The old girl is retiring

When we moved into our house in 1994, there it was - a Kenmore range in a tiny kitchen. Since the house was built in the 70s, it was already pushing 20 years old. A few chips in the white enamel covered steel, but that’s OK. I’d bet my bottom dollar it was bought at Sears, where else? I never cooked on gas, but found instant temperature control can make up for some mistakes. We love that you can cook when the power goes out - hot soup during a February snowstorm blackout is a nice fringe benefit.

Fast forward another 30+ years and I must admire the fact that this thing performed for 50 years without complaint from either it, or us. We just merrily continued without thinking much about it. I guess we don’t demand much. At one point we brought someone in to try and fix the electronic spark which, on the left side of the cooktop, only works 50% of the time. We never figured out why, must be a short somewhere, but we keep a lighter in a drawer. Usually it lights as I am reaching for the lighter, and I say ‘of course’.

In any case that’s a lot of cooking, and baking. That’s-a-lotta breakfasts, a-lotta cookies and cakes and pies, bread and stock, a lotta dinners both ordinary and, well, ordinary - but that’s what home cooking is, no? Christmas mornings and Thanksgiving dinners. I’m certain there are a ton of failures mixed in there too, but you know what - I’m seriously having a hard time thinking of any of those. I did turn the marshmallows on candied sweet potatoes into a spectacular blackened charcoal fireshow that one time….

So a few weeks ago when we pulled some sticky-buns out of the oven that turned out underdone, we didn’t think much of it besides ‘thats weird’. Turns out, that was the last time the old girl would ‘bake’ anything. Pretty sure it would be a $40 glow bar, but we figured its time to give the old lady a rest. I don’t mean Tracie. I notice the word ‘OFF’ on the oven dial has worn off, as if it will never quit.

We ordered a new stove, this time GE (or ‘Cafe’). We THINK its being installed this week but it got complicated and involved plumbers and electricians. The new one wants of course to be internet connected, and I have a feeling that I will miss the technology of a different kind:

The kitchen is still tiny, and a new range will be interesting to get used to. It has 6 burners which is kind of silly on a cooktop that big. Its supposed to do things like cook 3 racks of cookies perfectly, has things like ‘timers’ and ‘cook modes’, and has about 10 times the BTU output of the old Kenmore. I wonder if it will run without complaint for 50 years?