Ovens ahoy

Snow has fallen and is lying – not quite deep and crisp and even as in the old Christmas carol – but in an icy, slippery layer rendering even the shortest distance a treacherous undertaking.

At this time of the year the caravan is very cold. We awoke to find that the internal temperature which was sitting at 3.3°C had fallen as low as 2.9°C during the night. As we hugged our mugs of hot coffee over breakfast we both agreed that as soon as the basics of a bathroom were in that we’d retreat to the warmth of the house.

Husband plumbed the toilet into one of the bathrooms today and tomorrow he will install the washbasin. I’m already planning making up a bed in there for tomorrow night, our first night in the house!

I also decided to test the induction hob and the ovens today, thinking that we’re so close to Christmas now that I didn’t want my first use of them to be Christmas dinner for the family.

Ovens especially have a character all of their own, and it takes a while to get used to them. We could have bought an Esmeralda and be blissfully unaware that she only works on a Tuesday with a full moon. We had to find out.

We did a lot of research before we bought the ovens. Capacity, performance, energy efficiency and a pyrolytic cleaning function were prime factors that I was looking for, along with simple functions. I’ve tried too many ovens that required a computer science degree to operate them, with features that I would be paying for that I’d simply never use.

Despite a lifetime in technology I’m rather a Luddite when it comes to kitchen appliances (sorry Guido!). I prefer that they’re not Wi-Fi enabled, not multi-function and not all touch sensitive. My fingers don’t operate very well with touch controls, especially as they’re usually covered in cake batter, so although I do have them on my induction hob, the ovens by choice have manual controls.

These Bosch ovens are simple, solid and robust. A test roast in them today showed them to heat quickly, cook evenly and operate easily. I cooked a small piece of pork and a tray of roast potatoes, and was very pleased with the results. The fact that the residual heat would be reprocessed by the MVHR system was another bonus which I felt good about.

Husband had to ferry the cooking on a tray rather precariously across the frozen yard to the caravan to be eaten, as we have neither table nor chairs set up in the house yet. But as we ate dinner on our little lap tables we couldn’t help grinning triumphantly at each other. Our first meal from the house.

Special.