Range rover

I can look past most of the things around the new house that need addressed: Carpet removal, the need to paint, a fully-concreted backyard...

But the thing that makes me absolutely crazy is:

The Fabulous 400.

It is a beast. And I find it to be anything but fabulous.  


I can see how back in its day it was probably a very progressive appliance.  It has a rotisserie.  That could be neat.  It folds up like a Transformer (It's a cutting board... No!  It's a trivet... No! It's a full oven and stove top in one!), which is creative.

But at the end of the day, it is simply the bane of my culinary existence.

When we first looked at the stove we had no idea how it worked.  Where in the world do you boil a pot of water, for example?  

After some tinkering we found you have to uncover the coils hidden neatly under the cutting board/trivet pull-out.  Oh, of course! (smacking head sarcastically)   

But that feature only gets in the way!  It's awkward to lean over.  And I hate having to go the extra step of pulling it out when I just want to quickly, say, heat a kettle of water for tea.  So, I leave it like this...

But the most pressing issue is it doesn't work.

Our first night in the house we made a frozen pizza in the large oven on the left.  And it worked - fabulously. 

The next night, wanting a home-cooked meal, I put a meat loaf in the same oven.  Everything was cooking nicely when out of nowhere the 400 started buzzing.  At first I thought it was a timer going off.  I fiddled with that for a bit, then realized the oven was no longer on and the meat loaf was cooking on the slowly fading heat I had initially set it to.  

It hasn't worked since.  

Fortunately, there is a second, smaller oven on the right.  But cookie sheets and other pans are too big to fit in there, so I've either had to not make something or find a creative pan to put it in.


We're going to replace the ol' Fab with a normal gas - not electric, which I hate - stove.  

But to add insult to injury, the ol' Fab is 40 inches wide!  Today, that size is reserved for commercial or professional grade stoves, which, as much as I would love that, I do not love the cost: $5,000, $10,000, $15,000!!

What we don't understand is, the kitchen is remodeled with new, nice cabinets that were built around the Fabulous 400.  Why, oh why, wouldn't you replace the stove with a normal one and build the new cabinets around that?  

It's mind boggling. 

Fabulous my foot...