|
My Profile
Gift from Hil Part 2 - 2014-12-30
|
9:33 p.m. - 2011-02-27
In which our narrator makes yet another heretical statement. Thanks for the big lovey welcome to my new stove. I appreciate it muchly. Especially because it's not really a homey cozy sort of stove. I'll get used to it soon. But right now it looks quite a bit like Darth Vader squatting in my kitchen. All shiny black and hard and sort of evil. 5 burners beneath massive matte cast iron grates. This is no nellie frou-frou home appliance, this thing is bad ass. I did consider getting the white one. The old stove was white with black accessories and its looks fit well with my retro kitchen, but a white stovetop is a bugger to keep clean so I went with the solid black. The one thing I did NOT consider for even a moment was getting the stainless steel one. (Here's the heretical bit.) I detest stainless steel appliances. They suck. Nasty, high maintenance, awful things. For real. Sure, stainless looks all sleek and gourmet in the magazines and on the home decorating shows, but the living with stainless steel is hard. The fingerprints alone will make you crazy. In less than a month a stainless steel fa�ade on an appliance is all smeary and has permanent schmutz marks ('stainless', my ass) and looks like crap. Unless you clean the stupid thing all the time with the pricey stainless steel polish. Frankly? I have better things to do than polish my dishwasher every few hours. I use my stuff and I use it hard. I keep it clean but I have no patience with prima donna appliances that demand constant titivating lest with the slightest neglect they turn into raggedy smeared-up wrecks that look like curb shopped rejects. Another thing about stainless steel appliances? No magnets. My electronic cooking thermometer is magnetized and I don't fancy holding the damn thing in my hand the whole time I'm trying to use it. I slap it on the stove where it's handy and no worries. So no stainless steel stove. I have friends who got suckered into the stainless steel refrigerator thing and without being able to use magnets they about died. Regretted it big time. Usually ended up scotch-taping the kids' artwork and the school lunch calendar to the front of their 'oh so special stainless steel' refrigerators, and let me tell you, it looks like shit. So no sir, ma'am, young master and miss, NO stainless steel for this chef. And while I'm getting the heretical kitchen confessions off my chest I'll own up to another one. I HATE granite countertops. They're just another one of those wildly expensive sucker bets that end up looking like dreck before the year's out. Unless, of course, you never spill anything on them or use them for anything except to display that perfect bowl of wax fruit and your back issues of 'Trendy Kitchen' magazine. Granite stains, my friends. You have to reseal it at least once a year, more often if you, oh I don't know, clean it with anything harsher than the cotton puffs harvested from angels' asses. Plus, one accidental slop of tomato sauce or raspberry jam and the visible memento of your clumsy moment is going to live on your granite countertop forever. I know this from my friends' experiences and from my stint as the prettiest plumber in the Hudson Valley. Stainless and granite suck. Me? I have white Formica countertops with huge slabs of white Corian laid over them. I use the Corian like ginormous cutting boards. Corian is great. I can slice on it. I can set hot pots straight off the stove on it and it doesn't singe. I can scrub the heck out of it with Comet. When I clean my counters, by gum, they not only look clean, they are clean. Completely disinfected. And they look pretty. All shiny white and fresh. Not like that swirly barf colored granite with the flecks and specks and blobs and bits and you never know whether it's the natural grain or leftover dried chicken blood. Ick. I'm no germ-o-phobe, but I do like a clean kitchen. A nice low-maintenance, easy to keep sanitary kitchen with no prima donna appliances or unforgiving vomit colored countertops.
|
