LG LRE3083SW Range -- Goodbye and Good Riddance

It had a pretty blue enamel interior.
It had a convection oven function.
Mmm, it had a smooth ceramic top.
Self-cleaning.
Warming center on the top.
It was on sale.

Yes, I bought it, and thought it would be the last range I'd ever have to buy, so lovely to look at and play with that it was a trophy stove for my kitchen, even though I do tend to sneer when people make trophy alliances or buy trophy homes or cars.

Serves me right, I guess. The first time I used the self-cleaning function, it did a really crappy job. I mean REALLY. So much so that I went to the store to buy oven cleaner, only to find that you may not use oven cleaner on convection ovens. I was not pleased to discover I'd have to live with a dirty-looking oven. But surely, the industry of oven cleaners would evolve to come up with a solution, sooner or later.

Last spring, we began hearing groaning noises coming from the stove when we used the oven. Intrepidly, Bernie researched and found it it was because the convection fan in the oven was giving out. Repair would be fairly inexpensive, and relatively easy ... so we'd deal with that when we had to.

Labor Day Weekend; a family meal, a big batch of delicious breaded pork chops with mashed potatoes and gravy, and vine-ripened tomatoes and corn on the cob ... WTF, the front burner stopped working and now my chops were sitting in oil instead of frying in oil! Switch to another burner, salvage the rest of the meal, dangit. Well, those burners can be replaced, a bit of a tricky job, true, but not impossible.

The next morning, I turned on the back burner to heat water for my tea. It came on, but so did the big front burner, without me touching its controls. What if I had been using that front burner area like an extra bit of countertop? After all, that's the main reason I like flat ceramic tops, because they can function as additional serving space or work area.

After researching, Bernie found that the likely source of the problem was the control panel. Seriously? For a barely three year old stove?

About $250 for the part alone, not counting the cost of service call and labor if it turned out to be a repair he couldn't do himself.


My turn to do some Googling of stoves. I found a plain old damn electric range at Lowe's for $350, although it wasn't in stock and would take some weeks to get here.

Next best option: get the model that simply upgrades to a self-cleaning oven. $450. In stock. And when we went to look at it, and subsequently buy it, we got $100 off by opening a Lowe's account, which costs us nothing. And there it is, tucked into its spot, looking like it belongs to the kitchen and the dark granite countertops.

It's pretty.
The burners heat up really, really fast.
The controls are simple.
The oven is WAY more even for baking (Bernie made some outstanding zucchini bread)
The oven pre-heats a lot faster.
The burners' temperatures don't fluctuate.

The LG ceramic top stove was probably never meant to be used by people who cook as much as we do. I needed a workhorse, not My Pretty Pony.

I think I've got it.

Had To Experience It For Myself To Believe It

I'm not a bad housekeeper.

Too true that I'm not good at washing windows, and I don't stress out over dog hair (as long as it isn't in my food or my sheets), but no visitor is going to wind up with food poisoning from a dirty kitchen, or sustain major injuries tripping over stuff left on the floor. But ...

We got the interior of the house painted this past year, and had scrumptious carpeting put down in the bedrooms and hallway, and as a result, I had to delve into closets and corners and clean up enough for work to proceed. More than once I had to say to myself, Good grief, how long has that been in there?

Also in the past year, Bernie found an article on the web that talked about this Japanese woman, Marie Kondo, who specialized in teaching people how to "tidy up." There was a book by her:


 ... and so we ordered it from the library and read it. Most of it, anyway.

The result was that Bernie and I cut the amount of clothing in our closets by more than half. The process was easy -- take every article of clothing out of the closet and pile it on the bed. Then pick up each piece and ask yourself,  Do I love it? Really love it? If yes, then it goes back in the closet. If not, it goes, to trash or donation bag.

A couple days ago, Bernie and I found a Netflix series on the same subject, and since, having cleaned our closets, we felt like experts, we condescendingly decided to watch it.

The 40 minute show took us nearly two hours to watch, as it sparked so much conversation about how we do things and think about our household. Yow.

One of the bits that I hadn't read in the book was about arranging drawers in baths, bedrooms, and kitchens. "Stay out of my drawers" was a statement my mother taught me from childhood. However, watching the TV series, I realized that I had not only underestimated the importance of drawers and organization, I had missed out most of my life a truly lovely and uplifting -- prayer-like -- experience of bringing order and finding joy in it.

