h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

... a big burner!


And you thought I was going to say, "Now we're cookin' with gas". No, we don't have gas service in this house, even though it's in the neighborhood. I *wish* we had it in this house, but we don't.


But I digress.


A couple weeks ago, the only large burner on my stove died. Well, not *completely*, but on an electric element, there's two coils, and one of them got a hole in it, which effectively meant that it wouldn't work any more. So no matter how high I turned it up, I only got about half-heat out of it, from the coil that *was* working. Not much good for cooking most family sized meals, or , or a pot of pasta, or any of a dozen other things, as I found out repeatedly over the last couple of weeks.

The stove has 3 *small* burners, which seems like overkill... why couldn't they just give it two small and two large, like a *normal* stove? Who designs these things, anyway? And why hasn't the design been changed at all in the last 30-some years? What are these people thinking?!


I should mention that this stove is as old as the house - about 35 years, give or take a few years. In fact, this stove is so old that the repair shop didn't have the parts I needed in stock. Oh yeah - they found a "bubble" in the oven element, which meant it was about to go bad too, so that needed to be replaced. And the pushbutton for the light in the hood had a short in it, so it only worked part time too. One would think the best thing to do would be just chuck this stove out and get a new one, right? Simple, right?


Wrong.



This is a stupid 27" drop in stove, apparently very chic back when it was made, but nothing but an annoyance now. Amazingly enough, they *do* still make them, but since a standard stove is 30", the cost of replacing one of these things is horrendously expensive in comparison to a standard stove. (about 2 to 3 times the cost of a standard stove ) And why would I want to replace it with another stove that really isn't big enough and only has one large burner? And pay so much extra for the privelege?

That's just it, I didn't want to. Nor did I want to pay several times more than that in order to remodel the kitchen (or put up with the mess from remodeling ) so that a normal 30" stove would fit in here. Yes, it would definitely require remodeling to fit in a normal stove, because there's no room where it's located to just move the cabinet over three inches to accomodate a larger stove. Oh, and we'd have to get a new exhaust hood to go with it, because the range top controls are in the hood. (another annoying thing about the design) And I haven't even mentioned the fact that the range hood *is* 30" but the extra 3" are on the *opposite* side from the direction we'd have to move the cabinet in order to accomodate a 30" stove. So if you can picture this, that whole wall of the kitchen would be all catty-wampus, complete with the refrigerator being pushed 3" closer to the door to the garage, completely covering the light switch. No, I didn't want to remodel.

My point is that they finally called me this morning to tell me that the parts for my stove had come in, and they could fix my stove this afternoon, and Yay! It's finally fixed! I can cook real meals again!

Lord Scott has requested for dinner, since it's getting so close to the end of the season. Coming right up!

Yay She's cooking again

Sometimes it's the little things in life that
really count.

I know that this isn't all that important in the total scheme of things, and 100 years from now, it won't matter a bit, but it sure was frustrating trying to figure out what to feed the family for dinner when the stove wasn't being cooperative.

Nothing compared to a poor woman who has nothing left to feed her starving children, or the life and death situations some people face on a day to day basis.

Not a crisis in my life, not by any means, just irritating. And now that it's fixed, I just wanted to make note of the day, and how glad I am to have it working properly again.... especially since - ironically enough - I don't *like* this stove to begin with!

do the elements just flip up so you can clean under them or do they pull out of a plug like device?


()

It is a good thing to have a working stove with a family to feed.
If it's taken up space it better be useful in my house

You are lucky they could fix it, hopefully not too costly either. The last time I wanted to fix the oven it costs 2/3 the price of a new one. I hate when that happens with major appliances.

My stove uses LPG. I only use one of the four burners,
because I generally make one-pot meals. For baking I use
a toaster oven. I also have a microwave oven for reheating
things.

So, if my brain seems fried some days , blame
the microwaves.

The elements are "hard wired" into the stove. Yes, it's that old. They do *sort of* flip up, but only enough to get the drip trays out. Anything that falls through the hole in the bottom of the drip tray lands on whatever that is underneath. I have no idea what it is, because the top of the stove does not lift up for cleaning.


