Cooking with Mrs. MacGuyver

On today's episode of "Cooking with Mrs. McGuyver" we will be discussing what to do when one's oven suddenly dies. The discovery of this annoyance can be a bit exciting, for example while preheating one's oven to make biscuits, one notices a strange glow through the glass, and sees the heating element a bright orange and emitting sparks. So what does one do? Well, the best thing to do of course is turn the heat down (using pliers since the switch is also broken), and then turning it back up again to see if it does it again. When all appears normal one inserts the biscuits, which seem to take an extraordinarily long time to bake, until one realizes that the oven won't get hotter than 325, which is pretty much useless unless you plan on making pot roast every night of the week. If your family has given up eating meat for all of Lent, this is quite the nuisance, since the toaster oven also will not heat up higher than 300 (even though it SAYS it goes up to 450). And nothing but chili or vegetable soup gets old after a couple days. So what is one to do for the remaining weeks until the heating element is replaced?

Well, the best thing to do would have been to consult one's Crockpot cookbook first, rather than planning and shopping for meals that all required oven baking. Not to worry, though! Nearly any oven meal can easily be transformed into a crock-pot recipe. So you may enjoy the various casseroles and oven bakes and one-dishes you'd planned by following this handy conversion chart (all cooking times very approximate):

Conventional Cooking Time: 15-30 mins.::Crockpot Cooking Time: 1.5 hours on HIGH - 4 to 8 hours on LOW
Conventional Cooking Time: 30-40 mins.::Crockpot Cooking Time: 3 to 4 hours on HIGH - 6 to 10 hours on LOW
Conventional Cooking Time: 50 mins. to 3 hours::Crockpot Cooking Time: 4 to 6 hours on HIGH - 8 to 18 hours on LOW

(This opens up several possibilities for summer baking, too, when one doesn't want to heat the house by using the oven.)

Note: the LOW cooking times are pretty much useless since one never remembers to prepare the crockpot until the afternoon.

Another kitchen appliance that will make itself particularly useful during this period is your breadmaker.

As for biscuits (a staple for much of Lent since they go so well with beans), they can be fried on the stovetop when they're rolled thinly. Colonel Sanders has got NOTHING on these home-made babies.

If you want to make Lenten pretzels, however, or muffins for Sunday, you're pretty much screwed.

So for the next few weeks, it looks like it's going to be Crockpot Cornucopia!