One of my biggest beefs with living in China has been the fact that I’ve never had an oven.  Ovens are simply not the stock appliance that they are back in the States.  The traditional Chinese meal does not use anything which would require an oven and the only time most people in Shanghai eat food that was cooked from some kind of oven is at a restaurant serving pizza or at a Hong Kong style place (see here).  So I have been ‘in the market’, as it were, for a few months now.  Originally I had thought of buying a full oven, potentially even finding an external full oven that did not need to be installed into the kitchen cabinets.  That false hope turned sour when I basically discovered those do not really exist.

The market for ovens in China is pretty hilarious.  Naturally, it is a lot more difficult to actually shop for an oven at a store.  I went to several large appliance-type stores and the selection of ovens was close to nil.  The presentation of the oven, if a store did have one, was as if this machine is the most advanced piece of machinery and technology ever produced.  This oven will make your kitchen look beautiful, modern and your food delicious.  The problem of course is that all the ovens I saw kind of sucked.  I mean they were not horrible I guess, but they were certainly on the very low end of the oven spectrum.  This is logical too, the average potential oven buyer in China probably can’t distinguish between the fancy ovens and the mediocre ovens.  But unlike the ovens I’ve seen in the US, with all those fancy features like broil, convection, timers (yes timers are ‘advanced’ features in China), these ovens usually had two or three dials and that’s it.  To top it off, the prices of these things were ridiculous, upwards of $400!

So I let it pass, my hopes of someday having an oven in China took a backseat.  Just a few days ago, I couldn’t take it anymore.  I had an inclination over the weekend to just buy a huge toaster oven, since these things are essentially the same as a real oven just smaller.  And also since the big ovens have no features anyway, they are even more similar.  I perused Taobao.com, China’s response to eBay and the greatest Chinese web site on the face of the planet, and in no time, I found one.  The size was great too, 25L, enough to fit a whole chicken and it even included skewers, trays and these other semi-useful accessories.  The oven was delivered in only 1 day and now my oven is sitting right on my kitchen counter top.  Since I purchased it, I’ve cooked a full chicken, which was really tasty.  Last night, I made peanut butter cookies.  Surprisingly they came out pretty good, I was going through cookie withdrawals after not having a good cookie for months.

By the way, if you find yourself asking ‘Why is he talking about his oven?  I don’t want to read about his stupid oven’, then you should understand that this is now what makes my life exciting.  I’ve been reduced to getting so worked up over stupid crap like this (and this, this and especially this) that having and using a toaster oven is now like a paradise vacation.  I’m gonna go eat some cookies.