What Happens When Your Kitchen Doesn’t Have an Oven…

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Having lived in the dorms and eaten at my college’s dining hall for my freshmen and sophomore years, the prospect of living in a suite-style flat while abroad was exciting. Probably the thing I most looked forward to was the kitchen. While I don’t love cooking (baking is another story), I had dreams of making lasagna, stuffed pasta shells, and other goodies in my flat’s kitchen. No more ramen cooked in the microwave for me; it was like I was going to be a true grown-up. Or as a certain wooden puppet-turned-human storybook character would say, “I’m a real boy girl!”

So when I arrived at the university the first day and walked into my flat’s kitchen, I was more than disappointed to learn that there wasn’t an oven. Everything else was there: fridge, stovetop, sink, microwave, and table. No oven. According to my welcome packet, the microwave had an oven function. After one failed attempt at using this mysterious oven setting, I gave up on the idea of baking anything. I then had to think of everything that I could make using the stovetop or without cooking at all. My diet in England mostly consisted of:

• Sandwiches-Easy, didn't require any cooking whatsoever.  
• Cereal-Again, no cooking required.
• Spaghetti-Substitution for my lasagna dreams.
• Eggs-Boiled or scrambled, eggs were fast and easy to make.
• Stir fry-The local Morrisons carried prepackaged vegetable stir fry mixes. Thrown in a pan with some sauce, these required very little effort. 
• Premade meals from the supermarket-Supermarkets in the UK have a variety of refrigerated and frozen options. They aren’t like the sectioned-off plastic container ones that come to mind when you think of frozen meals in the US. They actually taste good.

Not the most well-rounded diet ever. There were times when I actually put some meat into the things I cooked, but I survived mainly on the above items. Hopefully during your time in the UK you’re more creative. Your kitchen might even have an oven (my blog coauthor has informed me that her flat didn’t have an absentee oven problem).

-L.