Oven Escapades

Sometimes I think about my time in the UAE and wonder how much these experiences will shape my perspective in the long run. So many little things require 'more' here and while it causes a lot of frustration and requires (seemingly) unending patience to get through in the moment, it also deepens my appreciation for 1) Steven and my ability to figure things out (no matter how irritating), and 2) the comforts of home.

For example, I love to cook and probably make ~80% of what we eat from scratch. I don't do it out of financial necessity, or lack of options (amazing delivery all the time), or gender roles (screw those), etc. I do it because I enjoy the process of creating something new from start to finish.

No matter what kind of housing I was in at home (from dorms to wayy to many 20-something's sharing a house, to apartments, owning our own house), there was always a stove/oven that just turned on. Maybe I made a phone call to put the utility in my name, but it was always a simple process. I turned the knob, heat came out, and I cooked my food for as long as I liked. Done.

But after living in the UAE even my appreciation for this lifelong hobby has changed. First, when we moved to Dubai a few years ago, I realized how much I truly enjoy cooking. And second, now I understand that I've always taken for granted how the heat required for cooking just magically appears when you need it, how you need it, when you need it.

Will I always? Who knows, but get comfy because a way too long story is coming...

Around June-ish I bought a mid-range, Western-style gas oven from a merchant on a buy and sell group on Facebook. After a little barter and some pictures, it was delivered to our apartment (a few days late and at 11pm).

It took us a month to get the gas company out to hook it up (wrong numbers on gas boxes, and vacations, and night hours, and such), only to find out that while the gas line now worked, the oven had the wrong type of gas injection parts. I didn't really retain the details here, other than I couldn't use it until we swapped parts.

Luckily, the merchant that I bought the oven from knew exactly what I meant and came fairly quickly to swap out parts (but after the weeklong holiday, plus a few extra days, of course).

So we had the gas line, gas meter, and gas oven (with correct parts!) all hooked up and ready to go, but the gas detector is/was broken. It's a nifty little device that sounds like an extremely annoying alarm and shuts off your gas when too-high levels are measured in the kitchen. Ours is broken in such a way that the oven only works if we continuously hold down a safety button just under the ceiling.

And no matter how many times we called to get this fixed, no one ever fixed it.  A couple times someone came and just stared at it (seriously).

At one point in early September, Steven asked me to consider just using a hot plate.  But I love me some oven and I loathed having to cook everything using only 1 hot plate burner.  It's super dissatisfying and I gotta get my small joys where I can (out here).

So eventually, I made a duct tape contraption that kinda/sorta holds the button down for short intervals.  It means we have to reach up (Steven) or climb up on a chair (me) to touch the button every 10-ish minutes to keep it held down, but it works.  Sometimes we forget and the alarm goes off, and all the gas needs to be relit, but still...it works.

And even better, within the last week the alarm has graciously run out of whatever power made it scream so loudly, so it doesn't even make horrible sounds anymore. Which means that after 4 months of haggling, and arranging, and appointments that no one shows up for, our stovetop and oven work more or less as expected.  I may get some extra exercise climbing up and down every 10 minutes, but the food tastes the same, the cooking is still satisfying, and I don't have to use the dreaded hotplate.

As a side note, after I started using it more I realized that all the knob symbols (broiler, burner locations, oven temperature setting, timer, etc) looked a little odd. I looked more closely and realized they were all hand drawn with a Sharpie.

And that, my dear friends, sums up my oven escapades pretty nicely.