Bestest toy ever!

Sooo...I have a confession to make.

Earlier in the week, I did my taxes (*one* benefit of renting - and living in a state with no state income tax - is that it's quick and easy to do taxes!) and figured out my refund. And I made an executive decision on what to do with the refund, which will be here next Friday. I asked myself what would be the biggest quality of life improvement I could make to this place, and then I went to Lowe's and ordered the biggest durned counter-top convection oven they carried. It's more of a mini real oven than an over-sized toaster oven. It's HUGE.

It came in on Thursday. I lugged it home, dragged it out, and immediately made pizza, mostly because it was one thing at the grocery that came with a disposable tray - I didn't have any pans yet. It baked - yay!

Actually, it wasn't that great, but I think that was the pizza's fault rather than the oven's.

Halvah, of course, preferred the box. Just for sitting on, 'cause that's her thing.

Tam took a more active interest:

Cisco sez, "I just don't get cats..."

I also made a quick batch of brownies, and brought those to work the next day. They were gone by noon, so I guess they were OK...

Today I did my first *real* baking: made some blueberry bran muffins. A regular sized muffin pan fits in the thing, as do small cookie sheets. Actually, it's about the same width as my broken wall oven, though the wall oven is far deeper, I admit. The muffins turned out nicely, I think! They'll be good breakfasts for this week, and I can freeze some, too.

Now I'm itchin' to try some real pizza in it. I'll do it Dad's way and just use a regular cookie sheet instead of a round pan, since I can fit a bigger pizza that way anyhow, and I'm done with buying pans for now.

I really hope it holds up over the long term. Don't know why it wouldn't, but of course I *had* to go look at on-line reviews, and there are a few negative ones. Granted, some of the negative ones are pretty pathetic. One person gave it a seriously negative rating because they opened the box and it was big. No joke. Erm...kay.