When I came to live in my little house here in Muyenga, Kampala, last November, I was pleased, albeit not terribly surprised, to find that the kitchen had a gas oven. Great! Thinks I, can do some cooking!
The gas supply is from a canister which is kept in a cupboard next to the oven itself. Have to say, they are amazing bits of engineering, I’ve only need to change it once since I’ve been here, and the pressure was maintained right until it expired. Then a call to my former boda rider Michael (remember this post?) who took the empty canister away and came back 1/2 hour later with a full one.
(Parenthetical thought: I refer to Michael as my former boda rider, he is now working in Dubai. Long story which I hope he’ll tell in a future guest blog post, in fact I did refer to this as a possibility when writing the post referred to above. So my current boda rider is Vicent. Thank you Vicent! Really delighted to be able to call upon your services when I need them).
And then to discover – the oven has no thermostat, there is a direct connection between the dial and the gas supply. Oh, really? So how am I supposed to roast a chicken at 190 degrees? There was a thermometer which came with the house, but I for one found it impossible to read without opening the oven door which clearly I’m not wanting to keep on doing in the middle of cooking. I experimented with a roast potato which did actually work out pretty well, but then, potatoes are going to be more forgiving than a souffle for example. I tried to buy a new oven thermometer locally but couldn’t find one, not sure whether this is because I was looking in the wrong places or they’re really not generally available.
So, high on my shopping list returning to the UK a few months ago was an oven thermometer. To find a most marvellous device on the Amazon website – and sure enough, it really is as good as I was expecting if not better. It has a probe which goes into the oven itself, which then connects up wirelessly to the component with a read out. So, what I hadn’t realised until I started to use it is that I can monitor the temperature of the oven from the comfort of my living room next door. Which in practice means getting up every 10 minutes or so to adjust the dial to try to keep the temperature to 190 degrees, or at least within 10 of that.
So, able to roast chickens again, also I like making meat loaf which I’ve done more or less successfully, including as a snack for a meeting I called, not sure how universal the rule is that if you call a meeting you have to provide snacks, but it certainly goes down well to have something to drink and a snack in an after school meeting. Meanwhile, I’ve been asking colleagues how they cope without a thermostat and they just look at me blankly as if the question doesn’t make sense. You just get on and do it, effectively is the reply. Well, you might just get on and do it, that is beyond the capabilities of this idiot mzungu (white person).
We have a week off this coming week so looking after that, an opportunity to cook at leisure among other things. Also, spending a fair bit of time supporting at the moment supporting a total of 4 orphanages, all goes well that is the next blog post. Thank you for reading, do keep in touch!
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