Bye-bye Range of the Deadly Gasses

We finally broke down and bought a new range, since our old one has been on the fritz for the last eighteen months. The last couple of times I used the oven, it pumped the smell of gas throughout the entire first floor. I don’t think that’s normal. Or safe. In nine days my new range will be here.

I have always loved perusing the gas ranges in the appliance department. Especially the really expensive ones that I won’t even be able to think about purchasing until after the book that I haven’t written yet hits the New York Times bestseller list. Or I win the lottery that I don’t play.

Of course the range we finally chose after deliberating for an hour was about two hundred dollars more than I wanted to spend. I have never shopped for a stove before, so I didn’t really know what to expect when we arrived at the store. I am really excited about a new feature that allows the parent to actually lock the oven door so that a small child who decides that he just can’t wait any longer for the cookies to be done won’t be able to do anything but wait for mommy anyway.

That element upped the price a bit. I did the math though, and I figured that preventing a child from scorching their body or melting their skin into little puddles was worth more than one hundred dollars. Piece of mind is priceless. And while we were at it, an extra fifty for a fifth burner didn’t seem so bad. Yes, I am the proud owner of a five-burner gas range.

The other cool thing about these newer gas stoves is that the bottom drawer is no longer the broiler, which means that I’ll have a smidgen of extra storage space. Now that’s something to get excited about!

Danger! Danger!

It is time to get a new gas range. The stove was here when we bought the house, and it has never worked well. As a matter of fact the stovetop didn’t light at all when we first moved in. After some major scouring three out of the four burners worked relatively well, but that fourth one still won’t light. It can be complicated to fry fish, heat a spicy white sauce, cook rice and steam vegetables all at the same time; actually, I can’t do all of those things on the stove tops simultaneously- something always ends up in the microwave.

The front left burner used to emit a semi-large fireball while igniting if another burner was already lit. My husband used to crouch down so that he could look the burner directly in the eye, like he was trying to give it the I’m-the-boss-of-you stare and frighten it into submission, but all it would do was continue to click, click, click. Many a time did I advise him to move his eyebrows out of the way of the fireball that was to come if he didn’t want to smell of burnt hair for the rest of the week. Or perhaps he would like to turn the knob off and stop the gas from leaking into the entire house. The burner works fine now, but my husband still doesn’t know how to operate the range.

It is the oven’s manner of operation that has sealed the fate of the entire range. When it ignites, it initially omits a rather ominous stench of gas, and the whoosh of ignition is a little too intense. I thought the smell was possibly a bit stronger than the oven in our previous apartment, but it dissipates almost instantly so I wasn’t really bothered a whole lot by it. However, my mom was here last night and having never had a gas range she was surprised at the odor. The more I thought about it and talked with other family members who have gas ranges, I realized that the oven is taking too long to light (hence the reek of gas and the caliber of the whooshing), just like the stove burner used to. As I am not interested in manufacturing an explosion worthy of director Michael Bay, I intend to purchase a new oven as soon as possible.

Here We Go 'Round The Mullberry Bush

I awoke at six o’clock this morning with my son’s feverish toes digging into my back, and his head feeling hot enough to fry up some breakfast. It has only been a month since my family was rid of the dreaded viral cold/bacterial ear infection illness. That virus held us in a death-grip for weeks and weeks. It’s six am and I can’t sleep because I’m having flashbacks of force-feeding two kids amoxicillin twice a day for ten days.

When I finally dragged myself out of bed at eight o’clock I settled my little guy on the couch with a sheet, his pillow and a fuzzy blanket, put on a video and then plodded into the kitchen to make the coffee that I would need to get me through my day. I ground up some nice Mexican Select Green Mountain Coffee and poured cold filtered water into the reservoir; I plugged in the pot and toggled the switch into the “on” position. No red light. No sounds of percolation. Turned it off; turned it back on. And off. And on.

I suppose there is no good time for a coffee pot to break, but today seemed a particularly bad choice. The thing is only 1 ½ years old. In the six years that we’ve been married we’ve had to replace a VCR and our microwave. Family members have microwaves that have been around since the dawn of time and coffee pots that are older than me and still operate. They just don’t make things like they used to.

My husband was able to convince the mutinous coffee pot to brew ten cups, but I have a desperate hunch that it won’t be made to work again. In the meantime I suppose I shall have to drink twice as much tea to sustain me as I nurse my poor sick toddler back to health. All I can do is hope and pray that this time around the period of illness will be short lived and milder, and that it won’t ravage the whole family. If I ignore the tickle in my throat and wash my hands every two-point-five seconds maybe it’ll go away.

And so, technology dies.

After the invention of cell phones many of us wondered how in the heck we got along without them. We could now call the friend we were meeting at the mall instead of walking around for hours trying to locate them because they thought you were going to meet at the store entrance into the mall while you were under the impression that you were gathering at the store entrance to the parking lot. Instead of dropping by unannounced to visit a pal you could now phone first to make sure that you wouldn’t be interrupting anything, or to verify that you would not be going fifteen minutes out of your way just to find their car gone and no one at home. And, of course, they offer a certain amount of security when lost or having car troubles.

Microwaves are a similarly wonderful piece of technology. They are not the best for making scintillating home-cooked sit down dinners, but boy are they great to heat up leftovers or fix a quick snack. The amount of time to boil water for one cup of tea or to pop popcorn is greatly diminished with a microwave when compared to a stovetop. This sort of operation generally dirties fewer dishes as well.

Nine-thirty last night found me in the midst of an attempt to will the microwave to heat some leftovers as I had yet to eat any form of dinner. The appliance had warmed up leftover chili for my husband hours before and also a bit of leftover noodles for my son. The baby was in her crib sound asleep with a tummy full of milk. I alone was starving! I found myself unable to channel my Jedi mind-powers properly for lack of food; the microwave gave one final sputter and touted its triumph over my hungry stomach by refusing to abide by my attempt to force it into submission by repeatedly jabbing the Quick Min button.

In my desperation I had to resort to boiling water on the stove for some good old-fashioned macaroni and cheese in a box because I had already had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich that day and on top of that I had a hankerin’ for hot food. What should have taken two minutes turned into about twenty minutes of listening to my belly grumble before I was able to eat.

Ah, the things we take for granted. If, dear reader, you have yet to acquire the sniffles as the cold weather sets in thank the Lord above for a chap-less nose, and give your microwave a pat on the back so that it will not decide to give its notice and force you to stand over the stove with a tissue coiled up your nose stirring chicken soup when the time to be sick does come.