Early Christmas Present

I hate the oven/stove in my house. It's a horrible old nasty thing that won't maintain heat, has no consistency as to what temperature it runs at and the stovetop has two options: searing hot (and not in a good way) and off. The stupid thing also doesn't have any markings on its dials so we are not quite sure if the way we are turning the knobs is the right way, and it doesn't sit level so all your food falls to one side of the pan.

My mum has had to listen to me whine about my kitchen ever since we moved here 3 months ago, and she said that everything I complained about could be fixed if I just got one of these convection oven things that she had. Apparently the oven cooks on a very high heat which means that everything gets cooked superfast. You can also (apparently) cook cakes and cookies in it too. She loves hers and so when she was visiting for the Good Food and Wine Show, she bought us one as an early Christmas present. We were also going to get an electric hot plate, but they seem to have disappeared from stores.

The plan was to cover up the crappy stove with my large Ikea breadboard and set everything up on there. Unfortunately, because we couldn't get the electric hot plate, we've had to keep the convection oven away because there's no room for it. Mum was very excited to see if I liked it and kept asking if I had used it yet, and I never had.

That is, until I had a roast pork sandwich for lunch one day and ended up with a serious craving for roast pork. I bought a pork shoulder on special at the local shops and fired up my new oven.



This took just over an hour on 200 degrees celcius, and as you can see, it was probably a little too long because the meat was a little dry.


It was tasty though. Next time I'm going to try and roast a chicken. Exciting stuff.