My life has meaning again!

The oven is fixed! The nice GE repairman came by today (on a holiday!) and replaced the glowbar. It turns out that out attempts to relight the pilot light were unnecessary- yet highly humorous looking back on it. There was no way we would have been able to fix this ourselves. A new (clean) oven would have been nice, but the repair was cheaper than a full replacement. I can't believe this thing is 20+ years old and just now had something break.

Oh, and the stuff underneath the stove? SCARY. There were not one, not two, but FOUR pens under there! None are mine because I've never lost a pen in the kitchen. There were pasta noodles, massive dust bunnies, a bottle cap, pills (?!), and a knife. ???? LOL. When I told my mom, she asked if it was a good one. OMG, I wouldn't keep anything I found under there! The only thing (other than possibly some of that food) that was mine was a lid from a yogurt container. The other funny thing under there? A dog treat. Since we only have cats...that's definitely not ours. Despite the grossness and mortification of a stranger seeing this filth (I'm sure he's seen MUCH worse), that area is now clean. WIN!

As soon as the GE man left, I fired up the oven so I could bake the strawberry fig newtons I put together yesterday.  The recipe I used can be found here, but I added in some criminally expensive dried strawberries and used whole wheat pastry flour in place of the regular whole wheat. My dough didn't come out like hers- more like a cookie instead of the doughiness that a newton has. And since my dough would not yield to the rolling pin, I ended up pressing one disk into the bottom of a pan, spread on the strawberry/fig mixture, and then smooshed the remaining dough onto the top.

Despite these not turning out how I expected/wanted, they're still pretty tasty. Dangerously tasty...I had saved some of the strawberry/fig mixture to use on my oats this morning, which I sadly forgot about in lieu of some dark chocolate almond butter. Tomorrow perhaps! This recipe came at a good time for me as I was thinking about trying to make my own to "save" money. Barbara's Bakery has some awesome fig bars out there (if you can find them), but they're over $4 at Kroger, which I think is a little ridiculous for a package of cookies. After purchasing the dried figs and strawberries, that store price is looking pretty good, LOL. The berries I found at the Upper Arlington Whole Foods (the Dublin store didn't have them)...for $18.99/lb. Isn't that INSANE? I did try a couple to see how they were, and go figure, delicious! I really want a dehydrator now, but it's going to be awhile. Hopefully I can get one during the summer when we have all that wonderful fresh fruit at the farmers' markets. Another lesson learned from this experiment? I LOVE dried figs! I'm not a fan of the fresh ones because the taste isn't there for me plus they look creepy and alien on the inside.

I'll leave you with this (blurry) photo of Arwen taken yesterday while we were trying to sort out what was wrong with the stove. You know how cats are- if there is a space, they will fill it. Said space is under the oven where the broiler drawer pulls out. And who knew it got that dusty in there? Don't worry, it's all nice and clean now!