This is about my latest toy. No, I haven't started spinning my own yarn. After that experience with the Lamb's Pride, I know spinning yarn will be unbearably fluffy with lint all over the house. If you have read other topics on this blog, like Fact-Checking or the 21st Century language threads, you know I love breaking the mold. So here's a new take.
After 30 years, my kitchen is a disaster. It has to be gutted down to the plaster, re-plastered and painted, all the appliances replaced. With appliances taking at least a month to come in during the pandemic, and my sister's experience with new kitchen cabinets, I decided it was time to break the mold.
So first I bought a multi-function cooker. Air-frying, broiling, dehydrating, etc, For a couple hundred bucks. Delivered in one week. If it only lasts two years, that's still comparable to spending a thousand or so on a full-up range and having it work 9 years, replacing the pans under the burners every couple of years, and having the baking element short out.
This new toy works from a lamp socket. It runs cool. So where I originally put the toast on the middle setting, I can see I'll have to set it to dark. When I baked shortbread at the right temperature, I had to almost double the time. The broiler works fine. I used the dehydrator on some nuts that absorbed humidity during our rainy weeks. The air fryer did great on fries and chicken nuggets made from scratch. The dehydrator will let me incubate yogurt, which was always chancy in my oven -- which ran hot anyway. Cool running I can adjust for.
Second, you have to get familiar with your new toy before you can do what you want with it. My French bread recipe, from George Greenstein's book, has you bake at 425 to make the crust crispy, and finish at 350. The bake setting won't go up to 425, but the roast setting will. So I roasted for 10 minutes and baked for 25, and it came out beautifully.
Why is this important? Because I keep kosher. The nearest kosher restaurant is 10 miles away over one of the 10 least reliable intersections in the nation. With this and my hot water urn, I won't have to live off salads and sushi while the kitchen is being torn apart. When the kitchen's done, I can put this on top of storage, like a butcher block kitchen trolley with storage.
I can get a couple of cabinets and put modern solid-element "hot plates" on them. This is safer than a four-burner range where you might have to reach over a hot burner or pot, risking a burn. I can't tell you how many times I've turned on the wrong burner and risked a serious injury. Mounting two-burner units side by side gets rid of the reach problem, and cuts down on the number of times you use the wrong knob.
I can have the remodelers put up wall-mount pot and pan hangers that arrive in -- you guessed it, about a week. Leaving the cabinets for my Royal Doulton English bone china and my Corellware. With my current cabinets, half the space is inaccessible to tiny little me. One of them was even installed just above eye level and several times I have run my head against the corner of it.
My kitchen is only 10 x 10 or 100 square feet. This setup will leave more floor space without making it harder to reach my spices when I'm using a burner. I can put the burners on a top shelf and keep spices below that shelf, and brother have I got a lot of spices. I'll even have room for some shelving beside the fridge for sugar, salt, flour, beans, and canned goods. If your kitchen is larger than mine, and you can break away from a full-up range with these smaller appliances, you may have room for that island you always wanted.
The washer and dryer are a different matter, but hopefully I can keep the dryer where it is until the new one comes in. If not, I know where there's a laundromat. And I'm NOT going to put counters over these appliances. I have that and it was impossible to replace the broken washing machine without tearing down that entire side of the room. I won't make the next people in this house go through that.
If the first toy breaks down too soon because the manufacturer didn't plan for a high duty cycle, there are wall mount electrical convection ovens that can also be mounted on cabinets. Just make sure you buy one that has a fan; one from a well known appliance maker doesn't -- what were they thinking?
Before I have to leave this house, I might put in a full-up range cos most people are hooked on that, or I might let them pick the one they like best cos hopefully things will be better by then. But I'm not trapped waiting a month for a range and all it took was breaking the mold.
I'm just saying....
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