My Oven Hates Me (and the feeling's mutual!)

Most of you already know that I enjoy cooking, but most of all I enjoy BAKING. I've always taken pride in my homemade breads and cookies and cakes--and I've always enjoyed making them. UNTIL NOW!

You've heard of ROAD RAGE--is there such a thing as STOVE rage? Because I think I experienced that tonight! I think for the first time in my life, I wanted to hurt my oven. I wished I had a wrecking ball to swing at it. Repeatedly. While laughing like a mad woman and yelling, "Take THAT!!" really loudly.

The oven I'm currently using is very old. I'm not sure how old exactly, but I may start referring to it as Methusaleh. We have lived in our apartment for 5 months now, and I'm still figuring this oven out. And just when I think I've done that, it dumbfounds me. For example, I thought I had figured out that the oven would behave normally IF I set it 25 degrees lower and arrange the racks a certain way--AND use foil to cover the "hot spots". But tonight I did all those things--AND I turned the cookie sheet 180 degrees like I know I must in order to heat the back the same as the front. And my Russian teacakes still BURNED on the bottom!! And for extra fun, the smoke alarm went off and I had to open the front door for a few minutes. At that point I thought I saw the oven stick its tongue out at me.

It's a love/hate kind of thing. This morning I baked a quiche and it turned out perfect. Last night I baked a pie that came out just a little underdone in the middle (had to cook it for longer than I should have), but other than that, came out pretty good. I also baked cookies last night, and 1/2 of them burned on the sides. It's like tempermental! And it's making ME tempermental! Or just mental.

There is no point to this blogpost, other than to "vent" (no pun intended). And in typing this all out tonight, I now know what I must do. I shall request a new oven from the apartment management. The worst that can happen is they say, "NO". In which case I'll have to bake them a banana bread that's mushy in the middle- or perhaps a coffee cake that's hard as rock on the top.