I'm not going to show a picture of my lingerie drawer, but it turned out great;  the kitchen drawer that houses dishcloths, dish towels, potholders, and a couple miscellaneous things, and that USED TO BE a veritable rats-nest of tangled fabric and buried kitchen linens now looks like this:

This thing was overflowing when I unloaded it onto the counter. I threw nothing out, but now, orderly, there is room to spare and I can see at a glance what all is in there.

The handling and folding of the individual pieces was the most surprising part of it. In taking time to do so in a certain pattern allowed me to appreciate each towel, respecting its nature and its purpose.

 And oddly enough, I think that the process has made me a better woman.

Dolmades from Solar Power

When we set up an appointment with a solar power company to talk about how to move forward for our future electric needs, I had no idea this would be the result: dolmades, or stuffed grape leaves.

This is the way it happened: Bernie set up the appointment, and gave me the option of sitting in on the presentation and process -- I had things to do and didn't want to be bothered. When the representative arrived, Bernie greeted her out in the front yard garden and chatted with her about it, because she was so impressed with the growing food and wanted to come live there. Bernie needed to call some past electric company records on his computer, so he handed the rep, Lamis, off to me to show her the back garden.

She noted the lemon tree, the plum tree, the shady oasis -- and then dove for the grapevine that stretches twenty feet along the fence. "Do you make stuffed grape leaves?" she asked. "Oh, no? Okay, I'm going to cancel my lunch meeting and show you how!"

We quickly ascertained that I had all the necessary ingredients on hand, and then we listened to her presentation and what design we'd need for a solar power system. Done, she turned to me and said, "Let's get some grape leaves!"

Grape leaves for stuffing should be young and tender, about the size of your hand with fingers outstretched. No stems. We returned to my kitchen with handfuls of leaves, and began. Here are all the ingredients we used:

Grape leaves, blanched for a few seconds in a pan of boiling water
1/2 pound ground lamb, browned with
3 fat cloves of garlic, diced.
2 tomatoes, diced
a small handful of fresh parsley, minced
1 cup of rice, steeped in hot water for the time it took to prep everything else
1/4 onion, sliced into rings
another tomato, sliced
olive oil
tomato paste
salt
pepper
cumin
beef broth

The lamb, garlic, tomatoes, parsley and rice, with a drizzle of olive oil, the salt, pepper and cumin got mixed in a bowl. One by one, we rolled up teeny spoonfuls of the mixture into the blanched grape leaves. The mixture is placed in the middle, just above the stem stub, the sides are folded in, and then you roll it all up to the top. It holds together remarkably well.

Lamis squirted another tablespoon of olive oil into the bottom of a pot, put the onion rings and tomato rings in (to keep the grape rolls from scorching) and then stacked the rolls tightly together. She mixed half a little can of tomato paste with water, poured that over the top, and then added a cup of beef broth.

A small plate was put on top of all that, to keep the grape leaves from moving around and unraveling. "Bring it to a boil," Lamis told me, "and then turn it down to low and simmer it for about an hour." Off she went to her next appointment.

I am truly glutted tonight from those incredibly delicious dolmades. Bernie nearly fell to the floor at his first taste; Lillian pounced and gobbled a plateful when she got home from school. Honestly, I have never tasted anything like them, even though I have been served "dolmades" at restaurants and potlucks before. (The past dolmades get quotation marks from now on.)

And the other surprising thing was the encounter with Lamis as well. Her family is Middle Eastern in origin; my ethnic roots are in Mexican culture (and of course Central Pennsylvanian, where I grew up in my Dad's home town), but there was nothing strained or false in harvesting food together from the garden and sharing camaraderie in the kitchen while we prepped and talked about our family histories.

It was a tremendous amount of fun.

Around 2pm the phone rang. It was Lamis, making sure that I'd turned off the dolmades, and very happy to hear that we loved them.

I hope to hear from her again.

Bernie's Nemesis

This little fellow has been wandering around the kitchen ceiling for days.

I've always had a fondness for jumping spiders; they're feisty and independent, fast and furry. If you poke at them, they'll hop away, but if you're persistent with your pestering, they lose their tempers and will hop at you.

That's what had Bernie worried. When was this spider going to have enough of intruding humans in the house and go on a rampage?

Spider was exploring the kitchen island when I spotted it, just ambling along, checking to see if any slices of home-made pizza had been left out. I got my camera and had an interesting photo-shoot with the close-up focus ... but I couldn't get too close because Spider would get aggressive, throw front legs in the air, and jump on the camera.

It was fairly annoying to the bug, but what an expression when I used the flash:

Wherefore Art Thou, Cuisinart?

I can't remember how long ago we bought our first Cuisinart food processor.