Honest, it really *doesn't* lift up - I really *can't* clean under it! I'm not just making an excuse for not cleaning, this time. The top and side edges of the front are one solid piece of porcelean covered sheet metal.

So, if Jimmy Hoffa or Elvis fell down behind,
they'd have to stay there, Lady Scott?

Yeah, more Lady Scott food!!!

Yeah, I'm afraid that whatever falls in there stays there - I can't get to it to clean it out.

that sounds like the one in my appartment...I cleaned under there but I couldn't see what I was doing...very scary looking stuff came out on the sponge


()

I think I could scrape the gunk up with a spatula in mine... *if* I could actually get a spatula down in there to scrape it up.

I have the exact same "one large, three small" burner arrangement. This apartment building still has the much-dreaded *avocado* green appliances from the late sixties. I think they may be older than I am ... and, they're the color of baby puke!

The range top catches on fire every now and then due to a disintegrated hole in the base of the burner which leads to the oven insulation. That's the last time I try to make turkey gravy by caramelizing the brownie-bits in the bottom of a pan that's straddling two burners.

I also have a refrigerator with a trick collapsing shelf that's barely supported by a semi-broken peg. Thus far, I haven't bothered to devise a solution. My milk, beer and bottled goods tend to suddenly fall to the shelf below without warning. If anyone asks why my fridge shelf is at an odd tilt, I tell them there's been an earthquake.

I think I shall move!!

I'm still trying to get someone to fit me a new oven which is electric but I've a gas hob, one large burner, and three progressively smaller burners though, two fo the smaller burners work pretty meanily it is very old, but I like the gas hob as it works the little automatic ignition things are dead on it, so I have to turn the gas on, and then 'click' one of those 'clicky' things to light the gas, get some pretty mean flash backs sometimes I think I'm a little dangerous int eh kitchen

"Who designs these things, anyway?"

As my mother always says: 'A *man* must have designed this!'

Our gas grill has a *huge* burner on the side tray thingie for boiling stuff while you grill other stuff...

I thought it was a silly thing to have until the power went out right before I started cooking supper the other day. It sure was nice to be able to cook the kids their desired pasta even though the electric stove was on holiday.

Yes, I do believe a *man* must have designed my kitchen too, since it obviously was not built for cooking convenience. He'd probably never cooked a thing in his life, and had no idea how stupidly the kitchen was put together.

In fact it was probably a 6' tall man who designed it... and here I am, only 5'3" and can't reach half of the shelves without a stepladder, not because they're too high up (I *can* actually reach the *edge* of the top shelves), but because they're situated over top of an obstacle that a 6-footer could reach easily.

But what really gets me is this cavernous cabinet at right angles to the stove. The cabinet goes back all the way to the wall that runs behind the cabinst and the stove, and yet the door to this cavernous space is only about 10" wide, which is just *barely* wide enough to force the big pans through... Where were they expecting us to store this stuff? And why not make it just a couple inches wider so that a human being could actually *reach* things in there?

Your experience with thinking the side burner on your grill was stupid (until you actually had to use it to cook for the kids) just points up the fact that unless they've experienced needing to cook in all kinds of conditions, men just don't see the point in a lot of things that women wish were standard.

Speaking as a six-foot tall man...

I would have put the pot on top of the grill if I didn't have a side burner.

But I'll admit it was nice to have.

*is suddenly glad she rents*

Our oven died completely (well, the range top still had 2 working burners out of 4... But the oven was dead as a doornail) a week before Thanksgiving, which we were having here. Again (so I make a good turkey... Looks like I'll probably be hostessing again this year too, if we decide to not just ignore it this year. Maybe for once I'll let someone in *my* kitchen for more than a cup of ) For once, the rental company acted fast--I came home to a brand new stove one day soon after calling. Still not quite used to cooking on gas burners though--I need to get one of those diffuser thingies...