Skip to main content

Santa "Brings Good Things to Life" and to Lakeside Drive

A certain sexy, cycling, picture-taking Santa Claus visited Amy's house a couple weeks early this year to check her Christmas list. He made a stop at the local appliance dealer. And if all goes well with delivery and installation, we'll be baking holiday cookies in our new OVEN by early next week!!!

We ordered this model in all black, a GE Convection Range that features a cooking system that delivers even air and heat circulation for quicker, higher quality baking and roasting. It also has a self-cleaning oven with heavy duty oven racks that can stay in the oven during the cleaning cycle, a glass cooktop featuring a warming element and a dual 9-inch/12-inch element, and a hidden element in the oven bottom.

The oven we have, an RCA (yeah, the people who made the victrola...and you wonder why we might want to upgrade), is an original to our 1992-built home. It was cheap from the get-go, doesn't have a self-clean function, burns one side of baked foods and barely cooks the other, has two semi-functional burners, and heats the stove burners to scalding temps when the oven is on. This morning, the coil element started smoking beneath my pan, so I picked up the pan to find flames lapping at its underside. Yeah, that's safe.

I'm doubly indebted to Mr. Claus for overlooking the fact that just yesterday I was very, very naughty. I got myself pulled over for apparently running a red light in the biggest cop stop speed trap in the county, University Heights, Iowa. Merry Christmas to you, too, officer. My court date's Dec. 23, but I'm going to take my punishment and go ahead and pay the $96 fine ($50 which is "court costs," a wholly bureaucratic bunch of BS). And never, ever drive Melrose Avenue again.

Not to be deterred by our archaic piece of kitchen machinery, Henry and Tim are currently baking a family favorite holiday treat -- Peanut Butter Kiss Cookies. It's purely a scientific, technical endeavor, they claim, insisting that they must bake a few last times in the old oven to truly compare with and appreciate the new appliance.

Next week can't come soon enough for us OR our taste buds. (And I'd think the fire marshall would be counting the days, too. I saw flames people, and it's not a gas range.)

Comments

Anonymous said…
CONGRATULATIONS!
And happy cooking and baking to all!
mom
Sounds like a really nice oven!! I bet you will make a LOT of delicious food in that oven!! Congrats.

Popular posts from this blog

Holy Separated-At-Birth, Batman!

Gary Oldman...meet Uncle Knit-Knots from Imagination Movers.

So, I Changed My Mind

More than four years ago, the blog and I parted ways. I needed a change. A whole lot happened in my world since then. I switched jobs a couple times. My kid went from an elementary school tween to a teenage high schooler. We built a new house and moved. Both my parents and my sister have passed. The world around me changed as well. Mass shootings, racism, the #metoo movement, a misogynistic bigoted narcissist in the White House ... go ahead, add to the list. Toss your woes into this dumpster fire we call 2019.  I appreciate my previous sentiment, that I was no longer wandering. But let's be honest, we're all trying to find our way through this mess. I decided to reboot the blog to give myself a creative outlet, a way to sort through the confusion and frustration and attempt to make sense of it all. I have a voice, and I'm not keen to silence it anymore. Guess what? I'm back, bitches.

In memoriam...

I remember the first time I heard the name "Les Anderson." A bunch of Wichita State University communication majors were sitting around on campus, talking about classes they planned to take. Several people warned me: watch out for Les Anderson. He was tough. He had a murderous grading scale. It was nearly impossible to get an A. They weren't kidding. But he wasn't tough just to be a tyrant. From his teaching sprang a fleet of incredible, successful journalists, writers, editors, broadcasters, public relations experts, advertisers, non-profit professionals...I could go on and on. Most importantly, he created a legion of people who wanted to make a difference in the world. The greatest gift Les gave to them all? He believed in them, cared about them for their own personal stories as well as the stories they told for class assignments or in the pages of his hometown newspaper. Les was my teacher. My boss. My mentor. My conscience. My champion. My friend. When I started c...