3/27/14 Dear Mishka. My first experience with the kitchen

3/27/14
Dear Mishka,


Let me tell you the saga of a brave little stove. Some time during the week I decided it was cookie time. Warm chocolate chips like mom used to make.. Mostly for myself because I had a craving. And of course I told everybody it was all for Matt because I'm such a great wife (stop laughing! I am too!).

Anyway, I discovered that the stove would not turn on. The burners would light slightly if you used a lighter but no oven. I pushed buttons in and out because the stove labels are gone completely by now, it's a bit on the well used side. After pushing and pulling and waving a grill lighter around like a magic wand I came to a decision.. No such luck. Time to call maintenance!

Maintenance around here is delightful. Always quick and helpful. This time they quickly attempted to be helpful. The first man was Robert, who I suspect was the gardener based on his sun hat and gardening boots. He and I sit around discussing how to push buttons and pull levers, and I'm helping as only I can when I can barely make out what someone is saying and absolutely nothing helps. Not match nor lighter or even a prayer.

Now make the all important phone call to the head of maintenance who is home sick with the flu. Aforesaid gentleman proceeds to tell us over the phone that the switch on the wall where the plugged in is probably off. We had a bit of trouble explaining to him that there was no switch, no outlet, and no plug. Well that is poor Roberts was explaining everything over the phone to Joey for the third time.

During this delightful highly productive time period I spotted my neighbor Anne. Time to ask someone with experience here. Anne has lived here for about 30 years, much of it in this apartment complex. Anne walked in and pointed out there was a plug in back, a very short one, she also explained that the crimp in the hose she could see was not helping. So under her firm and knowing direction Robert and the younger gardener, named Ronan, proceeded to drag the oven out from its location unkink the line and discover that there was a plug and it had a number of feet of cord that has been stuffed into some open space in the back of the oven. Oh THAT sounds safe.... We pulled it out and ran it down the wall to the nearest outlet. Tah Dah! A plug leading to a socket and a switch... gosh what an unusually familiar sight. Joey also explained to us that the button with pretty little star was the igniter... for the whole beast. It makes a hell of a noise while creating electrical shocks, mostly because it ignites all the burners and the oven at the same time by creating electrical sparks at each location. The only difference is whether or not you have turned on the gas, something I was actually hesitant to do by this time, golly gee why?


Again we attempted to turn everything on and I should mention Anne's dog Raz had snuck in my apartment when the door was left open and was also in the kitchen, bringing the total to 5. Little devil was not supposed to be there so he stood in absolute silence watching us. I thought his sneaky silence and freezing in place was actually quite adorable, not allowed but still adorable for a true shaggy dog. And then Anne spotted him, reminded him he did not live here so he gave us a bit of a dejected huff and left. Lovely.

And it was then that the Gods of the Ovens spit at us, laughed, and then left.


So in our infinite wisdom and experience we decided the tank must be out of propane, so Robert went into town for one. Now these suckers are full size and weight a ton. When they got back in a surprisingly short amount of time (no “island time” here) he and Ronan wrestled it out of the back of a truck and dragged it to the apartment and plugged it in. When they moved the old one they discovered it was still quite heavy and full. But just to check on things we went inside again turning things on with the new tank.. Sure as shit those burners lit like a dream, and so did the oven. So out they went to put the old tank back on. Guess what? The Oven Gods were still laughing. It appears something is creeping around inside the old tank occasionally creeping up to block the flow of propane and snickering.

So the poor gardeners proceed to unhook, drag, drag again, hook again, and press buttons again. Once again everything lights like a charm. I even let every single burner at the same time and left them running and it worked just fine. Then we decided to turn on the oven, a bit nerve-racking since earlier when the igniter wasn't working we could hear gas flow quite heavily and smell it. Not reassuring to people waving a grill lighter around. So most of us take a step back and we let Roberts have the honor of potentially blowing himself up. Darned if that puppy didn't light. We were all amazed and thanked our Oven Gods. And then they informed us they weren't done yet, and the oven began to start smoking. As my husband would say, head wall head wall head wall.

Robert decided it was simply dirty and pulled out the racks and grabbed a rag from the sink. He bent over and insisted that he clean the oven, not me. I felt a bit foolish watching somebody else do my job. But when he finished and lit the oven.. no more smoke. The racks went back in and the gentlemen left with my profuse thanks.


Of course the story CANNOT end of there. My oven actually did not continue lighting and the broiler didn't light at all. We spoke with Joey, AKA Mr. Astaphan, who turned out to be a phenomenal ass, and after a long bit of bitching he sent out an actual repair crew. They were here for about 2 hours removing part scraping parts and putting parts back. I felt more faith as they had actual tool kits (our gardeners had none and parts IN the tool kits for the oven and for cleaning little parts. When these Oracles of the Oven Gods finished I had a fully operating oven!!! My religion had changed.

Everything looks like it should, work like it should and warms like it should. To celebrate I baked a chocolate cake and put cream cheese frosting on it for Matthew. I also have my originally desired batch of chocolate chip cookies prepped and in the batters box (no pun intended, well maybe a little intended). Now we have to wait and see how it turned out.

Love, The Blonde

P.S. - I realized shortly after that there were no temperature marks on the oven either. So an oven thermometer (ok, 2 of them) was purchased and placed inside. There appears to be no control, it heats and keeps heating.  I wait until its ALMOST at temp and stuff in my baking quickly. After all this living hell... I can live with this. No one touch my stove! It now works!!  No touchy!!!