an end to envy

When Terry and I left Gilroy and moved south in 2015 we hated leaving the house into which we had put so much love, effort, and money. What I really hated giving up was the stove with convection oven which we installed as part of our kitchen remodel.

It’s shouldn’t be surprising then, that when we would watch cooking programs on Food Network (and we watch a lot of them) that I would get a bit sad and a little envious when the camera shot would show the inside of an oven with a fan in the back. That fan meant, of course, that it was a convection oven. I managed to not let that interfere with my life in any sort of significant way, but I did miss my convection oven.

Earlier this year our oven here in Hemet quit working. A day after the service man came out and diagnosed the problem we got a call saying that the repair would be $250. Given that the stove was the age of the house, twelve years old, and given that we had lost the clock display during a power bobble over the winter, we decided the money would be better spent going towards a new stove.

As much as we like to support our locally-owned appliance shop, and we do—we bought both a washer-dryer pair and a refrigerator there—their selection of stoves, at least those with convection ovens, did not excite us. We made a trip to Lowe’s and found a unit that we liked. To get it in white, we were told, would be two to three weeks. That was fine, although the two to three weeks turned into seven.

In the end, though, it was worth the wait, and in any case I was somewhat less than a hundred percent for much of that time after my surgery and the unpleasant complication that followed it. By the time the stove arrived I was feeling much better and ready to make good use of it.

Having had it for some weeks now, I can say that I am delighted. No, it is not a Wolf or Sub-Zero: it is a Samsung. It is, however, everything I need. I have my convection oven, a proof setting for bread, and even a long grill burner, something our Gilroy stove didn’t have.

No more reason to feel envy when I see the fans in the ovens on Food Network.