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Published on 09/14/1998 All articles from this issue

It's the oven's fault

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By Joan Passarelli

Blue Jeans & Jelly Beans

I got out the cookie recipe and dusted off the mixer. I told myself I had to test the oven. You see, our oven hadn't worked all summer. We'd been on a long vacation, and our housesitting cousin had supervised three repair visits, all unsuccessful. Home again, I had overseen the last attempt, on which the repairman had finally installed what he declared to be the right part. I told myself I needed to make sure the oven was really fixed.

I also told myself that my kids deserved a full cookie jar. They were going back to school and needed cookies, both for their lunches and for after school, with homework and a cold glass of milk.

Who did I think I was fooling?

The real reason I was creaming the butter and sugar was that I wanted freshly baked cookies. I wanted to make the dough and lick the bowl. I wanted to watch the cookies rise up cooking and smell the aroma in the kitchen. Most of all, I wanted to eat one still hot out of the oven, soft and chewy and chunky and sweet. Make that more than one.

The oven heated, baked, and timed perfectly. The batch of cookies disappeared in a day or two. I ate more than my share, but I did my best to overlook that fact. Terrific. The oven does work.

Two days later, my brother and sister-in-law came over for dinner. I eagerly used the oven for Parmesan-topped French bread and roast chicken, and they were delicious. For dessert the oven turned out a Grand Marnier souffle, and we laughed to see how high it rose up out of the dish. With all of us digging in, the souffle was gone in no time, leaving only memories of high-puffed, orange-scented clouds. Good oven, I thought. Nice oven.

What I'd forgotten, though, was that while the oven had been broken, I had eaten much healthier food. For snacks, instead of cookies, I had sliced heirloom tomatoes and sprinkled them with salt and pepper. They were juicy and tasted of summer afternoons, with not a fat gram in sight. For dinners, I had grated zucchini and onions, sauteing them quickly in a little olive oil, hot and filling and very good for you. For dessert, I had served fresh berries, or stewed some nectarines with just a bit of sugar and a splash of orange juice. I had hardly missed the buttery, creamy quiches, tarts, and desserts I used to make.

But now the oven poses a problem. Now I can bake cookies and other yummy things whenever I want, and I don't usually have guests to share them with. Now that the oven is consistently, reliably working again, I am mentally wobbling between the 10 pounds I need to lose - well, 15 - and the joys of homemade pies, or cobblers, or brownies. While the kids are at school, it's just me and that oven, staring each other down, waiting for me to use it for something that'll do me no good. I'll read a new recipe that I want to try, for example. Never mind that it calls for a cup of cream and a half-pound of butter. Or I'll want to make bar cookies, knowing that in cutting them up I'll decide to eat the four corner ones myself because they don't look right on the plate. It's not a pretty situation at times like those. Loving to cook, and having a good working oven, don't go well at all with a personality like mine that can get carried away too easily.

Maybe I should think of some way to break the oven again.

Joan Passarelli, mother of three, lives in Mountain View She writes a monthly column for the Town Crier.