Their oven has a history of quitting.  Especially right before Thanksgiving.  Nearly every year as long as I’ve been around on Thanksgivings (which includes the season before we were married).

Merritt and I always took advantage of the occasions to brag on our tiny little $10 oven.  His folks found it at a garage sale long before we were married.  And it sat on the back porch of the store (when it still had a back porch!), but no one bought it.  Merritt and I thought it was awfully cute, however.  (He was good at asking “hinting” sort of questions, “Isn’t this stove cute?”)  Along with the yellow 50’s diner-style kitchen table, the Monarch stove’s tag had my name put on it, long before we were ever engaged.  Some people even slipped up and called it “Merritt and Gretchen’s stove.”  I did try to be proper and just refer to it as just for Merritt’s house.

It’s the cheapest appliance we bought (actually, I don’t know if we ever paid the store for it, but don’t tell!).  And it’s worked the best.  (Unlike our blender…and our waffle makers…)  It has a tray under the burners that slides out so you can clean up the crumbs, as well as a tray on the bottom of the oven for the same purpose.  It’s a pretty cool oven.  Not to mention that it is incredibly cute and vintage looking, to go long with the rest of our old-fashioned farm kitchen.  (I know I’ve posted a picture before…now if I could just find it.)

So it was an incredibly sad morning when I turned on my oven to cook “salted peanut chews” for a dinner…and it did not turn on.  The burners worked, but the oven wouldn’t heat up at all–the preheat light didn’t even come on.

This was Thursday morning.  I called Marlys.  Who had just gotten her new oven installed and working on Sunday.  “Guess what doesn’t work at my house this morning?”  We couldn’t believe it.  It was funny, but not funny at all.

I was very sad as I explained to my husband all the symptoms (or rather, lack thereof).  I love my oven.

Merritt was at work, and couldn’t come home until lunch time.  I tried flipping the breakers (which didn’t make any sense, since the stove top worked, but hey, anything was worth a try).  I turned it off and on a couple times.  No luck.

I called Katie to ask if she was going to be using her oven that afternoon.  She about had a heart attack, thinking Dad and Mom’s new oven was broken.  No, it was just mine.  But I was free to use hers, of course.

I kept studying it.  I noted that the clock still worked.  But what was that little knob there next to it?  I wasn’t used to seeing that red dot.  That knob wasn’t pointing towards off.  Hmmm…

I flipped the knob to the off position, and turned on my oven.  And there was much rejoicing.  That little red preheat light came on!

Apparently we’d somehow turned the time cook knob on when we were cleaning the stove top.  But since we never used the time cook feature, we always keep the time set to zero minutes.  So the time cook feature was turned on, but with no time left, the oven did not turn on.

I was so very happy.  I called everyone to share the good news.  And I proceeded to bake a big pan of “salted peanut chews” and an even bigger pan of “ultimate double chocolate brownies.”  I love my oven!