It’s a New Range!

Yes, here at the Oaks house we are celebrating the much anticipated arrival of our NEW RANGE!!! Okay, so this was probably only much anticipated by me and my Mom, who always said we need a new one. I think Nick was excited about it as well, but not as much since he would be the one installing it.

Now I know some are you are asking- Did the old Range die? What happened? Well, I am somewhat sad to say that I was never able to will the old Range to die. The old Range (picture below) was original to the house as was the dishwasher when we moved in almost 4 years ago. I was able to will the dishwasher to die, forcing its replacement. BUT the range was stubborn and hung in there and “we” ended up literally dragging it out of the house, and when I say we I mean Nick.

Here it is the Old, Ancient, and detested RANGE. This pic was actually taken on the day we closed on our house. That is the original dishwasher in the picture as well. Ohhh how far we have come! This range did serve me well for 4 years, but I will not miss it’s unlevel burners and yucky pans.

So without further ado, the NEW RANGE . . .

It is a stainless steel Whirlpool! It self cleans, steam cleans, has a 5th warming burner and 1 expandable dual zone burner. I LOVE IT. So far everything functions perfectly, and it makes a huge difference in the look of my kitchen. Now if I could just get rid of my dusty rose counter tops!

A huge Kudos to the sales girl at hh gregg who sold it to us. We had never made a purchase at hh gregg and they were super helpful. We had originally planned to make this purchase at Best Buy, since we had Best Buy points. However, the day we went to look I did not see the one I had picked out online and no one ever offered to help us. So we left and headed across the street to hh gregg just to look around. We walked in, the girl asked us if she could help, I said we need a range that is stainless and self cleaning, and she took us straight to this one.  Here is the best part it was ON SALE! I had not looked at anything with a warming burner due to the cost, but this one was the same price as the one I had picked out online at Best Buy that did not have the warning burner. SCORE!

Praise the Lord for handy husbands! We picked the range out and ordered on a Friday and they were going to deliver it on Monday. So Nick came home and began the process of getting the old range out and prepping for the new one. He worked very hard on all of this with little help for me and I really appreciate it.

Here he is making the final push to get the new range in!

So I know some of you are wondering, what was our first meal out of the new range? Well, we did not get everything in till late Monday and I had actually already had dinner so I whipped up something quick for  Nick . . .

Old faithful- Scrambled Eggs and toast! (The toast was done in my toaster)

Muffins too!!!

Nick enjoying the fruits of his labor.

One meal down and many more to come from the NEW RANGE!

Adventures in Cooking

Well, today I was out browsing the inter-web when I can across a recipe for Soft Snickerdoodle Cookies <----Click here if you want to see it. Now I LOVE Snickerdoodle cookies and actually up till about 3 or 4 years ago made them every year around Christmas. So with the snow falling today . . .YES March came in like a LION! Lets only hope it leave like a LAMB as the saying goes.

I thought today would be an excellent day to whip up some cookies. So naturally I did not have all the ingredient needed and had just got back from a trip to Wal-Mart. Luckily, my wonderful husband ventured out (the snow stopped) to pick up a few things for me. Isn’t he sweet!? So the cooking began! I will have to say 1st and foremost that I am not a perfect cookie chef. My cookies are never attractive unless it is those slap on a cookie sheet Pillsbury variety. I always envy those people who can make all there cookies the exact same shape an circumference. I do believe there is an art to it. My cookies on the other hand are more like snowflakes--- No two of them are ever alike!

That being said this cookie dough was some of the oddest I have ever worked with! Normally, cookie dough gets stiff enough for you to roll it in to balls, but this one just never did. I chilled it for the called for 15 minutes and then I actually stuck it in the freezer to get a little more chill, but I just never felt like it was write. The dough just kind of glopped, which made getting the cinnamon and sugar coating on a challenge.

How did they actually turn out you ask? Well, results were varied. I decided to use my Pampered Chef baking stones even though I have had trouble making cookies on them in the past. I know sometimes you have to cook things a little longer on a stone so I did that in hopes of having beautiful cookies. Despite my best efforts the 1st pan had to be completely thrown out, they just NEVER got done. They appeared to be done on the top and the edges but when I tried to get them out of the pan they just gooed up. Not sure if “gooed” is a word but it best describes what happened. The next pan also a baking stone turned out GREAT! Go figure?! 3rd pan yet another baking stone was yet another disaster . . .

I was able to salvage a few but most of them ended up in the pile you see here.

Pan 4 was actually a metal pan and those I cooked on it actually were partially burnt, and I backed of my cooking time in an attempt to avoid this.

I would honestly like to blame my oven for this entire fiasco. Not sure if that is true or fair, but it is a like easier than it being user error.

So would I use this recipe again? No probably not! I think the old recipe that my Mom has yields a much better result. Although we did get a plate of cookies out of this one . . .

See I told you I make unattractive cookies, but they are yummy!

Now for the worst part . . .CLEAN UP! Ugh!