It’s raining and cold (at least pretty cool). What an opportunity! You may think me crazy but we have had a great summer weather and all I have been looking for a chance to bake with the new Omnia oven my mother gave me for Christmas. It is a stove top oven which I need as my regular oven isn’t working well. ( It takes 45 minutes to preheat and then doesn’t hold a constant temperature. )

Well this is a story about what it is like to do something different on a boat.

The first thing is always “Where is the oven?” Of course it is packed away somewhere. On a boat you can’t leave things out, so where is it? We have an ipad on which we have an inventory program with lists of  lots of things, but without fail the thing you are looking for you forgot to add to the list. Who could misplace an oven?

I decided I would bake something and that would be good to eat and warm up the boat as well. It took 2 hours and rearranging all my storage to find it. I tried to look on the bright side  thinking that my storage area was much neater now. (I often try to trick myself that way.)

Okay so on to what to bake. I wanted chocolate chip cookies but we didn’t have any chocolate chips. So no dice there. Next on to the packaged cakes etc. I found a pumpkin bread mix (dated 8/2017, only a year old, not bad) but it required eggs and I had just used my last one two days ago. Look in more places for mixes etc., but I didn’t find anything else interesting and certainly nothing else that did not require eggs. I know I saw in a cookbook a section on substitutions when you are out of an ingredient. Figured it had to be in “Joy of Cooking” but I couldn’t find it there. Then I looked in a couple of other books, no luck. We were fortunately in a good area for Verizon and I had 3 bars of LTE, score. I looked it up there and it gave two choices. 1.  2 tablespoons water (I had that), 1 teaspoon oil (good), and 2 teaspoonfuls of baking powder. 2.  1/4 cup mashed banana.  I had baking soda but powder, now where might that be ( if I had any). Now all my spices and baking supplies have been successfully rearranged too. I finally found a small round box still sealed with plastic in the area where I keep our hot sauces. In big letters it said REXAL doble accion. I wasn’t sure if that could be baking powder or maybe a laxative?? In little letters , requiring reading glasses, I found polvo para hornear.

Went back to my phone and asked for a translation and got baking powder, YEAH. I also had a little piece of banana so I decided to use both choice 1 and 2. (Two eggs were required).

Next step was to locate the mixing bowl (collapsible), measuring cups and spoon (collapsible). I knew where they were, just had to dig them out. To get to the bowl I had to remove both the bowl, the lettuce spinner and the strainer. The measuring instruments were in the bottom storage area by the stove which has 3 plastic boxes stacked, (measuring cups and spoons in bottom box). I had just put the three boxes back ( on my knees), when Hartley said I need a funnel do you know where they are? I knew well as I had just been there ( the third plastic box down) so I triumphantly got that out too.

So anyhow I now had what I needed to bake.I mixed up the pumpkin bread and decided to read the instructions for the oven. I remembered the little instruction book had gotten wet when we took a wave over the bow and it came into the forward stateroom and that I had put it somewhere to dry…. Oh well the phone still worked and I looked up the instructions there.

The instructions for baking things are to use the time as stated on the package. Well the choices were for muffins (15 minutes), or for a bread loaf (50 minutes). Well the Omnia oven makes an a ring so I figured 30 minutes??? Well I am learning, 30 minutes was too long or the heat was too high . It got royally burned to the pan. I had to chip it out. The top portion wasn’t burned and tasted pretty good too.

The good thing on a boat when you burn something to pan you just tie rope on the pan, throw it overboard and in the morning it is clean. No scrubbing involved!! (At least I hope it works).

The crabs must be slow or not very hungry around here,the pan is on it’s second day and only half cleaned.) Oh by the way I just ordered on Amazon the newly available silicon liner for the oven, it keeps things from sticking too much. I can’t be the only one who sticks (and burns) stuff to my oven.!!!