The last time our oven was on was 7 a.m. on June 12, when I baked sugar cookies for the World Cup party before the kitchen warmed up. It's off now until September, give or take a birthday cake. The garage thermometer hit 104 on Wednesday, and the kitchen stayed close to the 76 on the thermostat all week, which is the whole point.
Last June I did my first no-oven week and learned that it mostly comes down to planning which appliance each night gets. This year I didn't even have to think about it much. Here's the week, Monday through Sunday, with the cost of each dinner and the grocery total.
The week
- Monday: hamburger steaks with onion gravy, made in the cast iron on the stovetop, with mashed potatoes and green beans. The beef came from my bulk buy in May. $13.40.
- Tuesday (office day): cold peanut noodles with a Costco rotisserie chicken, cucumbers and carrots. The only heat involved was ten minutes of boiling water for the spaghetti. Eli had plain noodles with butter and chicken on the side. $11.60.
- Wednesday: chicken fajitas on the Weber kettle. Matt grilled the chicken and pulled Eli's plain strips first, then put my cast iron right on the grate for the peppers and onions, which kept the pepper smoke outside where it belongs. H-E-B tortillas, warmed on the grill. $15.10.
- Thursday (office day): air fryer night. Plain chicken strips for Eli in one basket, buffalo strips for everyone else in the other, then fries in two rounds, never one. A bag salad on the side. $12.30.
- Friday: fend-for-yourself Friday. Leftover fajitas and cheese quesadillas on the electric griddle.
- Saturday: Matt smoked a pork shoulder on the pellet grill, using the smoke tube the boys gave him for Father's Day. Pulled pork sandwiches with coleslaw and corn on the cob. $17.40.
- Sunday: pulled pork tacos, with the leftover pork crisped in the cast iron, and charro beans from the Instant Pot. $6.80.
Six dinners came to $76.60, a little over $2.50 a serving, partly because the ground beef was bought on sale and the pork shoulder fed us twice.
The groceries
The whole week, including breakfast and lunch for three kids at home every day, snacks, and the household list:
- Aldi, Monday morning with Rosie in the cart: $168.52
- Kroger pickup, Wednesday: $42.67
- Walmart+ delivery, Thursday: $64.81, mostly milk, paper goods, sports drinks and a case of sparkling water Matt now considers a basic need
That's $276.00, $11 over our $265 budget. Last year's no-oven week was $268 on a $250 budget, so we were further over then. Summer always runs over, and I've stopped pretending it won't. The dinners aren't where the money goes. It's the lunches, the popsicles and the watermelons, and three kids who are home and hungry every two hours.
What went sideways
Saturday's pork shoulder. Matt put it on at 6 a.m., went out to mow before the heat, and didn't check the pellet hopper. Around noon it ran low, the grill couldn't hold temperature, and the shoulder sat in the stall at about 160 degrees for longer than it should have. By the time he noticed, the grill had dropped below 200. He refilled it, brought it back up, and the pork finished fine, just an hour late. We ate at 6:45, and Matt has now taped a note to the hopper lid that says "CHECK ME," in his own handwriting, which I appreciate.
The other small thing: the air fryer still blows warm air out the back. It's pointed at the window now, the way I set it last year, and it's nothing like having the oven on. But I could feel it from the table on Thursday.
What's different from last year
Two things made this year easier. The pellet grill means Matt can smoke something on a Saturday without babysitting a fire for twelve hours in the heat, and that one cook covered two dinners. And the freezer is in better shape than it was last June, with the bulk ground beef and a stack of freezer lunches doing a lot of quiet work.
So the week ran $276.00, $11 over, with the oven off the entire time.
One more thing happened this week that isn't on the paper plan: the plug-in meter came back out of the junk drawer. It's been a year since I measured what each appliance costs to run, our electric rate has changed since then, and every plug-in that cooked a dinner here this week went through the meter, the pellet grill included. The numbers are coming in a few days.
