I freeze bacon regularly, because we smoke our own and there's no way we can eat an entire pork belly, or even an entire belly half. So we cure it, smoke it, slice it and freeze it. It will keep well up to a year frozen, but it never lasts that long unless I bury a package accidentally under something like beef tongue or soup bones. I've never tried to freeze it after cooking, Cooper would never forgive me if I took his lovely freshly cooked bacon and froze it, LOL. I do cook extra sometimes and reheat it later, keeping it refrigerated until tomorrow's BLT or whatever. Annie

The first thing I would do is check your oven temperatures, as has been mentioned. If that's OK, then I'd start a checklist until I found the problem, I guess. I can second the vote on the danish dough whisk, Renee sent me one, and a second one for the Princess, it's great for muffins and quick breads and whisks through tough cookie dough too, a great and relatively inexpensive tool. So, if your oven is good and you are checking your baked goods for doneness, the next thing I'd check is the flour to be sure it's fresh and dry. If that's not the problem, I'd try mixing less and see if that helps. You might check your leavenings too, make sure your baking powder is fresh, your yeast is good, etc. I doubt that it's the heat or the humidity, as many cooks here have baked goods turn out fine in the south. Elery's sister lives in Tennessee and her cakes, muffins, cornbread and biscuits, etc., come out fine. It may just be a matter of adjusting to your environment and your new oven, having been used to California and a different stove. Good luck! Annie

I wasn't sure where in Minnesota you lived. So here is some links of what I found in the whole state. Good Luck! http://www.chefspace.com/ http://www.dinnerdr.com/ http://www.dinnertonight.biz/ http://www.homeappetitdinners.com/ http://www.letsdish.net/ http://www.mixitupmeals.com/ http://www.mydinnerparty.net/ http://www.simplytothetable.com/ http://www.socialegourmet.com/ Here is website that list others all over. http://www.easymealprep.com/main/direct01.php

To supplement pillog's comment, consider the following. In the image above, a commercial hood with a tad too little air flow is attempting to capture and contain rising hot air from a hot cooking surface. Because this is a commercial hood, the gap between the cooking surface and the hood is probably four feet. The heat-induced variations in the index of refraction of the rising hot air are imaged by schlieren photography. Now imagine an 18-inch pop-up at the back (left) of the cooking surface. It would dimensionally be a bit more than a third of the height to the hood. It would have to move the rising hot plume from near the front of the cooking surface to the back and into whatever aperture was provided on the pop-up. Considering that the hot surface can generate a greasy plume rising at more than three feet per second, to get the plume to deviate steeper than 45-degrees to vertical would require a horizontal air velocity around 3 ft/min at the front, corresponding to some large multiple of that at the pop-up where the narrow dimension is (guessing from the pictures) not over 4 inches or one fifth the distance to the front of the range-top. The pop-up air collection aperture might be a tad loud under those conditions if enough air flow could be achieved. And on the subject of airflow, it looks to me from skimming their literature that Best failed to mention that the rated flow rate of their blowers is achieved hanging in the air, and not sucking air through a narrow width pop-up and thence via a duct (that may have an elbow behind the range and one below). For the higher flow rates, one would use an 8- or 10-inch duct; but that would require significant spacing from the wall to even hope for a configuration like Best shows in the their brochure. Perhaps an 8 or 10-inch duct could go straight out the wall to an external blower. My sense is that getting much more than 300 CFM through a 36-inch by 2-inch pop-up (0.5 square foot) would be a challenge for the listed blowers, perhaps even with their largest blower, but this is dependent on many factors. (300 CFM flow is 600 CFM/sq. ft. in the pop-up, maybe 300 CFM/sq. ft. at the pop-up aperture. For comparison, I pull about 90 CFM/sq. ft. through my Wolf Pro Island hood aperture. But being a hood, it makes use of the rising plume velocity to aid capture; the air flow is mainly to aid containment when the hood is large enough.) So, bottom line, ignoring flame disturbances if applicable, the Cattura may be able to capture hot greasy plumes at the rear burners, but I would doubt that it is effective at the front burners except for what Best showed in their video -- steam -- which has a low upward velocity above a pot compared with hot grease plumes from griddles, woks, and grills. In any case, I would suggest taking any opportunity you might have to witness a demonstration of effectiveness and noise. A demonstration is worth a 1000 analyses, including my analyses. For a demonstration bring a pan and some peanut oil and heat it to the smoke point. Then you can see the results without schlieren photography, and you can decide on the acceptability of the noise and the potential for escaped grease and odor. One does have some control of where particular foods are cooked relative to the pop-up.