Teeny Tiny House: New Oven

Flashback to 2013 when we purchased our house. As with most homes, and especially in our case since the former owner was deceased, you don't truly know what is wrong with a house until some time after. One of the discoveries we made was a mice infestation. Luckily, hubby was able to solve that problem pretty quickly and we haven't had issues with mice since.

Fast forward to one month ago. Matt was late from work and I was putting a spaghetti dinner together with fresh garlic bread. I had the oven working overtime with three burners going simultaneously with the broiler for toasting. Suddenly the smoke alarm goes off, I check the bread in the oven, but it isn't finished nor burnt. The food on the stove top is also fine. Strange, right?

Hubby makes his way in the door and smiles at me because he can smell the burnt odor in the air. He obviously thinks that I must have burnt dinner again but I assure him that whatever is happening with the oven, it wasn't my cooking.

After dinner, the odor wasn't dissipating, if anything it was even more concerning since there was a slight "electrical" smell to it. Hubby pulled the oven out and started taking it apart. Finally asserting that the stench was coming from under the cook top, he pulled the entire oven out into the garage. He asked me to hold the top open so he could dig around in the insulation and find the problem. What we discovered was a desiccated body of a mouse. Apparently, 5 years ago when the mice had run of the house, this one had climbed into the stove in-between the cook top and oven and made its nest in the insulation and died. After all these years of being cooled and heated, the tiny mouse body had combusted and started a fire. I was horrified and disgusted and wished I could throw up 5 years worth of meals that had been cooked in this mouse-ridden oven. Needless to say this appliance stayed in the front yard until the recycler could come pick it up.

It took a couple of weeks of shopping and waiting for delivery, but our new oven arrived and boy, is it fancy! We ended up selecting a convection oven which cooks things to perfection. We didn't realize how poorly our old oven worked until we had this one. Everything is so hot! It even has a setting for dough proofing which I can't wait to use. We are hosting Thanksgiving this year and are very much looking forward to roasting a turkey.