Deborama’s Kitchen has a new cooking method
Blame it on climate chaos. In fact, I guess you can blame everything on that. But by two pathways, climate chaos led to me acquiring the object pictured. I have been using it — a lot.
One way climate chaos lad to this is that I don’t turn my oven on from about mid-May to about mid-October. I may have written elsewhere about my struggles with the year-round excessive heat in my two-bedroom, theoretically air-conditioned but not really condominium.
Among the mitigation expenses already incurred in the nine and a bit years I have been here are — a new more powerful air-conditioner in my one wall-slot ($500+), a new better ceiling fan ($400+), replacing windows in all three rooms ($12K — highest single outlay so far), custom shades on the big bay window ($700+), replacing refrigerator with new more efficient model ($600+), and pretty much closing off and never using the smaller bedroom (free.) One thing I need to do but haven’t done yet is to replace the electric range. Only one of four burners is still flat, the oven temperature and the heat leak through the oven walls are both very problematic, and its too old (36 years) and encrusted to be worth cleaning.
I had a microwave which I used for frozen meals, heating things up (coffee, leftovers, canned soup), step two of making cheese toast or beans-on-toast, and “speed defrost.” I had a cheap toaster which was fine for most toast things, including of course step one of cheese toast, beans-on-toast, or avocado toast. (I do practically live on toast, I must confess.)
So the second way climate chaos led to my switch to toaster oven life is that in August and early September, we experienced some freaky rainstorms, including one that apparently killed my toaster. I survived a little more than a week without a toaster at all. It was very hard.
I had been thinking of getting a toaster oven anyway. It can do most of what microwave can do, and all of what a toaster can do. Also…