It honestly didn’t occur to me until yesterday afternoon that there might be some connection between my love for Aga stoves and my earlier obsession with Easy-Bake Ovens.

Wow, and I call myself a feminist…

“Easy Bake Oven: Teaching girls their place since 1963″
Image: Ebaumsworld.com

I never did get an Easy-Bake Oven, no matter how much I begged for one. My exasperated mother told me I could just use the REGULAR oven if I wanted so desperately to bake something.

My mother just didn’t understand.

The clever artifice of the Easy-Bake Oven was an essential part of its charm for me: by the heat of an ordinary light bulb, one could produce a wonderful variety of cakes, cookies and pies, each a perfect miniature of the real thing. And actually edible, to boot!

The Easy-Bake oven was like a doll’s house come to life.

Nor am I the only person, nor even a member of the only sex, to suffer from an unrequited love for an Easy Bake Oven:

I cannot begin to tell you of the psychic agony of being a “sensitive” male child in the 60s (well maybe not sensitive just plain oddball) wanting and not being able to enunciate the X-Mas Love that Dare Not Speak Its Name: the EZ Bake Oven.

Five years ago, in celebration of the Easy-Bake Oven’s 40th anniversary, NPR ran a story featuring The Easy-Bake Oven Gourmet, a combination cookbook and retrospective written by David Hoffman.

With all due respect, Mr. Hoffman and NPR don’t understand, either.

Educational? Gourmet? Wild mushroom flan?

No, no, and GOOD HEAVENS no.

Easy-Bake Ovens, guys, are all about magic, Christmas, and multi-colored sugar sprinkles:

I’m 43 and I’ve just fulfilled a dream. As of a couple of weeks ago, I am the proud owner of an Easy-Bake Oven … Today, I pulled it out of my “tickle trunk” (bedroom closet) and showed it to my 4 year old nephew and informed him that we were going to bake Christmas cookies. His eyes lit up, and our day quickly shot up to a 10 on the excitement scale … I had my mini copper Christmas cookie cutters (which up until this point, had only been used with the playdough I made them — recipe off the ‘net) and sprinkles at the ready much to their delight. …Three batches later, I put the brakes on them eating anymore as their Dad would soon be here to pick them up and take them home for supper… Tomorrow for lunch, we’re going to try out the pizza recipe I found for Easy-Bake Ovens. The 4 year old is bringing some different sparkles from home for tomorrow’s afternoon session of Christmas cookie baking. Thanks for the memories Easy-Bake! Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night…   -Nadene, comment on beancounters.blogs.com

O, Sing It, Sister.

Smart, strong women read books.

This is the lesson I hope the daughters in our mother-daughter book club are learning.  We’ve just finished our 4th year together, and even though our daughters are growing taller than we are, we hope to continue.  We meet about once a month, and the girls take turns hosting and leading the discussion.  Moms help out by providing an activity and food. 

We’ve visited one author in her home and heard another one lecture about being a writer; we’ve marvelled over a local grandmother’s WWII rationing coupons while trying to bake without sugar; we’ve built tiny “Borrower” houses and been teased by our daughters when the books made us cry. 

These are the books we’ve read thus far.  You may recognize some old friends, but we discovered some really wonderful new ones, as well. 

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Creative Commons Photo, “Little Red”  by Flickr.com’s Aussie Patches, aka Ali J
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3rd Grade

• From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg
• Felicity (American Girls Collection Books) by assorted authors
• The Gadget Wars by Betsy Duffey
• The Magic Treehouse book #16. Hour of the Olympics by Mary Pope Osborne
• Molly (American Girls Collection Books) by assorted authors
• The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
• Emmy by Connie Jordan Green

4th Grade

• Island of the Aunts by Eva Ibbotson
• The other side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George
• Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
• Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder
• Joey Pigza Loses Control by Jack Gantos
• The Borrowers by Mary Norton
• Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry

 - To see rest of list, click here -