Anyway. I decided for my first oven experiment I would go all out and make a pizza. Not one you stick in the oven and wait for, one you prepare with knives, cheese graters, fresh vegetables and such. We make these things quite often – usually at least half vegan but this time I was alone and able to smother the entire thing in pepper jack cheese. The onions and shallots came from the community garden at my mothers apartment and the red pepper from a store down the street from where I currently am, ahem.. Albertsons. I cooked them in olive oil for about 10 minutes on med-high heat while carefully cutting free and smothering in sauce a quality Boboli crust. I grated a fairly generous amount of Tillamook cheese onto the crust followed by black olives and many jalapeno slices. The oven was set to 450, though who knows what temp it was actually at, and I let her go.

I had spent the afternoon preparing the stove by cleaning it out with intense chemical soakings and the wasting of many a paper towel only to find out that I had missed something rather important. The stove smoked like crazy but I was determined to eat pizza no matter what. I opened the door, turned on the fan (made sure the pizza wasnt on fire) and stuck it out. 10 minutes later I pulled out the pizza and to my wonderment and satisfaction there was a perfectly edible and tasty meal. I normally would have put on some kind of fake chicken product but veggie pizza and protein rich cheese was enough for me (Oh and jalapenos and hot sauce, my 2 major food groups).

So far cooking is a success. I have blueberries to get rid of so its either pancakes or muffins tomorrow. hmm.

Other appliance news.

The heater works very very well. In fact if you leave it on more than a couple mins you will roast to death at pretty much any temperature its set to. I have been turning it on for about 20 mins in the evenings but really theres not much point because I wont be sleeping with it on any time soon.

I got tired of using a cooler after we unsuccessfully tried to turn on the fridge with both gas and electricity so I spent yesterday afternoon on the lovely Spokane bus system trying to find some dry ice. I should have known better but I was hopeful, and my $15 in dry ice (12lbs) worked amazingly but only lasted about 15 hours. I was more than annoyed.  I was committed to the idea of using the fridge with its ease of access and superior size to the cooler so I cut the top off my spouted 2 gallon water jug and filled it with ice. I put the “most important to stay cold” things (insulin, yogurt) directly on the ice and everything else in the doors and bottom shelf. It works fine and when the ice starts to melt I can use the spout of the jug to drain the water into my pitcher of drinking water and have some nice cold water. Clever me. So far its been lasting about 2 days a bag so at 99cents a bag, Id say 15$ a month isn’t bad until we can get the fridge working eh?

Food success! Things are pretty normal in here besides the inability to use running water. Soon enough though I’ll finish draining the tank, pull the pump, test it and order a new one (tomorrow soon)