adventures in cooking

I’ve had Adventures in Cooking tonight. I wanted a bowl of soup for dinner, but was thwarted by being unable to figure out how to turn the stove on. I was further thwarted from my secondary plan of going down to one of the corner cafes and having soup there by sheer laziness. So after a while I was whining online and my friend Geni, who is English, told me how to turn the stove on. (There’s a completely unmarked button that has to be pushed after you turn the gas on all the way, and you actually have to push the burner knob in, too, because otherwise the gas doesn’t gas, or something, and then there’s a WHOOMP! and sudden alarming flame and you turn down the gas too far and repeat the whole process about four times before you actually have fire to boil your water with. Because there is no microwave.)

So I went off to boil water, and Geni eyed me strangely, and said, “Don’t you have an electric kettle? This is Europe. We have electric kettles.” And I investigated the kitchen and there is something there that could in fact be an electric kettle, although it looks like a coffee pot to me and the water in the “this is how full I am” indicator looks like it might be very weak coffee, or maybe it’s just a bit discolored, and I described it to Geni who said that was very likely an electric kettle, and to look for a knob/twagger/slider to push down on, so I went to do that, and a red light came on and it started making alarming noises! Yes, Geni said, that was an electric kettle.

But by that time my pot of water was hot enough to make soup with, so I did. :) And had a bowl of soup and a slab of homemade white bread with a generous spread of Irish butter on it, and am very satisfied indeed with my dinner. :) I am a domestic goddess! I have made the *stove* work, learned about electric kettles, *and* successfully done laundry!

Geni has just asked if I have any other confusing domestic appliances she could help me with. *giggle*

Completely unrelated, communal writer’s spots. I think this is a great idea. :) And perhaps now I’ll try to get so me more of my own writing done. :)