Cave Dwellers had it Good Because Fire

Captain's Log: Stardate Today: It's been six months since I crash landed in this jungle. The heat has lessened since my arrival but the humidity has not. The cats' space kibble is consistently soft and displeasing to them (they've taken to eating the lizards), and my temporary shelter has the marks of condensation streaking down the sides each morning. The natives have proven friendly, though my initial contact with them has revealed that they, too, are aliens on this this strange and lush planet; there may not be any native intelligent life here. 

There are some things I love about living here. One is the weather. Duh. It's the end of December and I am running around (okay, sitting around) barefoot. Santa was wearing flip flops while he delivered the presents to all the good girls and boys. Just kidding. There are no good girls and boys here. Also, Santa isn't real. Spoiler Alert.

One thing I still haven’t gotten used to: cooking on an electric stove. I just can't seem to figure it out. There's no FIRE. One needs fire to cook food properly. You cannot roast a weenie over a candle. Well, actually you can, but it takes forever and ends up tasting like loganberry spice. (2/10 would not recommend.) So I am using my prefab shelter stove-top instead, which is a glass surface electric contraption. There is no fire involved at all, unless I start one on accident while cooking, which has only happened a couple of times. (You say hockey puck, I say hamburger. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.)

The problem is, there's no way to control the heat on those things. The temperature settings are OFF, TEPID, and SURFACE OF THE SUN. My current cooking method is "bring to a boil on 'surface of the sun' for ten seconds then reduce heat to 'tepid' and simmer for three days. Also, I can't figure out how to clean the glass top once the food is done. Seriously, how do you clean a glass heating surface? Fire is self cleaning. Glass is not. What's even under the glass anyway? A tiny nuclear reactor? A Tesla coil? A newborn red dragon? I wish it was a dragon. Then there'd actually be fire involved. But I digress.

Initially, I thought this would be the easy part—I mean it's a flat piece of glass, right? Spray on the glass cleaner and wipe off the goop. Nope.  That doesn't work. It does disinfect the charred remains of my fried egg but doesn't actually remove the remains. I know what you're thinking, and NO, I didn't cook the egg directly on the glass surface. I considered it, but in the end opted to use a pan. I mean I may live like a 30-year-old bachelor most of the time, but I have a few standards.

So, once I get my food cooked, which, as I mentioned is a challenge, I have a mess to clean up. I try to stay on top of domestic tasks. For example, yesterday, I cleaned the cats' litter boxes. I mean, I know we've only been here six months, but they seemed a little dirty. But the stove-top just doesn't want to come clean. I would really like to find a product that would take the grime off. I have tried a few different options and nothing has worked. I do not have the time or money to buy every single product on the market and do a test. Someone just tell me what to buy. And, no, I am not interested in your great aunt Hilda's special recipe for household solvent that involves vinegar, Epsom salts, and the tears of a sad Borneo spider monkey. I don't know where to buy Epsom salts.

In summation, the living here is easy. If only I had fire there'd be nothing to complain about.