After a couple of weeks of searching second hand shops and ebay, we managed to find a second hand cooker that wouldn’t break the bank or give us a debt the size of a small country in fuel bills to go and get. It’s old but it’s a good quality cooker. The “problem” is that I am seemingly incapable of using it.

DM keeps telling me I need to be “subtle” with it but my problem is, to coin a phrase, I am as subtle as a sledgehammer. Since installing it late last week, I have cremated about 70% of the meals I’ve cooked on it. It’s not a problem with the cooker – the ovens both heat to a higher temperature than my old cooker and I’ve not managed to adjust my use of the dial to accommodate this fact so the pizzas on “Friday night is pizza night” were very welcome after a couple of weeks without (because of no oven) but to describe them as “crispy” bases is probably an understatement.

As for the hob – well, this helpful little indicator tells me when the hob is hot but what I’ve failed to work out is that you have to anticipate it being hot before it gets hot and turn it down in expectation of the fact. If I don’t remember in time it is so hot it cremates everything before it cools down again. I’ve burned everything I’ve tried to cook on it so far other than last night’s pasta and to be honest, when you’ve got a pan filled with 4-5 pints of water it’s hard to imagine how long you’d have to boil the pasta for to burn it!

I expect that over time I will find a way of taming the beast but for now that still eludes me!