Agreed. I have Australian multicooker and airfry oven. They aren't that expensive compared to delivery. I've cooked for several daily with a couple gas rings, a few scrawny pots, which were our mixing and serving bowls, as well, with table forks for utensils. But you have to want to cook good food...

When we were having our kitchen re-done, we cooked on the BBQ, crockpot, hotplate and toaster oven (before airfriers) for 6 weeks! We made it through with some pretty tasty meals! Have never done uber anything! (Oops, a couple times while traveling)

@Nancy Todd- Sounds like when we had our kitchen redone 😁 We had a microwave, a sandwich toaster and a George Foreman grill for about six weeks. This was thirty years ago so no air fryers and the microwave was pretty basic.

And thinking about it, when DD was little, when we travelled we stayed in little stationary caravans. I would take the sandwich toaster, which had three different sets of interchangeable plates- one pair flat, one pair with a ridge that seals a sandwich around the edge and the last pair waffle plates. I cooked dinner on it.

I have also never "ubered' anything, including an uber for transportation. When my girls were younger and we travelled I stuck an electric frying pan under the seat of our conversion van and used that for cooking everything from eggs and pancakes to chili and burgers. My oven quit one year just before Christmas and I baked brownies in the Nesco, so there's always some option or another.

Annie

Sounds like this woman just wanted sympathy, attention and likely donations. Most functional adults know better though. Even when our whole oven/stove died years ago, I cooked meals very easily, because I had an electric skillet, a griddle, an air fryer, an instant pot. I had one of those portable burners if I needed more than the electric skillet. During the summer I almost never turn my oven on, and I cook pretty much every single day. And I work full time. 12 hour night shifts. Though to be fair, I have no children that I have to feed. Its likely easier because her kids like takeout or fast food more than home cooked food, and sometimes its just easier to give them what they want,and lucky her she thinks she had an perfectly good excuse for it with a non working oven. But thats her choice and therefore, the cost is HER decision and her problem isn't it.

Also, I am not a landlord but is it grounds for eviction for a tenant to lodge valid complaints? Seems petty at best and illegal and vindictive at worst, as she will have a difficult time finding housing with an eviction on her credit. Probably more to this story.

The laws are local. There's no way to know all the complexity of who did and said what. In many places tenants can be evicted for no reason. Where I live, there has to be a very good reason. Here, dwellings generally must have a stove. In other places, rentals are as is. I assume the story was from Australia, and we'll have to ask Colleen what the norm is there. ;)

Many people just don't cook these days. I find it really sad that mums don't think it's important to feed their children well. Jamie Oliver did a series a few years ago about cooking cheap, fast and healthy meals and one Mum said she had to take her child to Macdonald and had never cooked for her child. Everyone blames it on a lack of education. I don't know what it's like in Australia or the States, but in Britain, you'd have to live with your head in a bucket not to be educated about food. It's on TV all day every day.

It's not just a lack of education. I once worked with a woman who was a qualified chef, as was her husband, though he no longer worked as a chef. They only fed their daughter chicken nuggets (rolls eyes)

It's technically illegal to evict a tenant without just cause (ie, not for complaining about the lack of required repairs), but getting an eviction notice overturned is like pulling teeth and landlords know it.

Here in the USA, there are two all day food channels, plus cooking shows on public broadcasting, and mixed in with other programming on other channels. Plus YouTube, etc. But not much of it is about good nutrition and healthy eating, Often, it's restaurant cooking based, where they criticize not enough salt because the leaders/judges have blown out their palates long ago. If you look for it, however, there are good sources, probably including that Jamie Oliver show. And more young people are interestied in cooking in general, and good quality food, healty diets, etc., than there were for awhile. The younger people are bemused by the ... "millennials?" ... who would rather be bums and hustle housing and meals off family members and friends rather than working jobs that'll pay for rent and groceries. The younger ones seem to be doing things like cooking nutricious meals, working actual jobs, paying their way, getting married... Normal people stuff. But this is anecdotal, not quantifiable reasearch, so perhaps it's always been like that both ways, and ir's just who gets noticed when. I just have a hard time imagining being a parent who'd put a child on a steady diet of kibble. It's not good for your dog, so why would it be good for the kids!?! "Not hungry" does not equal well nourished!

I think it's wrong to presume that woman actually knows how to cook for real. Lots of people don't. Putting frozen food in the oven counts as 'cooking' for such folks, I think.

FWIW, I read something awhile back about CA law that does not require a fridge in rental properties, and than many people take their refrigerators with them when they move - many anecdotes of people who were not aware of the fact when they got their first apartment, and businesses that specialize in supplying and transporting refrigerators for tenants as well.

My lease specifies the landlord is responsible for providing/maintaining all the major appliances in good working order. Our biggest beef is that it's taken weeks for issues to be resolved so far

Was it really an oven only - or a range?

I don't know about Australia, but I learned from the Kitchens forum on GW that people, mostly in the NE, I think, say "oven" meaning "range". Shocked me.

I don't know if CA law used to require refrigerators, but I don't think it was actually specified back when. Most apartements did have them, however. My first places in college did. But sometime in the '80's landlords stopped providing them. I think too many had been left to grow too disgusting to be worth cleaning. My apt. in grad school had no fridge, while the next place had one, but the manager was glad to put it in storage so I could use my own from the former place.

I don't know the most current rules, but the only requirement used to be a heater and cooking. I think SROs had leniency, but I think most had hot plates. Perhpas nowadays a microwave might count for SROs. But an efficiency/studio/bachelor had to have a proper cooking appliance. Nowadays, perhaps a convetion/MW combo and a domino cooktop would be adequate, though a small range might be required. And I think code goes city by city still.. Additionally, I think air conditioning may be required in some places, now. It used to be that appliances not required by code were not required to be maintained. That is, if it broke, too bad, at least you had free use of it before it broke, unless those features were spelled out in a lease.

My own presumption is thet the woman in the story didn't actually know how to cook. But it would be logical for someone having children to learn what to feed the kids to make them healthy and strong. And to learn some very basic cooking to be able to provide that.