An oven & steamed broccoli!

I will start a new quest from today on. In the apartment I used to call my home we had a very nice oven: in fact, I may even call it the best electric oven I ever used in my entire life. I absolutely love baking cakes and I like the occassional deep fried pizza as well (a shame, I know!) so an oven is absolutely a must-have. So flash forward to when I moved into my new place. A somewhat larger (though messier) kitchen, gas instead of induction, and a microwave I can actually get along with. But no oven! Gah! Apparently, one of the former inhabitants of this apartment brought along a very fine oven that was used often by the housemates as well. But when she moved out she took the oven with her. Probably because it was a very useful oven, and an oven I would have loved to be able to use today. No oven dishes, no pizza... :(
So I am thinking of buying myself an oven. I just had a tax return so I might pull it off with that money, though I actually wanted to buy a new computer as well (luxury choices, how I hate those). I imagine the kind of things I would be able to do with my very own oven. Roasted shrimps? Baked salmon with a little bit of lemon? Potatoes and garlic with some more lemon? And the cakes! Especially the cakes I could make!

For now, however, I had to stick with just plain old boring cooking. Aside from the sumptuous dinner Sir G. & I had last Tuesday, I ate some jalapenos flavored beef (with coriander, some jalapenos) with lemon flavored risotto & broccoli steamed in garlic oil on Monday & the same jalapenos flavored beef but this time with a Japanese version of potato salad yesterday (= Wednesday).
The broccoli in garlic oil was one of my own ideas. For this, you need broccoli, some olive oil, some garlic, and some salt. Chop the broccoli while the water boils. Salt the water, then cook the broccoli for about three to four minutes. Heat the oil in a pan, put some chopped garlic in it and let it simmer for a while before throwing the broccoli in the pan and closing the pan off with a lid. Steam for about four minutes and you're done.
Now you're probably wondering why I cooked the broccoli first: well, I honestly had no idea what I was doing, and I thought that while experiments are great, you at least need to make sure the food is well heated to prevent bacteria from spreading. Sometimes when I only steam vegetables such as broccoli I seem not to take enough time, and it is still raw on the inside. So if I can prevent this by cooking it first, why not do exactly that? I hope that if anyone reads this they actually try to prepare this because I thought it was great! The garlic oil adds a little spice to the broccoli and if you finish it with some pepper it's even better.

Until next time!