Every time Scotty travels, we have some sort of catastrophe while he’s gone. Luckily they’ve been mostly manageable - like kids throwing up or the van battery dying (neither are ideal, but I can at least figure out how to solve those problems).
When Scotty left for Asia, we joked about what would happen while he was gone. We didn’t want to tempt fate or anything, but realistically, if your spouse is gone for two weeks, something is bound to happen. I’ve been worried for months that one of our cars would break down while he was gone, and that’s partially why we got a new van when we did.
We had just about made it to the one week mark when the catastrophe hit.
I was laying on my bed doing something important on my phone (I’m sure of it) when I heard Daisy and Zoe yelling up to me, “Mom! The glass on the oven broke!”
I was like, “What? Huh? What do you mean?”
And they were like, “The glass!”
I walked downstairs and saw the oven like this:
Frankly, I was stunned. I froze up for a few minutes and just stared at it, like wha?!?
I could hear the glass continuing to crack, and little bits and pieces kept crumbling and falling on the floor so that, within minutes, the hole in the oven was doubled in size.
I figured I should probably get as much of the glass off the oven door as possible so it would stop crumbling and falling on the floor, so I spent a good chunk of time trying to carefully remove pieces and get them safely disposed of.
I vacuumed a lot over the next several days. No matter how much I cleaned up, I kept finding more and more glass. It was messing with my mind because I felt like I had glass particles in between my toes and in my eyeballs and up my nose. I didn’t, fortunately, but it was kind of like seeing a spider and then not being able to stop feeling like there’s something crawling on you.
I ended up buying a new oven, but it wouldn’t be delivered for a week and a half, so the damaged oven stayed put and continued dropping glass.
The day after Scotty came home, the new oven arrived, and I paid for them to haul the old one away (there was a trail of glass from the kitchen through the living room and out the front door as the oven went away).
Scotty got the new oven installed, and I couldn’t wait to try it out. I got a double oven - something I’ve wanted for many years. It was a little more expensive than other options but was something I was planning to buy eventually and was trying to save up for. It’s crappy that I had to buy it during the most expensive time of the year, but let’s just consider it an early 40th birthday present.
Scotty kindly took Zoe and Holland to the park so I could try out the new oven without any little supervisors bossing me around. I wanted to make cookies for the theatre kids (I signed up to provide dinner for them for a late rehearsal on Monday of this week), so once the girls were gone, I got to work.
Things started going wrong immediately. You may recall that I’m a bit of a sloppy baker , and I usually make some sort of significant mistake when I bake. My first go round with my new oven was just par for the course.
First of all, I started mixing the dough and realized I was out of baking powder (note that baking powder was on my grocery list a few days prior, and somehow I managed to skip it at the store). So I sent Nicky to get me some baking powder. Luckily, I realized I was also out of brown sugar before he came home so I was able to text him to get some brown sugar, too. Phew (wipes brow. Then washes hand… because cookies…)
When Nicky got home I finished mixing the dough, but I lost count while scooping the flour, and I couldn’t figure out if I had done 4 scoops or 5. I do this all the time, so I’m always telling myself I need to measure the flour into a separate bowl and not put it directly in the dough, but I always believe that *this time* I’ll be fine.
I am never fine. I always get distracted.
I decided to bake a single test cookie to determine the flour status. Turned out, I needed to add more flour.
When the cookie dough was ready to go with the proper amount of flour, I started scooping. I filled a baking sheet and put it in the top oven. Then I filled two more baking sheets to put in the lower oven. I put the first sheet in without incident, but when I put the second sheet in, I tipped it too far (I think this was because I’m not used to putting things in such a low oven), and some of the dough started rolling out of position. I tried to adjust the pan to keep them from rolling off, and somehow I burned myself. I was grateful my kids weren’t home so I could yell my favorite swear word without censorship.
I wasn’t able to save the cookie dough, and about five balls of dough fell into the bottom of the oven.
I removed both cookie sheets from the lower oven and pulled out the racks as fast as I could so I could get to those dough balls before the smoke alarm went off. I threw the two hot racks on the kitchen floor, praying they wouldn’t burn it, grabbed some tongs, and picked out the dough balls.
I couldn’t even keep my oven clean for the first two hours of its life in my house!
After a whole lot of chaos, I finally got the oven put back together and baked six pans of chocolate chip cookies - three sheets at a time, which is just a beautiful thing!
But did the fun stop there? On, no, it did not.
I was making spaghetti for dinner, and I wanted breadsticks! So I mixed up some dough, and while it rested in the mixer for ten minutes, I saw the salt on the counter and couldn’t remember scooping any into the dough. Salt is essential in bread making. It’s more than just flavor - it helps the yeast work properly, so you can’t just skip the salt, so I had to figure out what to do. I took a little piece of dough and licked it to see if I could taste any salt. I couldn’t. I wasn’t sure if it would work, but I decided to mix the salt in the already formed dough and see what would happen.
By some miracle, it worked! The breadsticks turned out… except I burned them. But they were still edible. Just a lot more browned than normal (they started smoking when I opened the oven… or was that the residual cookie dough particles in the bottom? Who knows!)
So I didn’t get off to a good start with my new, beloved appliance. I hope we have better days ahead! But yesterday I burned a grilled cheese sandwich on the stove top, so for now…please send pizza.
(Quick aside for informational purposes: I often double this recipe and get 80-90 cookies depending on how much dough my family eats before it hits the oven. I have no idea what size my cookie scoop is. I made two double batches so I would have about 140 cookies for theatre (plus some for my family to eat)).
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