F8, F2, and no, they aren't football commands by Debra H. Goldstein

F8, F2, and no, they aren’t football commands by Debra H. Goldstein

I bet I know something you don’t know! It’s something I’m not even sure the protagonist of the Sarah Blair series I write for Kensington knows. For those of you who don’t recall, Sarah, as she demonstrated in One Taste Too Many, the first book in the series, is more frightened of the kitchen than she is of murder. Although her amateur sleuth skills improve in Two Bites Too Many, Three Treats Too Many and the upcoming Four Cuts Too Many, the reality is that she still doesn’t really know the difference between a walk-in freezer and a regular one or between a butcher’s knife and one used for de-boning. That’s why I’m certain she doesn’t know what it means when an oven stove combination flashes F8 or F2.

Sadly, I do.

I say sadly because I learned about each of these flashes the hard way. My story, and I’m sticking to it, is that a few years ago, I decided to clean my oven. I locked the door, turned the buttons accordingly, and waited. Nothing seemed to engage properly, so I flipped the knob to off and tried to start again. Suddenly, there was a sizzling sound, a slight flash and everything was silent. The only thing out of

place was the F8 where the time on the clock had been. I’d blown the brain of my oven. That one took about three weeks from diagnosis to receipt and installation of the parts.

Recently, I’ve been doing a lot more cooking. Because my usual fare was getting boring, I decided to try a service that my daughter uses. For the past five weeks, I’ve ordered 2-4 dinners that come complete…and luckily the ingredients are labeled because I don’t recognize half of them. My husband and I have been pleased with the results and actually amazed that most of the dinners look exactly like the pictures they send as a model for plating.

This is where the F2 comes in. One of the meals was small steaks, a vegetable, and an au gratin type potato. The instructions called for slicing the potatoes into thin slices, putting them in a tablespoon of oil on the stovetop, coating them a bit, and then putting the cast iron frying pan or whatever one used into the oven to finish them off while the steaks cooked – all at 350 degrees. Well, I don’t have a frying pan that I wanted to put in the oven, so I took a cookie sheet – put the steaks on one side and the coated potatoes now topped with some butter on the left and put everything in to bake. There was no question that the potatoes got done like they should, but the steaks weren’t the way we were going to want to eat them. They needed more time to cook.

I took the potatoes out, leaving the residue of them on the cookie sheet, and turned the dial from bake to broil. Only problem, I forgot the rack was higher than it usually is for broiling. Sitting in my sunroom, I looked up at the oven and didn’t even need to put on a light to see the flames coming off the part of the cookie sheet where the potatoes had been. Needless to say, I put the fire out. As I did, I noticed that where the time is usually reflected on the stove, it now read F2 – the universal message for the oven is on fire.

Need I say anymore? Sarah Blair comes by her skills naturally. Oh, and the steaks – perfectly seared. My husband thought it was one of the best meals I’d made.