Life Down Under

Dinner Disaster

Yesterday's dinner was a wee bit of a, well, disaster. I guess I should have quit when I was ahead when I was trying to thaw a pound and a half of meat - without a microwave (haven't bought one of those yet.....But that's a whole different post right there). That was quite a lengthy challenge....Too bad for me, I kept going with much persistence in my meatloaf-making venture. Things really started to turn south when it was time to bake it. You see, the oven in this house is pretty old.....so much so that all the printed lettering that tells you what are the switches are for don't exist anymore, leaving the user to figure it out by trial and error. Yesterday, I figured out how our oven works by error. Long story short, I was wondering why my meatloaf wasn't cooked after being in the oven for a good hour, and why my baked potatoes weren't even close to baked yet. You'd think that would have been enough to tip me off to the fact that something wasn't quite right, but no....it wasn't until another 20 minutes in the oven with very little progress that I realized (with much deciphering) that the little switch was on the "grill" setting, rather than the "bake" setting. That quickly explained the source of all my problems. So, an hour and 45 minutes later, we finally had our meatloaf. I think that could perhaps be a new world record for "longest ever baked meatloaf"......fortunately we weren't going out last night and could afford a bit later of a dinner. Hopefully I won't be making that mistake again.