One more stove kick and maybe we’ll bake
By JANICE R. KIASKI, Staff writerI keep threatening Better Half that I'm going to wear one of those front-and-back protest signs and walk up and down our street until I get results.
What am I petitioning for?
A new stove, one with not just burners that work, but an oven that bakes and a broiler that broils.
Why do I want a new stove?
That's a good question, one I've asked myself on more than one non-cooking occasion.
Convenience could be one reasonable answer since it's kind of inconvenient to call your neighbor in desperation and say, "Hey, what are you up to today? Oh, you're not baking anything at the moment? Wow, that's great news! Any chance I could borrow your oven at 350 degrees for 40 minutes or until the inserted toothpick comes out clean?"
Sure, it's doable as many things in life are when you're in a pinch.
I mean you can pour some water into the almost empty shampoo bottle and muster another hair wash.
And you can wear two white socks that don't match, preferably with long pants, though, not shorts and sandals, especially if one sock is a knee-high and the other one is a bootie.
But baking next door for in-home consumption? That gets kind of old real fast even with neighbors who are super accommodating and don't mind any burning fumes you leave behind.
Another reason I think I want a new stove is part stomach satisfaction, part human mentality, the latter being that you want what you're being denied.
I keep coming across cake mixes and exciting new recipes, all of which lead to that inevitable four-letter directive: bake.
"Oh," I say with great drama and a sigh to match the scarecrow's in "The Wizard of Oz" lamenting the absence of a brain, "... if I only had a stove."
We became ovenless by circumstance, not choice.
First our "good" stove went kaput, which ushered in the argument/discussion that, gee, we'd only had it "a few years," a vicious assumption silenced when I produced the receipt I've learned to keep for these very such occasions.
Then our spare "reliable" stove downstairs for canning only decided to go on strike, forbidding all baking and broiling but sympathetic to our burner needs to boil and such.
We're still in denial about the oven's baking and broiling capabilities. I don't think a day goes by that we don't flip that oven dial and wait to see the red light come on and the coils glow.
We even give the oven door a friendly kick from time to time, thinking that'll do the trick, and we'll be back in baking business in no time.
That partly explains our resistance to just going out and buying a new stove.
We're optimistic that the "reliable" stove will come to its senses. On the other hand, we're also procrastinators about appliance and other major purchases, students from the school of thought that these things take time, just like it took Michelangelo years to paint the Sistine Chapel. Even so, I'm sure he was hounded by impatient people wondering aloud, "Hey, dude ... you about done up there or what?"
Same with us take-your-time Kiaskis. We've been out looking at stoves, mind you, trying to figure out if we want electric or gas, gas or electric, electric or gas, but we're just not making much progress.
We can't seem to make decisions quickly so I've compensated with crockpot dishes and enough foil packs on the grill to earn the Reynolds Wrap Consumer of the Year award.
It's getting kind of scary now, however, with the prospect of fall and holidays on the horizon, as much as I hate to admit those animals are waiting to be unleashed before I'm good and done with a summer I'm not even sure I've had yet.
When I consider how long it's taking us to get a new stove, I remember how long it took us to buy our latest TV. We devoted years of indecisiveness to that effort before we jumped without life jackets and brought home a big screen plasma.
With that in mind, I thought maybe a little public protest would move things along somehow.
But first things first.
It's time to give that stove another little friendly kick.
(Kiaski, a resident of Steubenville, is a staff columnist, features writer and copy editor for the Herald-Star and The Weirton Daily Times. She can be contacted at jkiaski@heraldstaronline.com.)
