The oven that didn’t

Turns out I may have spoken too soon about my oven. Just when I was telling you about how it was going to be my constant friend once autumn rolled around, it gave out on me. With a blinding flash of light and loud pop, perhaps even a hiss, the element blew out. Technically, I don’t know if that is the right way to describe it, but it is fair to say that my oven is broken. And talk about timing—this happened with dinner in the oven and on the eve of a special birthday I was intent on baking a cake for. Not to mention that I was hosting my favorite sister for a bit of a holiday. Anyway, with the help of a kind neighbor, dinner baked on, but the cake will have to wait for another day.

As it happens, on the day my oven exploded, I had been roasting tomatoes. My little garden plot is in its tomato-producing prime right now. The plants are resting heavily on their stakes and I try to help matters out by picking them frequently. I only have six plants, but I can pick 20 pounds of tomatoes without searching around too much. Tray after tray of tomatoes have been slow-roasted with olive oil, thyme and a thin sprinkle of sea salt, only to be stowed away in the freezer for a cold winter day. There really is no magic recipe here, just the simple equation of home-grown tomatoes mixed with a low heat oven for the better part of a day. The results are stunning—a rich intensity of flavor without the chewy sun-dried tomato texture. But with the oven explosion, I had to change things up—I’d have to dispatch with the tomatoes in some other way and turn my winter-hoarding attention on something else.

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Turns out I had been collecting some plums for the arrival of Tina, who is known by many for her great love of plums. Our farmers market carries several varieties of plums and I had been gathering a sampling of them all on the week leading up to Tina’s arrival. She only had one baking request for me, plum kuchen, and I didn’t want to dissappoint. Luckily I got that baked before the oven catastrophe, but I was left with more than a few plums in the aftermath. So, I turned to preserving and managed to put away a few jars.  I don’t really put too much effort into summertime canning—after some of my previous exuberant forays into jam making, I try to keep it to a handful of jars for whatever fruit I am working with. But the pretty jewel tones of the plums are hard to resist.

It’s kind of funny how one takes things for granted. Whether it is the constant of reliable appliances and conveniences or the certainty of family that I come to rely on, I suppose there is some good in being reminded of all that I have to appreciate. Like tonight when a certain someone replaced the faulty element in the oven for me—there’s a lot to be thankful for it. Now I’d better get back to baking that birthday cake!