I live in a house that was built about one hundred years ago. It came with an old Roper gas range that was made at a time when we didn't know about cholesterol, vegans, PETA or how they slaughtered animals for meat supply. On the inside of the oven door there are instructions on how to cook beef, veal, lamb, ham and poultry. This oven does not acknowledge carbohydrates as something to avoid. There are instructions on how to cook double crusted pies, scalloped dishes, baking powder biscuits, double layered cakes, etc. This range has a rounded and clumsy old fashioned look. It has a big warming compartment next to the oven where I store the lids to all my pots and various ladles and slotted spoons.
The range stopped working well about five years ago. One of the burners disintegrated and when you lit it, the flame was uneven and out of control. Another burner went the next year. The pilot light on the remaining burners would not stay on and every time someone came to my house they said the same thing: I smell gas.Still I nursed my range. There was a news story about a house that blew up because of a faulty range. I held on to my range. A repairman who came to my house called the gas company to report my range, fearing for my safety. The gas company man came and declared my range safe. Even I was surprised. The third burner gave out recently and the oven only lights after several tries and sometimes not at all. It's time.
In thirty-six hours, The Home Depot is bringing me a spanking new GE gas range with sealed burners that are electronically ignitable. I am emptying the warming oven and throwing away lids that have lost their pots, old wooden spoons, a mesh lid to keep bacon fat from spattering on your face and a broken vegetable steamer. I know that the new range will bring change that has nothing to do with cooking. I am trying to prepare for that change. I feel, in some ways, the way I felt when the last child left for college.
This has nothing to do with my new range but two days ago for no apparent reason I sold five copies of my ebook Daughters in an afternoon. My normal sales history is one or none books a day and occasionally two books a day. You can imagine my astonishment when the sales number next to Daughters kept jumping. I have nothing to say about that except that it made me feel ebullient and that's a word one doesn't use often enough.
Everyone should buy and read your books. They're as unique as your old Roper gas range.
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