I would love to take a nap right now. Lin’s taking a nap. The kitties are snoozing in the sunny spot on the bed. It’s siesta time at Casa de Orb, and I don’t get to take part in it. Why? I’m making a roast.

I can hear the wheels in your heads turning. Roasts don’t require much care. They are one of the perfect foods to be making when one is lazy and feeling the need to snooze. Yes, but I have a mostly non-working oven. The roast doesn’t need any attention at all. The oven, on the other hand, has to be prodded into staying hot about every 20 minutes or so. This means the temperature in the oven drops and falls constantly, making it pretty much useless for anything that requires a constant and steady temperature … like bread, for example. But it should do well for a roast. The roast will keep roasting whether it’s 350 degrees in the oven or 200 degrees. It really doesn’t care, but that does mean I have to keep checking on and poking at the stupid oven.

I wouldn’t even be bothering, except a) we haven’t had a roast in forever (and we love roast) and b) I have a collection of large slabs of cow and pig in my freezer just sitting there not being useful as food. The one I am making today is at least $30 worth of pig, and that’s a lot of money to have sitting around in foodstuffs we aren’t eating. They also take up a huge amount of space in the freezer. So, it’s worth the extra effort to eat some of this expensive frozen stuff and clear out the freezer to make room for things that don’t require an oven to make.

Thankfully, and this has been the only thing keeping me sane while we work toward getting a new stove, the oven works great for making my thin-crust pizzas. Since I only need it to be 500 degrees for about 10 minutes, I just fuss with it once, get it hot, pop the pizza onto the stone on the middle rack, turn the oven off and that’s that. Alas, you can’t eat pizza every day though. OK, I could eat pizza every day, but Lin seems to like some variety in his meals.

I am really missing the homemade bread though. I did find a good brand of store bread that is healthy and not too expensive, but it still has that store bread texture, which I find totally unappealing. My bread consumption has gone way down. I just don’t like store bread.

It won’t be too long before we can get a new stove. I suppose we could go get one right now, but I prefer to deal with a little hassle in the kitchen than not have any money in the bank or run up a credit card. I’m crazy frugal that way. The biggest hassle has been that I don’t really know how to do much cooking on the stove-top. I have always preferred baking and roasting, so I really do miss having a fully functional oven. Wah!

So that’s how my day is going. I’m watching TV and occasionally looking things up on the internet interspersed with having to crawl behind the stove every 20 minutes to re-engage the gas flow. It’s pretty funny really, and I am laughing about it. My usual life philosophy applies. You do what you have to do in order to get the things done you have to get done, knowing all the while eventually it will get better, and you can put it all behind you.

I’m definitely looking forward to getting to the point where I can put all memory of my mostly broken oven behind me. I am also looking forward to eventually getting to take a nap, which I get to do all day tomorrow since the food will already be cooked (and probably the next two days as well — it’s a huge slab of pig).

I think I’ll go pester the cats. If I don’t get a nap, they don’t get a nap. I need to be entertained!