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.

Oh, The Burning!

While frying eggs yesterday morning, my husband decided he would be able to flip them a little easier if he braced a finger against the side of the skillet. He quickly realized that the blue gas flame not only heats the cooking surface of the pan, but the sides as well. It turns out that I really should have refrained from teasing him because a few hours later found me suffering from a burn wound myself.

In the act of removing my ceramic stone from the oven, atop which some lovely toasted bread sat, my left palm brushed against the wire rack which is supposed to make the stone safer and easier to remove from the oven. One wouldn’t think that gently brushing against blazing, sizzling metal could produce a glaring inch-long white sear. I had hoped that if I ran my open palm under cold water for a while any blisters would be deterred from forming.

Having a wound that renders one’s hand practically useless is very detrimental to a mother. Trying to change the diaper of a wriggling baby one-handed is a bit of a trick. In the eight hour span between when the accident occurred and bedtime I had to keep ice on the burn constantly, or the fiery pain would actually make my eyes water. Even after I fell asleep the pain woke me intermittently during the night. It caused me once again to consider the practice of cauterizing wounds. I believe if it were my choice I would prefer taking a bullet and being put out to pasture instead of biting a bullet and smelling my flesh cook.

Regardless, I did have to give my husband a lesson on “how the stove works” again. After hearing the tick-tick-tick followed by the whoooosh of the burner igniting no less than three times in six seconds, I hastened to his side with a cry of, “you’re going to kill us all!” just in time to watch him position the dial at a setting that doesn’t even exist.

He claims that it was the urgent sincerity in my voice coupled with the actual words that caused him to cackle uncontrollably, and he was hasty to reassure me that he was in no way endeavoring to fill up the entire house with gas fumes. I believe the root his inability to learn how the dials operate after repeated lessons, is that his man’s brain has a hard time grasping that the dial works in a counter-clockwise manner, as he seems to be intent on making it work in the more logical clockwise way.

If, at any time, I go for a week or more without posting a new blog please be advised that it might be due to the fact that I am lying on the kitchen floor choking on poisonous fumes. If such an event should occur I would ask that the proper authorities be notified and that take-out would be ordered for the duration of my recovery since my husband would henceforth be banned from playing with the stove.