The Oven

In our push for bigger, better, and more complicated experiences, certain commonplace pleasures get pushed aside and we forget about them in favor of their flashier, smoother, and tighter counterparts: four door sedans; potatoes; pornography with vaginal sex and pubic hair.

But you know what? Sometimes those simple gifts really are the best gifts, especially when styled into a photorealistic likeness of Mickey Mouse.

Naturally, what I'm referring to is using the oven to cook.

In our excitement over enamelware, grills, pressure cookers, and All-Clad frying pans, we forget that just roasting something in the oven is a beautiful thing.

Sure it takes longer than stove top cooking, but it's largely unattended work. For instance, I took out a roasting pan, poured in some frozen vegetables and a couple chicken breasts and poured a can of tomato soup over it all. It's now in the oven at 400 degrees and will be my dinner for a couple days.

Yeah it's going to take a good hour plus to cook (because all the components are frozen), but I'm sitting on my ass drinking wine, watching the Oscars (which were so fucking tame and lame--maybe next year there'll be burlesque shows), and writing this while it cooks. A tiny bit of advanced planning means dinner is cooked while I do whatever the fuck I want. It's like having a 1950's housewife without the closet lesbianism.

So don't neglect your oven. It's there and waiting for you. Just keep tabs on what's cooking so it doesn't dry out and serve whatever you're cooking with whole wheat couscous.