New Oven’s First Bake…

SO! The oven showed up this morning at 8:30, and it’s all sparkly, sleek, and wonderfully black and shiny! As an added bonus, of course, we have a grand total of 1 cm clearance between the oven door’s handle and the dishwasher door when it opens … and that’s only by dint of squeezing the oven right up against the refrigerator (yes, bad bad energy consumption, etc. … or didn’t you know that your appliances want room to themselves?).

In order for it to be fully “here,” however, we needed to test it. Problem was, what should we test it with? I mean, yes, it’ll cook (ceramic cooktop), but will it BAKE? So, since we had two monstrous zucchini sitting around, waiting to be fed into the vegetable drier (Okara took precedence yesterday), I figured we’d do zucchini bread. Now, let’s note that when I say monstrous, I mean that there are near-fully-developed seeds inside, which need to be scooped out before you begin.

So, a sore arm and withered fingers later, I ended up with 12 cups of lovely square-cut zucchini bits. I used our Benriner (shown to the right) slicer, because I’ve found that it does less damage to the veggies; it actually slices them, as opposed to grating them, which gives a better overall texture to most things which ask for “grated” ingredients.

This zucchini was added to flax seeds, blended flax seeds (as egg replacer), water, diced almonds, soy milk, pineapple juice, quinoa flour, whole wheat flour, oat bran, xylitol, splenda, raisins, nutmeg, cloves, vanilla extract, fennel seeds, salt, baking soda, baking powder, and … um … oh, yeah. FORGOT TO ADD THE OKARA!

Rats. Those of you who use recipes? This is why you do. This is where you can get all smarmy and say your “I told you so’s” and I’ll agree with you. The problem? I mean, it’s not like I didn’t have a recipe. I have plenty of recipes. I have two PDA’s (one Windows CE, the other Palm), each of which synchronizes with my recipes on the PC. I brought a PDA with me. It was sitting there on the counter. The recipe I was using as a base recipe was right there. You see, though, the problem? Not that I was using it as THE recipe, but as the “base recipe.” It was a recipe for banana bread. Were there bananas involved?

Smells great, though. Off to check … four loaves and a plate of muffins, all at the same time. It’s a trial by fire for it.

3 Replies to “New Oven’s First Bake…”

  1. Ooh! You’ll have to tell me how it goes. I feel like such a kitchen heathen–I don’t even OWN most of those ingredients, and your fancy slicer looks like some kind of sewing-related device to me.

    Speaking of kitchen heathens, the recipe I made last night was from my dad (chicken biryani), who specifies all his measurements in things like “dessert spoons” and “coffee cups” full of whatever it is you’re measuring. Ha! Good luck with exactitude.

  2. What, AF? You missed a prime comment on WEIRD PEOPLE WHO MAKE THEIR OWN TOFU.

    I shall have to make it for you:

    DM: You’re weird.

    Tofu’s primo, though.
    Who knew it’d be that easy and taste so much better than store-bought!!?

  3. As for that 1 cm clearance… I’m thinking it’s a 1/3 cm. This is ridiculous. We won’t be able to deal with this for long.

    Time to get serious about being broke and swap the cabinets, etc. After this weekend, of course…

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