Derelict Sunday - Spooky - Oven

I hope that this will fit the "spooky" theme for DS this week, as the dark reddish/brown congealed yuk looks rather like blood.

As you'll realise this is actually the inside of our old derelict oven, and the stains are accumulated fat which must have evaporated and escaped from the oven cavities and then congealed inside the back of the oven over the years .

I took this shot before the men came to take it away to the cooker graveyard this morning. We've had it about 20 years so it's not done badly; for the last 5 years or more the oven temperatures have been 20-30C above the actual setting so we've had to allow for this when setting it. For the last 3-4 years the fan in the main oven has sounded like we had a large mouse in there, and it usually needed a tweak to make it start (so we couldn't reliably use the programmer function). But we put up with all that. However a few days ago the fan finally failed completely, so we've had only the little top oven to use.

We'd hoped it would last until next year as we fancy having the kitchen at least partially remodelled then (it's 27 years since its last refit). But there's no way we could expedite that before Christmas (and a turkey wouldn't fit in the top oven) so we've had to get a new oven to fit the same space for the time being. In fact now it's fitted it looks so good that maybe we'll back off on the remodelling for a while longer - we'll see.

I'm off now to try out the new appliance for the first time. We'll probably miss the mouse squeaks!

(PS My Editor's now seen the photo and she reckons there are ghost shapes on the inside of the back cover - see if you can spot them!)