Stand facing the stove

Today was a great day in my life. It was the day I welcomed my new Bosch gas range.

What about Hieronymous Bosch?

How is that for a picture of hell? He had quite an imagination, did Hieronymous Bosch.

The Bosches who made my stove also had quite an imagination. We could not figure out how it worked!

Here is how this happened. After my wild visit to my old apartment on Sunday I went to Orville's looking for just a fridge and I ended up buying this stove, too. I have been wanting a gas stove for years. Even a cheapie would have been great! I had a cheapie gas stove in San Diego in my apartment and I loved it. I cooked for Leonard Pennario on that stove!

But the other day at Orville's I was with my friend Lizzie and, aided and abetted by her, I splurged on this Bosch. It is fancy and heavy-duty and it has this big medieval-looking grating over the burners. I love that. Best of all it was a scratch-and-dent model with $600 knocked off the price because of a barely visible ding on the side where you will never see it.

So. Last night after work I thought I would soar like an eagle and make lasagna. I got this good deal at Albrecht Discount on ricotta cheese and there was a not-too-fattening lasagna recipe I came across, plus in the great fridge switch, in which the kitchen was turned upside down, there emerged the package of whole-wheat lasagna noodles that I knew had been around somewhere.

Then I got yakking on the phone with Lizzie to tell her how great the stove was. Then Lizzie came over. We drank wine. Meanwhile I am making the tomato sauce for the lasagna and boiling the noodles but everything took a long time because I kept overestimating how high a flame I had. Do not worry, I will get used to this. But Howard came home and he was hungry and we all began snacking on crackers and cheese.

And the clincher was that I had totally forgotten what about a dozen people had told me in the previous 12 hours, that the first time you use your new oven, you have to run it for half an hour first. Son of a Bosch-buying sea cook!

So we wound up postponing the lasagna and having spaghetti instead, with the sauce. I have to say it turned out great. But that is a humble first dinner to have on this magnificent Bosch stove, spaghetti.

After dinner when we wanted to turn the oven off was when we realized we could not find the manual. Had Orville's forgotten to leave one? That seemed impossible. In any case, though, there was no manual and we could not figure out how to turn off the oven. There was this complex sequence of digital readings and we figured out how to navigate them but then the thing kept reading "Hot."

Howard would test it by opening the oven and sticking his hand in and sure enough, it was hot.

I went online to try to find the missing manual. Fifty pages and a gallen of toner later we realized that Lizzie was right and the thing did read "hot" until it cooled down.

Since then I have discovered that Larry who was cleaning the house yesterday and assisting with the appliances had hidden the manual deep in the cabinet full of pots and pans.

Ha, ha! And here I was blaming Orville's.

This promises to be quite the journey.