P-C, are you saying the oven shuts off or just that the coils cool down and aren't red anymore?

I can't tell the difference. There are two dials, one with OFF - BAKE - TIME BAKE (what the hell is the difference between bake and time bake?) - BROIL. And then the other with the temperature. Above the temp dial is a red light that turns on if I turn the dial past about 375. So I turn to BAKE and I turn to 400.

The red light goes on, and the coils heat up, fine. A few minutes later, I hear a *click* as the red light goes off. I look inside the oven, and the coils are no longer red either. And then, a few minutes later, the red light clicks on again. And then a few minutes later, it clicks off. If I increase the temp on the dial a tad, the red light turns on again and will stay on if I bring the temp back to 400. And then it will, of course, click off a minute or so later. In this case, about twenty seconds.

Ah, then the oven is behaving the way it is supposed to behave. Once the oven is up to temperature, the coils should shut off. The coils don't stay at 400 degrees themselves, the temp is temp of the air in the oven. So, when the air temp reaches 400 the coils shut off. When the oven cools enough, the coils will turn back on. It can't maintain a constant 400 degrees so it will keep cycling, with an average temp of 400 degrees. Go, bake.

See, that's what I thought might be happening, but I feel like some of my things have been undercooked lately. We'll see what happens with this turkey meatloaf concoction thing.

Every oven is different, too. I have to set my ancient oven higher than the recipe calls for and often cook it longer too.

I feel rather bad about it, but I am sniggering helplessly over P-C's oven worries. I concur that this is the way the oven is suposed to work. Only a bachelor would not know this, and only a precision-oriented scientist bachelor would even notice. It's (I'm sorry! ) cute!

Many ovens are off in actual temperature. Some get hotter, some stay cooler. You could get yourself a separate oven thermometer to find out what it's actually heating up to. My mom had to do that with her oven. Also, don't open the oven door too many times. You lose heat fast that way and it will slow the cooking down because the oven takes longer to come back up to temperature.

Hee hee. You're making me smile, flea. I like the phrase "precision-oriented scientist bachelor." In fact, I believe I will tag it.

Only a bachelor would not know this

Not just bachelors, bacheloresses, too. You don't want to know what my daughter doesn't know about cooking and she's 25.

so far I have made sweet potato pie, and irish soda bread ( DH helped with that) - shepard's pie soon. and I did nap briefly.

I forgot that it is difficult to stop eating irish soda bread.

Yes, I was using "bachelor" in its sense of "shorthand for one who eats bachelor chow from a tube." Not gender-specific.