I should have realized sooner. But I finally got the message when it took four hours to roast a 3# chicken. We spent two days shopping for a stove, both in stores and online. It was delivered when I was at work one day.
The first thing I noticed was that it sits against the wall. The old stove had a flat back, which meant it had to sit in front of the gas pipe and the electrical outlet. But this one is somewhat concave on the back, so that the plug and the gas pipe fit where the indentation is. There's no longer a 6" gap behind my stove. This means the stove door is nearly flush with the cabinet-fronts. It also means bottles of olive oil and spatulas are not diving to the floor behind the stove.
Second thing I noticed: light. I crab at people to turn the lights on "low" on the stove vent. The [not inexpensive] LED light bulbs last much longer if they're on "low" instead of "high." Once we got the new, white stove, I thought people were running the lights on "high." They weren't. Y'know, you learn things about lightwaves in your physics classes, but it still astounds you to see the difference in brightness when you have a white stove versus a black stove.
Third thing I noticed. The knobs for the burners are in different places. I suppose y'all should be placing bets on how long it will take me to burn down the house. I get so frustrated with a pot taking forever to come to a boil ... and it turns out I've got fire on an uncovered burner while the pot is sitting in an unheated spot. Yikes! I've gotta work on that!
Fourth thing I noticed (and maybe even better than the first thing I noticed) -- it cooks so nicely. The first batch of bread seemed exquisite. I attributed that to chance. But the second batch of bread rose beautifully, with a lovely crust, no cracking, no toughness. Hmmm. Maybe there was more wrong with the old stove than I had realized.
On the day the stove was installed, we found water in the basement. It's happened twice. Both times were with a hot load of laundry. No leaking when the shower is used. No leaking when the kitchen sink is used. No leaking when the laundry is set to "warm." Now, how can the water heater know to leak onto the basement floor only when the washer is turned on to a hot load? With some detective work, we are suspecting that there's a problem with a valve. I'll have to do some more sleuthing, including turning on the washer and sitting there with my eyes constantly on the water heater for 20 minutes or so. Not the most exciting spy-work. But we're on our way to solving the mystery.
Picnic lunch last week at work. Seriously. Outdoors. Picnic blanket. Sack lunch. Magazine. Granted, I was wearing my coat, but I had no mittens or hat, and wasn't in the least bit chilled on my face. Beautiful beautiful beautiful. The snow came the next day.
We found a buyer for the car. We'll be making the transaction on Saturday. I hope it serves him well. And I hope the van gives us a few more good years.
Car stuff. Large appliance stuff. Doing a little shopping for a suit for a massive-chested young man. Hoo boy. No wonder I haven't had time to blog. Now we're on to more suit-shopping and figuring the taxes and a couple of editing projects. And I really ought to teach Andrew to drive stickshift. (How do we make it all slllllooooooww dooowwwwn?)
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
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That was the stove you had for a while, right? Because I was just thinking how the bread recipe you gave me said to bake it for 35 minutes or so, and I have *never* had to bake bread past 25 minutes no matter which oven we've had.
ReplyDeleteMaybe instead of teaching Andrew stick now, you should make him do the taxes. Although yours might be complicated enough that even having him help could be stressful.
I keep increasing the temp for the bread (up to about 375) and was getting to the point where I was setting the timer for 40-45 minutes initially and then putting it back for "just five more minutes" several times.
ReplyDeleteIt crossed my mind yesterday that Thanksgiving dinner was much later than we'd anticipated, wasn't it? I assumed at the time that I'd figured wrong on the time it took to cook a turkey. But maybe it wasn't my mistake so much as faulty equipment.
It's new & different (in a very good way) to be able to tell Maggie how long something should be in the oven, and not put her in a position where she has to figure out if it's done, and how much longer to bake something. Between the crockpot cooking too hot and the oven cooking too low, we didn't have anything reliable with regard to times listed on recipes.
Oh, you're going to really enjoy that new, dependable oven. It will show off your cooking expertise so much better. Have fun!
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