Let's Do The Time Warp

Baking Day started with an e-mail from Caren:

"Hey guys, I cleaned my oven yesterday and now it's not working.  This means NO BAKING.  We could still do stove top stuff or maybe make some things to freeze and bake later..."

Well a broken oven is a bit of a dilemma for a baking group but as anyone who knows Caren would guess, she would have some sort of solution.

"I have a convection oven we could bake a few things in."

"A what?"

If you are as unfamiliar with cooking tools as I am you may not know that some ovens are convection and some are not.  The kitchen we use for baking day has a stacked oven with both convection and....regular...I don't know what it's called.  I also have no idea (after a year of baking) what the difference is or why some things should be baked in convection or not.  The spare convection oven that Caren has is a bit larger then a microwave.  See below:

That looks pretty old...

As we begin to bake and prepare foods Caren suggests coffee.  She whips out her coffee grinder.  See below:

"Caren, I'm going to give you a piece of wisdom I received from my friend Shalah: Appliances are not heirlooms.  I'm guessing this is your parents?"

"It is!  It's probably from the 70's."

"Dear Lord..."

I'm adding, "your appliances should not be older then your friends," to the list of sage advice.

Taking a page from our fellow baker Patti's page, I decided to make veggie pancakes.  I found this recipe in Family Fun magazine.  It has cornmeal, eggs, flour, carrots, zucchini, and corn kernels.  You can dip it in a pesto/sour cream dip or ranch dressing.  They turned out really yummy!  As other bakers arrived I lost my post at the stove and was moved to:

"What is this?"

"It's an electric fryer.  Are you telling me you've never seen an electric fryer?"

By this time Caren's Oven Man (and our eye candy) had arrived.  He found it quite humorous that there was a group of ladies who met to bake and at least one had no apparent knowledge in the kitchen.

The veggie pancakes were delish BTW.

Look what Kathy brought from her garden!    Scads of Beets!



This isn't the half of them!



Pickled beets were also on the agenda.  Cooked in a pressure cooker no less....another appliance I had never seen, used or heard of. 

Since we seemed to be in a time warp I suggested Caren plug the 70's into Pandora.  It was perfect!  People need to listen to some of that vintage stuff every now and then.  One forgets how good some of that is...

Caren and Stacey made a peaches n' cream pie:

We had to taste it because it was a new recipe.  The verdict? 

"Yes Ma'am!"

Oh my lands is this good!

We also had a huge box of plums to make something out of....  We tried a tart and there is some plum jelly about.  I took some home to maybe add to the yogurt I made.

Or maybe I'll paint a picture of them.  I think they are so pretty...

So it turned out to be a pretty interesting baking day.  Mountain Women: innovative, spunky and using the same appliances since 1973.