My oven is a piece of crap. It’s actually a very swanky stainless-steel double oven, and retails for a serious chunk o’change, but the people we bought this house from apparently didn’t know how to take care of their shit, so the oven, which is less than 4 years old, is… bleh. I’m just so tired of sighing and rolling my eyes over the apparent disregard those people had for what is in reality a very nice kitchen.
So the oven is gross. We lived in our townhouse for three years and I cleaned the oven exactly ONCE (the week we moved out, actually). But this place? We’ve been here 8 months and I am cleaning the oven for the THIRD TIME. I’m sort of grossed out by it.
The first time I cleaned it was because the oven desperately needed it. It was truly foul. So I used the self-cleaning function… to absolutely no effect. Consternation ensued. By the way, when one is in a state of consternation, do you say that one is ‘consterned?’ Find out and get back to me. I’m sure I know this, but it’s early.
The second time I cleaned it, I went all Dow Chemical on it’s ass. I got out the rubber gloves, the Easy-Off (a misnomer if ever there was one, or else my oven is just really foul and dirty), and a bucket and went to town on it. That actually had some effect, and, aside from the lingering chemical smell that gave me a headache for two weeks (unscented MY ASS), the oven got relatively clean.
Then, of course, I had to go experiementing with the cooking, and my chicken pot pie sort of overflowed a bit. I’m blaming the biscuit top, since I made drop biscuits instead of rolled biscuits and those things tend to be a bit on the heavy side. So it overflowed a bit, we all suffered from some smoke inhalation, but the food was good.
So now I’m cleaning the oven again. The problem here is that it’s morning, and my brain simply does not function well in the morning. I hit my stride around 1 PM, but no matter. I got Jillian her breakfast, made coffee, and thought “Hey! Let’s clean the oven NOW, and get it over with before it gets warm out!”
What a good idea!
Except not.
I pressed all the buttons and got my coffee together and sat at the table while Jillian had her breakfast. Then I smelled it. Oops. Little cloudy in here, eh? Turn on fans, open windows (it’s chilly), blah blah blah. Extra bonus points for me because the smoke alarm didn’t go off as it so often does when the oven is involved!
Yuck. I went in to check the progress and noticed that the bottom oven display said “2:34” meaning two hours and thirty-four minutes of cleaning time left. Puzzled, I looked at the top display that said “8:11.”
Hmmm. I’m not cleaning the top oven, so why would it say something about EIGHT HOURS?
Hmmm.
A bit later, I went in to refill my coffee and noticed the bottom display said “2:09” and the top display now read “8:39.” WTF? Stumped!
Oh.
That top display? IS THE CLOCK.