Worse Stove: Dushanbe or College?

Aaaaaanddddd let the debate begin!

When I was living with my roommates in college, I often complained about how bad our stove was (seriously, 15 minutes to boil a pot of water NOT EXAGGERATING). But now I may have met an even worse enemy: an electric stove in Tajikistan.

Now, many of problems may just because it's electric (seriously, how you make an incompetent cook more incompetent reason #2: give him an electric stove when he's used to a gas stove) but oh boy.

Here was the plan: roast some garlic/oil in a pan, throw in pasta sauce after roasting and heat the sauce up a little.

Here is how it went down: throw some garlic in a pan. Wait FOREVER while it was on low setting. Garlic doesn't roast. Turn up to the medium setting. BOOM GARLIC IS ROASTING AND BURNING. Okay. So then it's like. I know I can't add the sauce to the pan while it's this hot... so I turned off the burner and moved the pot off it for a few minutes. Finally think it's cool enough to add the sauce, and I do, and then it's like. Instantly burned sauce. Awesome.

It's that electric-tea-pot-kettle-thing!

Then the pasta. The pasta actually didn't go so bad (woo!) but it did take quite awhile for the water to boil. I have one of those electric-tea-kettle-things, so in the future I might do half electric tea pot water and half straight from my water cooler.

At the end of the day I end up with this pretty perfectly done pasta and miserable sauce. Actually I'm still not convinced it's sauce, but I took one of my Russian speaking friends to the store and they assure me it's pasta sauce... not buying it. It also has a bit of a burnt flavor. Weird.

"Tomatnaya Pasta" doesn't in fact appear to be Tomato Pasta 

I think the MOTS (moral of the story*) here is that I should find a new Russian speaking friend and maybe learn how to make cold things. Using the stove is scary. And the oven also concerns me... There's actually no temperature or setting indicator. I have three options: what appears to be the top half of the oven, the bottom half of the oven, and the entire over. Hmm...

Anyone have any good recipes for homemade Italian dressing?

On a positive note I did manage to find cheddar cheese (which ACTUALLY tastes pretty good)-- now the issue is finding bread that is good for grilled cheese (shout out to FeelGood!). I also successfully made iced (okay not iced... cold) tea. I know you're thinking "But, really how do you mess that up?" A victory is a victory, my friends. However small.

*MOTS is an internet acronym that I would like to popularize. I know it's awesome. So you're welcome.

Yeah, I only knew it was cheddar because it said so in English. So what!?