oh, oven woes.

As of now, our oven is working just fine. But the night before Thanksgiving, the bastard decided to ruin two layers of cake, two dozen cookies, then shoot fire at me before dying. I was knee deep in Thanksgiving baking! So much wasted flour! It turns out the heating element in the oven had cracked, which caused it to arc (hence the shooting of fire). We put in an online order for a new heating element, but Thanksgiving consisted of me taking my acorn squash & kale pot pie fixin's to Ken's parent's house and assembling and baking it there. At least that part worked out, even though dessert was ruined.

This was filled with a savory squash puree, kale, onions, green beans, and yum. The pie crust made it even better!



We managed to get the heating element fixed within a week, so we didn't have to go too long without. A few days after we replaced that part, we had the bright idea to change out the burned out light bulb in the oven. It's just a light bulb, so no big deal, right? Well! Ken unscrews the old light bulb, and we hear a *pop* noise. The entire range shorts out! No power at all. Ken heads down to the basement, assuming the circuit breaker had tripped. But instead of it just tripping, the circuit breaker had blown out completely. Luckily, after a $20 trip to Home Depot, we had a new breaker that Ken successfully installed. And it worked! The range was back to normal, and with a new bulb. We were so worried that we were going to have to shell out for a new range. Not the right time for that at all. Everything's been great with the oven since then... but now somehow we have two more blown circuit breakers that need replacing, one for each bathroom. Ah, one thing at a time.

Once the oven was back up to speed, it was time to bake for a holiday cookie swap! After much debate, I finally decided on what kind of cookies to bring.

The always perfect Chewy Chocolate Raspberry Cookies from Veganomicon:



Lemon Cornmeal Cookies from The Vegan Cookie Connoisseur:



Shortbread (both naked and chocolate drizzled) from 100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes:



And some weird looking oatmeal, walnut chocolate chip cookies that I just threw together. They look like I did, for sure.



Hooray for finally getting some holiday baking done! I have some brand new cookbooks in my possession, so I anticipate more cooking and baking coming up this week.