Neither can I recall why we bought it, as usually we have a specific reason for buying things. Why did we spend the money?

The beast can grate a pound of extra sharp white cheddar in under a minute. In 45 seconds, it can produce perfectly mixed tortilla dough. In less time than it takes to laugh heartily at such a wonder, it can slice a cucumber, or a summer sausage.

With it, we make butter and buttermilk, chimichurri or pesto, pizza dough or whipped cream, banana ice cream or chopped nuts.

It was the chimichurri that ended the life of the bowl this past week. Chimichurri is a paste of parsley, garlic, olive oil, and red wine vinegar that elevates a fine fresh warm loaf of French bread to divine heights. My intention was to make some chimichurri, wash the bowl, and then make some butter and buttermilk from heavy cream to construct a new batch of ranch dressing.

Alas, when I began to dry the washed bowl, its locking mechanism simply fell apart.

Easily enough ordered online, the part shipped today. In the meantime, we missed making pizza dough for Thursday night football, missed shredding block mozzarella cheese for the store-bought pizza dough, the aforementioned heavy cream to buttermilk process ... and the raisin-chopping for oatmeal cookies this morning.

When I was a new wife, I had never heard of a food processor. When I was a wife of 20 years, I would have sneered at the thought of needing a food processor -- because I had no idea how useful a tool it would be. As a wife of 37 years, not having a food processor is like having a bucket over my head in the kitchen; I keep reaching for it, and it's not there.

Store-bought pizza dough ... not bad, but what we can make with the food processor -- priceless, as they say. I hope the USPS hustles that new bowl, or else I will go nuts.

One morning last week I was putting away the dishes, and noted that the light was catching my largest stainless steel bowl -- just so.

I can remember buying it -- it's huge, and I use it when I toss two torn loaves of bread with simmered celery and onions for turkey stuffing; Bernie uses it when he makes meatloaf; we employ it when we pick grapes or pomegranates.

None of those scratches were there when it came to our house. Each silvery line, each dark line represents the touch of a potato masher, a fork, a wide spoon, a mixing blade. Thirty-five years or so of beloved use.

Far from accenting marring marks, the light made the bowl more beautiful, made me remember all the many delightful foods that had collected in its embraces.

All of us, in aging, have these scratches and mars. We get scraped in life, we get used for work at jobs and at home, we sprain muscles and find ourselves so tired some days that we tremble ourselves to sleep.  We think ourselves wretched, but in reality, every wrinkle, age spot, ache and lameness, we're being made into something even more beautiful, more unique, than that spotless stainless steel bowl.

To be useful, to be used for good -- what higher calling could anyone ask?

I want to be like this bowl.

Demolition and Reconstruction

 In an earlier post, I described how we took out the bar connected to our kitchen sink island. Demolition of that bar was easy, and gave us great hopes for the rest of the project.

Indeed, the next step -- one that the salesman at Lowes suggested, was to take out the edge pieces of the tile prior to the "formal" measurement by the counter top company. This was also amusingly easy.

But do you see what's under that tile? Concrete, reinforced with chicken wire.

 How does one remove it? One bashes with a hammer and wrecking bar. We had to do the sink island next, and this is what it looks like when "done."

Beneath that cement layer is raw plywood, which has been so dehydrated by its 18 years of neighborliness with the concrete that it sucks the moisture out of your hands when you touch it. As we say around this house, "DEES-gusting!!"

And then, if ripping out reinforced cement wasn't bad enough, (and it was) we embarked upon a day of frustration and aggravation. Papa Jim of the Haverim returned, and we exposed the plumbing, right down to the concrete slab, encountering shocking mistakes and sloppiness by the original installers. Jim and Bernie pounded down through the slab around the pipes and dug a small cavern, in which Jim cut and pieced a cracked pipe (what a wonderful revelation that our drain had been seeping into the ground underneath the house) and re-routed things for the new configuration of the island. (The poor sink was lying on the stones out by the back patio by this time.)

The long and sweaty, frustrating day was nearly at an end when we all figured out that our shut-off valve to the house is faulty, and that we had to turn off the water to the house at the city's street connection. Then the copper pipes' solders finally set. We sent Jim home.

As luck would have it, Monday, when we were to finish up the plumbing, Jim was sick as hell. We waited until later in the week, and then pitched into the construction on our own. We manfully ripped out the rest of the tiled counters (as the counter top people told me we'd have to do) and let me tell you that swinging a hammer all damn day is exhausting.

