A Lightbulb Moment

This week I had a rare moment of clarity in my life, but to explain it I have to start with a bit of history.

Mario's mother has an oven that is so old and so weak that it basically serves as a warming device only. It does not get hot enough to actually cook anything. On top of that, almost no ovens in this country have thermostats. Which just means you turn them on, turn the gas up high or down low, and they just continually heat at either a faster or slower rate. It's something like cooking over a camp fire.

When we got our oven, I made Mario search all over the city for an oven with a thermostat that actually CONTROLLED THE TEMPERATURE of the oven. He thought I was crazy, my very kind and uncritical MIL just raised her eyebrows, and we spent 3x the normal price so I could have an oven with a thermostat.

I did not understand how anyone cooked - my MIL just told me she makes everything on the stove... WHAT??

So, on Monday I was invited to an Essen party - kind of like a Tupperware party but for pots and pans. I knew my MIL had a few and they are supposedly great. I just thought they were like cast-iron pots. So I go, and while looking over the pots, ask the sales lady if they can go in the oven. She looked at me horrified.

I was soon to learn that these are special pots, that act like a mini oven, so everything, from cakes to breads to sauces to WHOLE CHICKENS can be cooked in them, right on the stove top, and all in about 1/3 the time it would take to cook them in the oven. I started laughing out loud, and then had to explain, in terrible, grammatically incorrect, poorly accented Spanish (another blog, another time) that I was finally understanding how my MIL cooks...

My favorite part is that they kept talking about how these pans are so great because you save so much gas/money by not using the oven. This feature is even highlighted on the home page of their web site. Let me break down the pesos for you:
average Essen pan: 300$arg
average monthly gas bill in my house where I run the gas heater all day long, use my oven liberally, average 30 minute showers with my gas water heater, wash clothes in hot water,etc.: 30$arg

How many months of saving on oven gas would it take me to pay off my Essen pan?? I might have bought one, but I don't like that they only come in ugly brown.