happen this time around, and how I still have tons of steak waiting to get in my belly ).
Sans a barbecue, I resorted to broiling both in the oven, five minutes per side, each. They both were smelling great, both were smoking up my apartment, and both left splatterings all over my already pretty dirty oven. And so, after I had finished with the cooking, before I was about to plop down on the sofa to catch up on some Idol and 24, I thought to myself: well now...why don't I try and use the self clean function on my electric oven? What a bright idea!
Never having done this before, I replaced the racks in the oven (one with a thermometer attached), closed the door, turned the dial to "self clean" and let the oven do it's thing. I headed over to the couch with a new cookbook, and began with my nightly dose of the tube. About 15 minutes later, when Jack Bauer was sealing off the situation room to prevent nerve gas from killing his team, just when Edgar fell to the floor in his last breathing moment, I jumped to my feet in reaction to a superfluously loud crash and bang that came from the kitchen.
The oven -- that damn oven. The thing was in the middle of my kitchen, door ajar, letting off smoke in all directions. Insulation fell to the counter, black ash all over the floor. I could not, for the live of me, understand what had happened.
Upon further inspection, I noticed my oven thermometer had exploded into pieces. The oven racks had fallen to the bottom of the over (hence the crash) and the entire belly of the oven had warped so that the sides bowed outwards and the bottom had become concave. Upon even further inspection, I noticed that on the inside of the oven door, a little sticker existed to tell you that to use the self clean function, you were to remove all racks and other items from inside the oven, and you was supposed to remove any broiler pans from the drawer underneath. Yeahhh, that so didn't happen.
And so now I'm taking part in an exercise of patience with my apartment complex's maintenance team. B'dalek, as we would say in Arabic. I'm forgetting that some services here still work on below the Mason-Dixon time zone.
Earlier this week I dropped $14 on a package of two flank steaks, whose total weight was 3+ pounds. I was super motivated to cook both on the same night, after each had marinated overnight -- one in a "Tunisian marinade" and one whose marinade was going to turn into a "red wine and orange glaze," so I'd have enough food for the rest of the week. I attribute to doing all this partly due to my aversion of freezing large pieces of meat, since they take forever to defrost in the fridge, and partly due to the fact that I'm always expecting people to come over to dinner (let's not talk about how that didn't happen this time around, and how I still have tons of steak waiting to get in my belly ).
Sans a barbecue, I resorted to broiling both in the oven, five minutes per side, each. They both were smelling great, both were smoking up my apartment, and both left splatterings all over my already pretty dirty oven. And so, after I had finished with the cooking, before I was about to plop down on the sofa to catch up on some Idol and 24, I thought to myself: well now...why don't I try and use the self clean function on my electric oven? What a bright idea!
Never having done this before, I replaced the racks in the oven (one with a thermometer attached), closed the door, turned the dial to "self clean" and let the oven do it's thing. I headed over to the couch with a new cookbook, and began with my nightly dose of the tube. About 15 minutes later, when Jack Bauer was sealing off the situation room to prevent nerve gas from killing his team, just when Edgar fell to the floor in his last breathing moment, I jumped to my feet in reaction to a superfluously loud crash and bang that came from the kitchen.
The oven -- that damn oven. The thing was in the middle of my kitchen, door ajar, letting off smoke in all directions. Insulation fell to the counter, black ash all over the floor. I could not, for the live of me, understand what had happened.
Upon further inspection, I noticed my oven thermometer had exploded into pieces. The oven racks had fallen to the bottom of the over (hence the crash) and the entire belly of the oven had warped so that the sides bowed outwards and the bottom had become concave. Upon even further inspection, I noticed that on the inside of the oven door, a little sticker existed to tell you that to use the self clean function, you were to remove all racks and other items from inside the oven, and you was supposed to remove any broiler pans from the drawer underneath. Yeahhh, that so didn't happen.
And so now I'm taking part in an exercise of patience with my apartment complex's maintenance team. B'dalek, as we would say in Arabic. I'm forgetting that some services here still work on below the Mason-Dixon time zone.