While Bernie worked on the lower copper lines and the box that holds the pipes, I was seized by loathing of the cement-dust flavored counters. I scrubbed them down, and when they were dry, I stained them with this cool wood stain  by Varathane, which comes in a tube and wipes on with a rag. The next day I put two coats of polyurethane finish on them.

I did the ABS (black drain pipes) and Bernie completed the copper water lines to the sink so that we could move the island cabinet back into place.  Again, it took all day both days, with solders that wouldn't stop leaking, wood that would not remain bolted into the concrete, and pieces missing necessary for the functioning of the sink.

 When Bernie at last could hook up the sink, all of us were so relieved that we couldn't wait one minute before washing the day's accumulated dishes, in a celebratory mood, all standing around admiring the running water, the scrubbing clean, the luxury of a kitchen with a semblance of order.

Here you can see my stained plywood countertops. Pitted though they may be, I can sanitize them with soap and water, which is important to me as it will be a good two weeks and more before the real deal is installed. I suppose I could have just polyurethaned over the  raw plywood, but this looks prettier, and for $7, I think it was worth it.

You can also see my long-unused wallboard repair skills where the backsplash used to be. When we ripped off the tiles back there, the wallboard came along with them!

Papa Jim was able to return to help us Monday, and hooked up the electric and made some adjustments to our work. You have no idea how big a difference moving that island out a foot made on our kitchen traffic. What was before a cramped area that allowed two people to work in it -- and only if they were on very warm and cuddly terms -- now accommodates us all so that we can work as a team, even if the dogs decide to wander through.

The refrigerator belongs in that nook at the far end, but we're not moving it back until the new counter is installed.

And oddly, we like the fridge where it sits right now. Maybe if we had known this ahead of time, we'd have taken out the window behind it, and just added more cabinet and countertop in the nook.

We're thrilled so far. 


And so, so happy to have a functional kitchen again.

The Day in the Kitchen

Before it was barely light, the sound of the wind thrashing the trees in the neighborhood infiltrated my dreams, making me image wild surf and seascapes.

The wind, along with the high pollen count from the citrus, the walnuts, the locust, and the weeds, is hurtful. Without the wind, it would be aggravating, but with the wind -- oh, noes, time to stay indoors.

And so it was an indoor day, a day for the kitchen, which we needed, after all.

Orange season is at its end, so we had bought cheap navel oranges in big bags to grind into juice. That's how the morning began. Bernie got more than two big jars of sweet, rich juice from his market harvest.

Then it was my turn, when I brought home my 40 Super-Jumbo eggs from the egg plant down the road. Super-Jumbo eggs are incredibly large, and can't be automatically processed at the egg-plant. They don't get candled there, and they're too big to go through the auto-wash. So we washed them carefully, all 40 of them, and I candled each with a flashlight to make sure they didn't have any dark streaks in them. (One was revealed to be a big double-yolker, which absolutely astonished Lillian, who had never even heard of such a thing!)

When my eggs were done, Bernie came back on shift to juice lemons from our tree, making lemon juice cubes to give us lemonade all summer long. (Lemons are a winter fruit.)

When the lemons' juice was all put away in ice cube trays, we cut up a large banana squash and cooked it in the pressure cookers. This is for pumpkin pies, a bright and rich-tasting confection. Then it was time for lunch, while the squash/pumpkin cooled.

In the afternoon, I piled the cooked squash into the Cuisinart (I love this technological marvel) and whirred it until it was creamily crushed. In my mother's time, we would put squash/pumpkin into a ricer and hand-grind it into palatability, leaving behind the fibrous bits. With the Cuisinart, the fibrous stuff gets chopped into oblivion, yet still remains as fiber in the mix, thus adding healthy stuff. The harvest was five pies' worth of pumpkin, a real treasure.

It was Real Life. We harvested, we processed, we preserved, all for our own survival, and pleasure.

As I gently washed the eggs, I had a strong sense of the blessing of food. They came directly from the chicken; no machinery was involved. This was REAL food, and we cared for it and prepared it for consumption ourselves.  It was not an automated event, far removed from our refrigerator. It was not a detached event; what I was carefully cleaning was also what would nourish my family, bringing to the task a tenderness, a love.

When I measured the pumpkin into containers for freezing, I had a sense of the future, when the pies made from this effort would bring smiles and good feelings to those who ate them.

I have a strong sense that this is what life is supposed to be about, not about hurrying to make money or meet deadlines, but to attend to the basic stuff of existence, the food, the provision, the love. The society we live in has put those things on a back burner, or a side burner at best. We've lost so much beauty and peace in that.

Retirement has honestly been a bounty of blessings.