Improvisation

Lesson 1 - don't give up

Zora and I are in the process of baking an apple pie. Lots of stories to go with me and pie - it only in the most recent of history that crust has not be an nearly intolerable stress experience. But today the stress is different. The oven preheated to 450 just like it is supposed to. Stuck the thing in (a beautiful one that Zora had artfully layered) hit the timer for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, I stuck in the crusties and an apple dumpling experiment of Zora's and thought that the oven didn't feel hot enough. 10 minutes after that I was certain that the oven was no longer heating.

what to do what to do - my instinct is to give up, curse the world, curse oven technology, curse landlords and supers and finally to simply give up the ghost and call it quits. But another part of me says god damn it that is a perfectly good pie in there and Z really wants it for breakfast tomorrow.

So what to do what to do - drive 45 minutes to Annie's house, too complicated. Ask the neighbors, don't know them well enough.

Turns out the broiler is still working (part of the over engineeredness of the god damn appliance) so I stuck a skillet on the top rack pumped up the broiler, stuck an oven thermometer inside and am hoping that the thing will come close to baking. The crusties and dumpling experiment worked - stay tuned with respect to the main event.