Itsy Bitsy Teeny Tiny Oven

Sorry for the delay on the oven story, I have been a bit busy and kid of forgot about it as I haven't been cooking or baking in the oven lately. I was instantly reminded when catching up on blogs and seeing my cousin Maggie's gorgeous new appliances including a giant dual oven. I was instantly jealous for many reasons. First, we have the size issue. There are four racks and they are about 3 inches apart, and it is a good thing that I didn't bring cookie sheets over here as they would never ever fit. Kristi said she made a homemade pizza and then tried to put it in the oven and it was far too long. Yes, most peoples sock drawers are bigger than these ovens! But the biggest reason I have had a problem with this oven is that it is completely different and the instruction manual is in every language except English! Take a look at the tiny oven that resides in my kitchen... As you can see there are many buttons and with that many settings. I thought I could just wing it as the food that was initially made in there wasn't bad. That is until the catastrophic cookie event of September! My friends Lisa and Jen gave me a bag of things to bring over and in that bag there were several bags of chocolate chips as they are no where to be found here. So I thought it would be fun to surprise TJ after work one day with some delicious cookies...and surprised we were as they ended up being two weeks of homemade dog treats for Tut Anthony! The cookies were very dark on the bottom, very light in the middle, and perfect on top. Since then I have vowed not to waste another chocolate chip. Here is a look at the dial...
There are the normal burner knobs, a temperature knob (in degrees celcius), and then the "problem" knob as pictured above. I certainly long for the days of bake and broil! Good news for me and TJ's stomach, Saturday night I was lucky enough to have a German and a South African in my kitchen to explain how this convection oven operates. The first 2 going clockwise from the top are explanatory, but the third one is for baking, the bottom is for broiling without heat circulation in the oven, the next one to the left is broiling with fan circulation (which broils faster), and then the last is the hottest for cooking with fan circulation. The horrible cookies were cooked on the last one...no wonder!
There still be no extracurricular baking until after Rome when my class is done with one exception...I am to make a dessert for the ex-pat Thanksgiving. I will keep you posted! TJ and I have decided to purchase something as well for a back up in case the desert blows up in the oven.
German today is easy. It is a simple form for a question. The Question is "What are you (verb)?" So if I wanted to ask, "what are you reading?" it would be Was lesen, Sie? The direct translation is, "what read you". Lesen is to read, but conjugated in the You (formal) form is also lesen. Here are some sample verbs:

machen = to do; Was machen Sie?
sehen= to see; Was sehen Sie?
haben= to have; Was haben Sie?
essen= to eat; Was essen Sie?
trinken= to drink; Was trinken Sie?

The response would be, "Ich lese, Are You There Vodka? Its Me Chelsea", or you can conjugate any of the verbs to drop the -n for the I form. Try some of them out, it is kind of fun!

Auf Wiedersehen