Thursday, March 26, 2009

Dear Oven Manufacturer,

Dear Fancy Oven Manufacturer,

I am a typical stay at home mom. I make breakfast, lunch and dinner and use the oven frequently. I have in my life probably baked over 1000 batches of cookies. I have never had a problem baking anything until I got to use your "Oven".

When I first moved into the home that has your "oven" I was quite in awe of it. I even posted its picture in a blog. http://just-what-am-i-thinking.blogspot.com/2008/08/random-things.html (it is the first picture in the slide show). It looked big, it looked fancy, it looked like an oven. But it is not!

It is a food destroyer. Today, I attempted to make cookies again (my past bad experiences aside, I had to find someway of using the 2 bowl fulls of chocolate chips that Madelyn and Adam had poured themselves while my visiting teachers were at my house, and I knew if I just took them away they would scream and cry, so being the good mom I try to be, I threw together a quick batch of cookie dough and had the 2 of them pour in the chocolate chips -- it worked fabulously -- they were so excited to have cookies they hardly noticed that I had taken the chocolate chips from them!)

I had preheated the oven to 350, put the cookie sheets in and set the timer for 8 minutes (usually it takes 12 in any other oven, but here I thought I would set it for 8 and then check on them) About 6 1/2 minutes later, I could smell them -- which usually means they are done. I ran in, opened the oven and the back half of the top cookie sheet was burned, the front half was perfect and the bottom cookie sheet was raw.

I pulled out the top cookie sheet, threw away the burned ones, removed the 8 good ones and opened the oven again to check on the bottom sheet (mind you , the timer still has not gone off) to find all 18 on it burned.

8 good cookies -- really???? I mean what kind of oven can do that? Is this a biggest loser kind of oven that is trying to keep me from overindulging??? It was like the oven was on 450 degrees. And then I looked and it was on 450 degrees.

So that is why I am writing. Who puts the knobs for an oven 6 inches off the ground, where all the little kids can reach it???? This in and of itself is a recipe for burned or undercooked food. I don't know if Madelyn or Adam did it (although I am pretty sure it was Adam) -- but they should not be allowed to reach it! I mean who designed this oven????? I want answers. They obviously never had a focus group that included kids. They obviously never asked a mother about it and so I want compensation. I am short 26 oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. Please send some to me. 8 is not enough despite the title of a television show from my youth. 8 is not enough (unless you are talking babies, but that is irrelevant to this cookie catastrophe).

And while I have taken the time to write this letter, I have a few more suggestions for your "oven".
  • Add windows
  • Put the controls up high
  • Make the controls digital
  • Have a timer
  • Have a delay start
  • Have a temperature probe that plugs in to tell me how close the chicken is to being done
  • Quiet the convection fan (it sounds like a 747 taking off)

In short, look like this.

http://just-what-am-i-thinking.blogspot.com/2007/04/tale-of-two-ovens.html

Oh, my Katy, TX oven. I miss you. We didn't always get dinner right, but you never let me down on cookies.

Sincerely,

Jamie Handy

2 comments:

beckmarsh said...

Jamie,
that was a hilarious post! I'm so sorry about your oven. Have you considered cooking over open flame in your fireplace? It might be less frustrating.

Marci said...

Ahh, you had me laughing hard :-)! I hope your future cookie experiments produce more than 8!