Sunday, December 30, 2012

pan-fried brownies

Caught between the exigencies of a fixed income and the mandates of Christmas and the bills that need paying, the matter of buying a new stove has sent my mind scurrying. I have searched the internet for second-hand possibilities, consulted with appliance repair men and come up against a brick wall: It's $500 or  a little more for something that has any chance of working well ... but in this day and age, it is unlikely to work well for long because manufacturers are not concerned with longevity or quality.

The top burners on the old stove still work, but the oven does not and cannot be repaired ... so there is this vortex of confusion and frustration and inescapability ... $500 or nothing and where is that $500 to be found? Answer: I am stuck with the confusion.

The issue did provide a little humor in the midst of the worry. Without an oven, both brownies and meatloaf were not a possibility ... until ... until...

Until my mind said, "Let's experiment with cooking brownies in a covered skillet." I had no way of knowing it would work, but I did know that the craving for some decent brownies was strong enough to overcome thoughts of ignorance. Store-bought? Yuck!

So I tried it. And it worked. Not perfectly -- there were some burned spots and the consistency of the finished product was not the chewy succulence I had hoped for -- but well enough so that they looked like brownies and tasted, mostly, like good brownies.

"Necessity is the mother of invention."

Maybe now I can take up Three-Card Monte and conjure up the $500.

1 comment:

  1. The answer is an electric oven 100 dollars or probably way less where you are and wonderful .They work like a dream .They look like a large roasting pan and make a turkey as juicy as a duck.You will never want to use a real oven again.Anita

    ReplyDelete