Well, I'm house-sitting at a friend's place for a week and enjoying some time out from studying at college, living at college, eating at college, and looking out my window only to see college :) The house I'm staying in is charming... although the oven presented me with some problems tonight.
You see, I grew up in a house which had an electric oven. None of this gas stuff. Over the years I have learnt to manage the gas burners... although I still turn the dials and flick the lighter with some trepidation. But I seriously couldn't not work out how to get my friend's oven working tonight. After 15 minutes I decided to phone a friend.
I called my mum first... she couldn't help me - she still has the same electric oven and is as useless at this gas stuff as I am.
I called my nanna (who has a gas oven) and after we eventually established exactly how hers worked we also established that my friend's obviously didn't work the same way.
Finally I called another friend who had stayed here before and asked if she had even used the oven. She hadn't.
But after I found a little switch inside the oven which started pumping the gas out she convinced me to do the very thing which I was hoping to avoid - stick most of my right arm in towards the back of the oven with the lighter and see if that worked. She told me she would stay on the line whilst I tried it, just in case the oven (and I) exploded.
It seemed that was a fairly pointless exercise since by the time she heard the explosion it would have been a tad too late for me. She replied that at least this way someone would know both the oven and I had exploded rather than, I presume, someone finding my charred remains days later.
Needless to say both the oven and I emerged from our initial 'getting to know you' phase relatively unscarred, and I finally got to eat my chicken dinner.
ah dani fear not, you are not alone in this dilemma! I just got back from cooking on a camp which also had gas ovens like that... oh the joys...
Posted by: chelsea | July 03, 2007 at 06:01 PM