There are some things in life that I can always count on. The sun comes up every day whether I’m miserable or not. No matter how bad things are, they can always be worse. I’ve tested this theory repeatedly and found it to be true. My animals only have medical emergencies on Sunday nights during inclement weather and major appliances, electrical and plumbing systems break after 5pm on Fridays.

This evening I created a new dish in order to use up some of the summer squash bounty. I set the oven to preheat and then took a large squash and two medium potatoes and sliced them thinly. Then I put a handful of fresh parsley and another handful of fresh basil, a large pinch of red pepper flakes and put them in the blender with about a 1/2 cup of olive oil and pulsed it til well blended. I put all this in one of those white, french gratin dishes (a deepish one), threw in some salt, pepper, a 1/2 cup or so of freshly grated parmesan cheese and mixed it all up with my hands. I topped that with course bread crumbs and dotted the whole thing w/butter.

Then I put the dish in a cold oven.

*sigh*

I saw this as an opportunity to slam the door as I left the house to feed my neighbors cat since she’s down the shore. When I came back, Brni had taken the oven apart and determined that the heating coil that triggers the ignition for the gas was dead. Gas ovens can no longer be lit with a match because we can no longer be trusted to use our ovens safely. We are still allowed to light the stovetop burners with matches, but for some reason, we are not to be trusted to light our ovens.

And it’s Friday night.

Last Friday night the kitchen sink stopped up. I thought it was the stupid garbage disposal, but apparently it was stopped up all the way down to the sewer pipe. The plumber charged me $200 to clear my sink because it was the weekend.

Luckily, I still have the microwave that came with the house. Now, I’ve never used it to cook anything before — it mostly warms up cold coffee and sometimes it melts butter or heats up frozen burritos. I had no clue as to how to cook real food in it and frankly, the idea scared me, but I had all this food in the gratin dish and no oven to cook it in. So, I set it to nuke the food for 5 minutes at 50% power. After the beep, I checked for doneness. I did this many times until the food seemed cooked. Then I put the whole thing under the broiler (yes, the broiler part of the oven works…it has it’s own ignition coil thingy). Amazingly, the dish was delicious and the tomato, pepper & basil salad I’d made was the perfect accompaniment.

The oven will remain broken until Monday.