I used to cook a lot. When I lived in a shared house I often cooked for everyone. When I lived by myself I lost some of my motivation, but when i cooked, it was with increased creativity and of a more experimental nature.

Then I moved here.

The DB is more a traditional than experimental eater.

I don’t really cook anymore. We eat a lot of bread with cheese and salami, like respectable Germans are supposed to, and we get invited to DB’s parents’ once or twice a week. None of them are into ‘foreign food’ (apart from Chinese duck).

On Saturday, the DB painted the part of the boat that would be under water if it wasn’t on a trailer. I was put in charge of 2 frozen pizzas.

Once upon a time I made my own pizzas, these days I don’t bother. I don’t get home early enough for the dough to rise before DB starves, and he’s not convinced that they’re any better. Ho hum.

So anyway, there I was with the task of ‘cooking’ 2 frozen pizzas.

I turned the oven on, got the pizzas out of the freezer, unwrapped them, placed them carefully onto 2 baking trays and slid them into the oven remembering to set and check the timer.

I went to sort the freezers out, going back and forth between kitchen and garage. After a while DB said I ought to check on the pizzas. The timer hadn’t done it’s thing yet, but in I went to check.

It was a good thing I did. Smoke was billowing out of creeping round the sides of the oven door.

The pizzas looked fine.

I looked closer and figured out the bottom of one was burnt, although the top wasn’t even nearly ready.

I rescued the burnt pizza and went to tell the DB that his oven sucks.

He looked up at me from beneath the boat and said I’d probably set it wrong.

Gee thanks, as if there were multiple options for turning an oven on!

I went back inside and studied the oven. Apparently you can either set the oven to a specific heat, or choose where the heat comes from. I played with the dials a bit, put the pizzas back in the oven and promptly burned the top of the previously unscathed pizza. I swapped them round and waited until the second one had reached a suitable degree of bubbly and took both of them out.

I tried scraping some of the burn off the bottom of the pizza, but called it quits when the topping fell off.

I chopped them both up, and arranged the pieces on 2 plates, trying to ensure DB got not only the least burnt pieces, but also the least uncooked, and summoned the good man.

He was very polite, considering.

Afterwards, he suggested we go out for dinner. Even offering to invite his parents to try the local Indian restaurant with us…….