The right oven (from Facebook)

One of the challenges of having been exposed to American ovens and enjoying baking but living in a country where even the bigger home “ovens” (like the one we have at home) are smaller than regular-sized American ovens, is the constant desire for an American-sized oven.

One of the things I want to do a lot at our Free School is baking. It can be a great group activity and one in which one can immediately see, taste, and smell (maybe even hear, too?) the result of one’s hard labor.

We’ve debated a few different options… Buy two of the type we have at home? But that would take up a lot of counter space and would require us to increase the breaker’s amperage to above the level of an average household which would increase our electricity bill. A lot of the bigger ovens are gas operated. The property being built now is an all-electric house. We could have gas for just the oven, but it’d be complicated and also has an effect on the safety (?) level of the property. We even thought about getting an actual American oven through a friend who regularly goes to one of the American bases in Japan, but if anything ever happened to it… Maintenance and after-sales service would be an issue. We’ve looked at buying a new electric oven (about $400-$500), changing our whole kitchen to one of the new style kitchens that include an actual oven ($too many 000’s), and yesterday we finally went to a big warehouse that has new and old ovens. I don’t think we found one that is right for us, but it was a good learning experience.

Big shout out to Rocky who made us aware of such stores and is better at finding things than anyone I know who has 20-20 vision, and Rieko who found the store that we went to.

Big warehouse with lots of old and new items, mostly for commercial use. Lots of big pieces of equipment, but inside of most of them actually fit in less than the “big” oven we have at home :( So many ovens of various sizes and shapes, but none that were right for us

After our probably, unfortunately, unsuccessful trip, we went to one of the Korean shops close by. We don’t have one close to us, so it was a rare opportunity for us. We also tried the Korean restaurant upstairs for the first time. It was so nice to see things like jajangmyun and Korean-style fried chicken on their menu! We tried a few different things and it wasn’t bad, but wasn’t great either.

I even tried the plastic glove thing they do in K-dramas (and wasn’t a thing when we lived in Seoul) for a bit but then gave up. So much easier just eating with my bare hands!

Jajangmyun! It tasted more like 짜파게티, what we usually eat at home, than 짜장면ㅜㅜ It tasted ok, just didn’t taste like real Korean jajangmyun. The noodles weren’t the usual jajangmyun noodles either. Or maybe they weren’t boiled properly? Anyway, something just wasn’t quite right... :( 김밥 & 진짜 오래만에 마셔 본 밀키스ㅋㅋ 마늘 통닭과 내가 엄청 좋아하는 통닭집 무!!! 마늘 통닭, 겉은 바삭하고 속은 쥬시해서 좋았음! 맛도 나쁘지 않았음. 양념통닭과 무. 이 통닭도 굽긴 잘 구웠는데 뭔가 좀 부족한 느낌… 양념통닭과 떡볶이 사이의 맛? 드라마에서 이렇게들 먹길래 나도 처음으로 해 봤다ㅋㅋ 한번 경험한 것으로 충분!ㅋ 원래 먹던 대로 그냥 손으로 먹을란다ㅋㅋ

Can’t wait for international travel to become normal again!

Please pray for us to be able to find the right oven for the right price! Our search continues…