My Dirty Little Secret

I write a food, cooking and gardening blog, and I have a confession to make: I haven’t had a working oven in nearly three years.

Yes, count them, three. And I’m being generous. There were times I could get the oven to work and once I did, it would pretty much heat on command for a few months at a time. “Mommy can fix anything” is the mantra around the house. Mercifully, it worked fairly consistently last winter. That was truly a case of Christmas magic.

But come spring, I’m “all about the grill.” And now you know why.

Now you also know why in a few past entries, you might catch a glimpse of my daughter in the background making little snowmen on the outdoor table while Mommy mans the grill in the middle of winter. Sure, food (both savory & sweet) tastes great from the grill any time of year, but I think I was in denial and just didn’t want to deal with the stove issue.

It died with no chance of resuscitation at the beginning of this year. There was only slight oven ignition, no hear generated and a gas smell in March, then a dead front burner by the end of the summer.

This relic came with the house when we bought it in 2002. The pokey little kitchen had been redone, at least refaced, a few years prior and had a new white sink and white GE Profile dishwasher, the quietest thing you’ve (n)ever heard run. We bought a white GE refrigerator upon moving in, because the seller took hers. But the black-bodied, white-enamel-topped Caloric gas range with a six-inch pyramid back and a clock that “flipped” its numbers as the minutes passed remained.

Why would anyone remodel a kitchen in white and keep a food-encrusted beginning-to-rust black clunker as the centerpiece of the room? Why did I all these years? Self-cleaning, it said. The latch never latched, so I’d go the Easy-Off route, although there was no enamel finish and nothing came off easily.

So I took the plunge and the expense only to ask now, “Why, Why, WHY did I wait so long??!!??”

I went with a gleaming GE slide-in range. It’s clean, white and shiny with slate gray continuous grates, a TrueTemp oven, power boil and precise simmer burners and a brand new flexible gas line. . . George Clooney be damned! This is a housewife’s wet dream!

And believe you me, I plan on giving it a workout that would make Mr. Clooney blush. Stay tuned.