But before we got to any cooking at all, we sat outside on her deck (yes, in Boston, in March, without coats) enjoying some appetizers and wine.

From start to finish, the NuWave cooked chicken breasts, potatoes, and vegetables in 45 minutes. The oven comes with a laminated card which indicates exactly how many minutes it will take for each type of food to cook, and it was perfectly accurate. The potatoes went in first, for 25 minutes on High.

Then, we added sliced vegetables which had been tossed with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper, and placed the marinated chicken on the rack. The oven was set for 10 minutes on High, we turned the chicken and tossed the vegetables, and then cooked it for a final 10 minutes.

The chicken stayed very moist; it did not dry out at all like it does sometimes in the oven. The potatoes were baked perfectly, and the vegetables were nicely roasted. The flavor of each food was distinct, even though they were in close proximity in the oven.

If you’ve ever tried to cook 3 different things in the regular oven at the same time, you know what’s it like to be juggling baking dishes and trying to be sure that everything is done just right. But perhaps the biggest advantage to the NuWave is when you’re cooking for a large group, and your regular oven just isn’t big enough. Of course, it is another appliance which needs to be stored somewhere, which is always a problem for me….

Thanks to Paula for hosting a fun night, group cooking projects are so much fun and the final product was delicious! And I didn’t even document the chocolate cake and ice cream….