Appliances

I've settled on some of the appliances I'm going to be buying for my kitchen. I had intended to go with all GE Profile stuff, but then when I was at Best Buy one of the sales persons pointed out a sexy new machine made by Electrolux. It's roughly the same price as the GE, but is so much cooler! It's a hip, awesome cooking machine, with a boatload of cool features. I'm usually one to obsess over researching a product, and the problem with Electrolux is that they're too new on the American scene to have any history. They're the manufacturers of one of the premier lines of kitchen appliances in Europe, with a 70 year history behind them and they've decided to make a huge marketing campaign here in the States. (Apparently they're also a Swedish company, which helped in their favor for this Scandinavian, plus, apparently this stove is made in the good ole USA). The only thing: I have no research whatsoever to go on, but I'm taking the plunge anyway. It just feels right to me, and it's high time I break from my normal mode of paralysis through analysis. What finally tipped the scales in the Electrolux's favor is the reality that I would always be questioning "what if." It's roughly the same price--I'm jumping on it, and I'll be one of the first ones to have this thing too. I hope it's a gamble that pays off, but man...what a machine!

It's got five burners, one that has an impressive range of power from 450-18,000 btu's. That will give you the lowest simmer heats the market, and with a searing heat of 18K btu's, you'll have a pot of water boiling in no time! It's got convection cooking, and a double oven down in the bottom drawer. Not a warming drawer, but an honest to goodness oven. Pretty cool! And as far as the interface...it's so, so hip! Can I say that again? It's so, so hip! It's called a Wave Touch control...when you touch it, the controls light up, but once you're done fiddling with, it fades to black. Some people want a flat screen, high definition TV with the latest sound system. Not me--I want a cool stove! It will be a pleasure to use, and for me, I enjoy cooking so much that I know I'll derive a lot of enjoyment from this thing.

As to the microwave, I'm going with a GE Advantium. This thing rocks! It's got high powered halogen lights in it that will brown the food you're heating up. It will also serve as a convection oven, so for a dinner party, you could have one thing going in the GE, one thing in the regular oven, and a third item in the bottom oven. Plus, I'm going to be putting my old stove in the basement. I think I'll be really prepared for Thanksgiving dinner, and plenty of other dinner parties!

It sort of bothered me at first that the stove and microwave were different brands, but they're both stainless with black highlights. They'll blend in just fine, and the Electrolux microwave is just too expensive and doesn't have the same kind of features as the GE Advantium, so I'm just going with it.

All I can say: Giddy up!