New stove...hubba hubba!

Many of you may remember my dreaming of a fabulous vintage stove.  This Old House magazine ruined me for life with a picture of a copper Chambers stove.  Then I found out they also came in red, blue, yellow, pink...I pined, I ebayed, I craigslisted, I googled...but those darned things are hardly, if ever, found within a 250 mile radius of Maine (if you're in NY, NJ, or CA, there might be hope for you!).  And it's tough to drive that far when you don't know how well something 50 years old is going to work, aren't sure if you're going to have the skills or stamina to refurbish it, can't honestly move all 450 pounds of it, deep down you know it's too big for where you want to put it, and they weren't designed for islands, which we long decided would be the best way to go in our kitchen, barring an addition or some other sort of drastic change.

Sigh.

When we got the drainboard sink, we realized that would be the great vintage focal point of the room, and mechanically we'd never have to worry about it.  You know, because sinks don't have mechanics.  Once we had that in place, it became easier to let go of the vintage stove.  Also, the stove would face away from the rest of the room anyway, so only the cook would ever see it. We got over it.  And just because the vintage stove isn't going to happen doesn't mean we aren't pretty psyched about what we DID get.  Turns out new stoves have some pretty sweet features!

Meet the GE Cafe model # CGS990SETSS.  Five burners and two ovens' worth of awesomeness.

Champ just had to check it out.  (No, the oven wasn't on)

It has the maximum amount of cooking space you could possibly cram into a standard 30" stove. Together the ovens have more cubic footage than even most (far more expensive) 36" stoves we looked at. No silly useless "warming drawer" here.  Tom the LP Man came over yesterday and hooked 'er up.  We bought it from Sears online and had it delivered to the closest one in Gorham, NH (extreme bonus: no sales tax). They had one of the best prices - the best of the best prices wouldn't ship to our area (booo) and Sears was able to get it to us in all of two days, so we had it before our Thanksgiving kitchen blitz and we could design our island around it.

After months of eating mostly canned soup, we were THRILLED to whip up some risotto with Brussels sprouts, garlic, and shallots from our garden.

Chef Gabe

 We only lived three days without a stove because we had just left our old electric one plugged in in the middle of the floor, but it's been such a mess that we haven't done any real cooking. I didn't realize how much I missed the smells. The powerful burners heated up the whole 10" cast iron pan (rescued from a rusty basement demise years ago) for once.  I also powerboiled some tea mid-afternoon.  And I also made my famous-in-four-states chocolate chip cookies, choosing the bottom convection oven for the job.

They came out nice and evenly cooked, no pan-switching necessary. Delicious.

Then I washed my pans in my big new sink...look, they actually fit in the sink!  We're really moving up in the world now.

We got a new faucet that we should install soon...note the old faucet mounted to our plywood "windowsill" here.  The new one is wall-mounted and will fit into the original holes hidden behind the pan.

This morning, we got up extra early to make pancakes on the built-in griddle.  The middle burner grate just pops right out and you plunk in the griddle right over the huge, oval-shaped burner.  It actually heated up nice and evenly, with no cold spots that I noticed.  Amazing! (Of course the Chambers stove invented this like 60 years ago.  Ok, I'll shut up now.) I'm going to huck that vintage-but-not-in-a-good-way electric griddle I've been using for pancakes.

I kept the pancakes warm in the small top oven...no need to heat up the huge one!  I think I'm also going to huck our toaster oven because I always wanted it for baking one small thing.  Now it's unnecessary with a petite oven for warming, or making just one pan of brownies or casserole.

I'm really, really, really looking forward to doing something like baking a cake in the top oven and biscuits, which need to be much hotter, in the bottom oven. And wow, look - a functioning light!  It's official: wonders have not ceased.

It has been a joyous day at the Corner Lot indeed.