A Long Distance Affair

My combi oven is arriving today.....in less than an hour if the FedEx tracking site is accurate.

By the time it gets here, it'll have had a lovely 1455 mile sightseeing trip from its starting point in Keasbey, New Jersey last Friday. Once in the Keasbey depot, it pretty much stayed there all weekend as in FedExland, nothing moves on a weekend. Well not my oven anyway. Hopefully it wasn't turning out baked potatoes for the employees and instead was just sitting there, like most humans, just waiting for Monday morning to come along.

After a bit of a lie in, the oven left the depot at 8:45am on its long haul down the East coast. Passing the City of Brotherly Love, it took in the skylines of Baltimore and Washington before hitting Richmond, Virginia - not literally I hope.

Then the scenery will have improved as it passed down through the Carolinas and into Georgia, passing close to the good old Southern town of Savannah where it probably tried to make a break for the home of Paula Deen. It's a classy oven.

Leaving Georgia and entering Florida, the route took a bizarre turn as the oven continued down the East coast of the state and passed Sebring by 100 miles. If I'd known, I'd have waved. Obviously wanting a few hours by the seaside, it reached Pompano Beach, near Ft. Lauderdale, at 6:19pm yesterday and so just missed the sunset. So far it had covered 1227 miles and deserved a bit of a rest.

Almost 8 hrs later, at 2:10am this morning, it decided to have a look at the West Coast and crossed the state to Ft. Myers, a short trip of 150 miles. I'm sure it loved the calm waters of the Bay of Mexico as we all do but there was little time for sightseeing as less than 90 minutes later, it was off on the last leg back up North to Sebring, in mid Florida.

Now it's only 80 miles from Ft. Myers to Sebring and it set off at 7am but the sad part of all this is that I'll probably not be here to take delivery. I'm going to play bocce ball at 9am and although I'd normally pass up the game to be here for my oven, it's a Men v Women game and with the women outnumbering the men, my presence, despite my lack of bocce ability, is needed this morning. I've asked Dennis to be my stand in and as the oven weighs in at 52 lbs, I'm kinda glad he'll be doing the standing in.

And just what is a combi oven I hear you ask ?


Well it's an oven that looks very much like a standard microwave oven but is a little bigger as it's also a convection oven. It's also a grill/broiler and all 3 cooking methods can be used separately or in 'combination' to achieve the result you want. I have one at home in England and being able to cook a baked potato that is fluffy on the inside and crispy on the outside in 10 minutes is alone worth the cost of the oven. To achieve that I just set the convection oven setting to full power and the microwave setting to 70% of full power and that's it. The oven constantly switches between the two cooking methods to produce the perfect result.

Well that's the theory - I'll let you know how it all turns out after this oven has got over its journey. Coming to Florida from New Jersey can be traumatic even for an inanimate object.

UPDATE : It was delivered at 10am.........next door ! The neighbours then took it on the shortest leg of it's journey, 20 feet to our house and it's now in position with the clock set and awaiting its first chance to shine..........that'll probably be a baked/jacket potato and some reheated Mexican leftovers from last night for my supper. Nothing too strenuous for its maiden outing.

Oh and the bocce score was Women 8, Men 4. Obviously all the men were concerned about my oven !