One, two, three…BAH!

You may recall me mentioning that my oven was out of commission.  Ah well, I figured at the time…we’re watching our budget pretty closely right now and I’m doing a lot in the kitchen at the moment, it’s a good thing to move out of your comfort zone every now and then and discover new things, techniques, recipes etc.  Hello, slow cooker!  I have to admit, having to use it nearly everyday taught me to think outside the oven, and I discovered how to make cakes in it, and how to make the best corned beef, EVER!  This morning I found a cool little recipe for the slow cooker, called Cuban Chicken.  I whipped it up before leaving for work, came home anticipating that I could sit and do half a dozen things that aren’t about cooking – after all, I’ve just made about thirty flower pots of bread as well as two chocolate tart bases at work today and my ankles are…well, they’re cankles now.  Ugh.  I came home to an unusual smell in the kitchen – not a bad smell…but certainly NOT a cooked dinner smell.  I have a pot of defrosted chicken drumsticks, sitting in a cold cumin, garlic, tomato, white wine sauce, with onions, capsicum and salt and pepper.  Lovely, but inedible at the moment.  I’ve put it into a Le Creuset pot on the stove, but I don’t have high hopes for it.  It appears that the slow cooker is kaput as well, which buggers me a bit.  It will have to be all stovetop cooking for a while, or toast.  And then of course, because dramas happen in thematical threes, my handblender went from ‘EEEEEEEEEE!!!!’ to ‘r-r-r-r……………………..’ in the middle of a frozen banana smoothie.  Flingin’ flangen thing is 12 years old and has deserted me now, in my hour of need.  So, there’s no blending, no baking and no slow cooking in this house at the moment.  Of course, there isn’t.  Two days before the Easter long weekend.  Of course.