no tea after 12

I would like to let you all in on what a big idiot I am sometimes. I've been at this cooking and baking lark for a good long time now. It's been over a decade since I spread my little wings and left home, and I've been working out how to EAT WELL ever since. So, I would say I've baked approximately 900 muffins, 327 loafs of banana / zucchini / pumpkin bread, 50 million batches of cookies and I've made more pasta than an Italian mama. With that said, it never ceases to astonish me that the simplest things STILL get the better of me. Enter the humble oven thermometer. 

But before I tell you about the thermometer and how its practically revolutionized my life...I will continue telling you about my colossal idiocy for a few minutes more. Jamie and I moved into the apartment we are living in now almost 3 years ago. I really like our kitchen, its cozy and quite functional even despite the fact that there's NO DISHWASHER. We have a gas stove, and a fan assisted oven, and even though we are renting I don't hate the way its decorated. Now that's not to say if given the opportunity I wouldn't completely redecorate. 

But the point is that I have been cooking in this kitchen for almost 3 years, that's a good chunk of the aforementioned baking escapades. And now that I am actually thinking about it, it was right about when we moved in that i started noticing a few weird things happening...Recipes that used to take 60 minutes in the oven, were taking much, much longer. Like 20 minutes sometimes! I had flat cookies more than once and there was a few epic fails that were meant to be scones.

Now we're tapping into my Virgo-ness here but I thought I had just lost my touch. That a dark cloud had rolled in and pissed all over my culinary skills. Not only that, but it showed no signs of letting up.

Finally, after many kitchen towels thrown in frustration, feet stomped and shouty shouty moments while my poor husband watched in fear from sidelines, it dawned on me that just maybe, perhaps, on the off chance, I should find out what sort of temperature calibration my oven has. Now, I'm sure that you're probably shouting...'You moved 3 years ago and it only occurred to you now to get an oven thermometer?' You might be screaming 'WHAT? That's THE FIRST thing I do when I move into a new place!' Or maybe 'You freakin' idiot of COURSE it's the oven!

And yes, for the record I'm very sure someone from the Ministry of the Bleedin' Obvious will be ringing any moment now to give me my formal dressing down. But it did only occur to me a mere month ago to get an oven thermometer. And let me tell you, this little baby has saved my sanity, if not my life. I now know that my oven runs 15 whole degrees cooler than what it should and my thermometer tells me just when it is perfectly ready to bake whatever I want. Oven thermometer, I salute you.

So i've got my baking mojo back, and there will be many cakes, breads and perfectly browned plump cookies in our future. And although I may be a bit slow on the uptake, I got there in the end. It turns out all this baking and cooking, and cooking and baking has learned me a few things; use your noggin, and get an oven thermometer, for God's sake.