Okay, so I also haven’t been very good about posting anything about my cooking adventures.  That’s because I really haven’t had any.  Or rather, the one I was having just wasn’t any fun.

When we moved into our house, one of the first things that happened was that the oven door broke off.  Well, that was less than optimal.  But you know, you can do quite a lot of cooking without an oven.  (We do have plans to replace it, eventually, but we plan to replace the gas model with an electric one, and that will require $$$$ for wiring.  So it hasn’t happened yet.)  I have tabletop roasters, and a couple of toaster ovens.  And we’ve gotten better at cooking pizza on the gas grill.  So not having an oven isn’t horrible.

But when you lose the stove as well, that can be a problem.  And that’s what happened.

Have I ever mentioned that my Beloved Husband can sometimes be hard-headed?  I didn’t realize just how hard-headed until the night I came home from an outing with a friend to find the range hood dangling by its cords over the stove.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I hit my head on it,” came the sheepish reply from the other room.

“Do we need to take you to the ER?”  Because the range hood is old and not light.

“No, I think I’m okay.”

But the range hood obviously wasn’t.  We had plans for the next couple of days, so we found some boxes and propped the hood up so at least it wasn’t dangling.  And I made a foray into sub-zero temperatures in inadequate footgear to stand out by the circuit breaker box and flip switches until we had the power to the thing turned off.

As it turns out, most of the other electrical outlets in the kitchen are on that same circuit.  So no microwave, no crock pot, no rice cooker.

We set up a camp table in the living room, and set up a microwave in there.  And then spent the next couple of months “camping”.  Because first I had the flu.  Then he had it.  Then we both had it again.  And just when I started feeling better, I came down with a nasty bout of norovirus.  And there were other things that needed to be done.  So the range hood didn’t get fixed.  And it didn’t get fixed.

Finally, three weekends ago, we got it put back to rights and turned the power back on in the kitchen.

So now there will be cooking adventures — of a happier sort — once again.  Starting with our annual Steampunk-themed tea party at the Denver Botanic Gardens this weekend.  Pictures and recipes to follow!