Programming the oven

I am back to my schedule of teaching a class on Wednesdays, and getting home at nearly 8:00 p.m., hungry. I have been programming the oven to have dinner ready for me - the five-hour rice pudding from Waitrose Food that I programmed the oven to make a few weeks back turned out aboslutely perfect. So, encouraged, I left the house yesterday morning with the thought of writing a post last night, featuring pictures - taken with my new lens - of the warm, comforting broccoli casserole that my oven was going to cook, and I was going to eat for dinner, from a Jane & Micheal Stern recipe, printed in How to eat supper.

'course, it did not work out quite like that.

I set the oven to have my dinner ready at 8:15, but I had the car last night, so I got home at about 7:45, and the casserole was nowhere near done. So I thought, oh a handful of cashews while I wait, that'll be OK ... but at 8:15, the casserole still looked just too raw, with healthy green green broccoli, instead of soft well-cooked. I had a few peanut butter crackers and a few slices of salami. I cranked up the oven heat, and at 8:45, I almost burned my mouth eating my portion of the casserole. At 9:00 I scooped up a bowl of ice cream and watched a movie on DVD (Smart People, filmed in Pittsburgh, fell asleep watching it on cable, so I got the Netflix DVD) - blowing not only my vision of a warm, homey dinner, but also my calorie count for the day.....

... but possibly answering the question of if it's "starve a fever, feed a cold" or the other way round - because even though I went to bed with a little bit of an overfed tummy ache, the almost-cold symptoms I'd been feeling all day were completely gone - of course, they're back this morning.