The new oven
Thursday, August 14th, 2008My mother will be intensely gratified to learn that my demon-possessed oven, which has previously misbehaved only in her presence, has finally shown its true colors to me. Tuesday night, while I was cooking a little casserole for dinner, my eyes started to smart just a little, like they do when someone’s cutting up onions 3 houses away, or there’s a bit of smoke in the air. My dish still had about 10 minutes to cook, but I went over to open the door. Nothing was burned (YET!), but the bicuits on the top were getting pretty crispy, and the oven seemed awfully hot. I tried turning the oven off, and nothing happened. In fact, when rotating the temperature dial to try to find out what the actual temperature was, I heard the infamous “click” just below the “Broil” setting. Joe turned off the circuit, which resolved the problem the last time this happened, six or seven years ago. Not so this time. As soon as the circuit came back on, the oven started up again. Even today, a day later, it’s still doing it. So, we went shopping for a new oven today. It’s probably just a thermostat that needs to be replaced, or something, but I’ve been wanting a new one for a couple of years, so this gave us a good excuse. It’s a dangerous fire hazard, after all! And we’re going away for a few days next week, and I’d hate for my poor housesitter to burn the house down.Â
Having been raised with gas cooktops, I always swore that’s what I was getting next. But, I’ve read so much about gas ovens having problems, and my own mom has always preferred her electric oven, so what I really wanted was an electric oven with a gas cooktop. Such things exist as stand-alone units these days. They’re called dual-fuel ranges, and they’re highly rated and pretty highly expensive as well. Apparently hard to find, too, because no one had them locally, even to look at. So, I thought maybe I should just get a gas oven, too. We studied them quite hard today, but virtually all gas cooktops have knobs mounted on the front of the oven, rather than up top the way electric cooktops do. I suppose that’s so you don’t sear your arm with the flame while you’re lighting a burner. I watched my kids gravitate toward those knobs like moths to a flame time and time again in the store, so I started to rethink the whole gas cooktop thing. I think someday when I have a bigger house, or get to enlarge/remodel this one, I’ll have a separate cooktop and a wall oven like my mom does, but for now, we’re kind of stuck with a single unit.
So, we switched our interest to the electric ranges. They’re a lot different than they used to be. Thinking we would likely have this one for awhile, we decided to look at the mid-priced ranges. It’s a whole new world to explore. Sealed ceramic tops or the old open coils, dual-powered burners, convection oven or not, sealed baking elements … It just went on and on. We finally decided what color we wanted, and then looked at what seemed to be the best value for the money.Â
We opted for a Samsung. I quizzed our salesman at Lowe’s, who seemed to be very knowlegeable, and he said Samsung has been making large appliances since the 1950’s, typically selling them to Maytag. When Whirlpool acquired Maytag, they no longer needed to contract with Samsung, so Samsung started to sell their applicances under their own brand. They seem to be of good quality and reliability. The one they had at Lowe’s was particularly feature-laden for the price, so we opted for that one. Naturally, it wasn’t in stock, but none of the other stainless steel-fronted stoves were in stock at the store, either, so we didn’t have any option to bring one home today. It should come in 3-5 days, though, as they are in stock at the nearest warehouse, wherever that is. The salesman thought perhaps Sunday, so hopefully, we’ll get to pick it up Monday. The installation will be much easier with the electric option, so we should be up and cooking shortly.Â
We’ll be microwave-dependent for the next few days, and I won’t be able to bake a dessert for the Pastor’s going away party on Sunday (guess I’ll just have to buy one – drat!), but soon I’ll have no good excuses for not baking more. I’ve pasted some data from the Samsung website about our new stove below – it’s a sealed surface ceramic top with 5 burners, a convection oven and sealed heating elements inside the oven for easy cleaning. Pretty snazzy! Grandma will be thankful that she doesn’t have to worry about burning the house down when she comes to visit next month!