Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Cooking up an Electrical Storm (Now we're safe from Witches!)

When we bought our house, we inherited a cooker.  It was a real gas-guzzler that burned the bottoms of everything I put in it and left the tops soggy and anaemic looking.  It did, however, have an enormous oven so, after several ruined cakes it became an expensive saucepan cupboard.  I really didn't like it so, after a lot of deliberation and a subscription to Which magazine, I dropped the idea of a beautiful, new Rangemaster and bought a lovely Leisure Cookmaster which I'm desperate to start using.  That's where the fun began.


Mr Joe checked the fuses in the house on our antiquated electrical system and concluded that we needed to get an electrician to come and put in a special cooker fuse for it.  He was right.  We do need a new fuse. And a new, upgraded, extended fuse board. With new safety cut outs. Connected to a different type of supply. Then, all the other circuits in the house will need to be re-wired to work on the new system.  Luckily the electrician broke the news gently and got onto EDF to arrange their portion of the work, bringing the new supply into the house.


As Mr Joe put it, my new, bargain cooker has ended up costing the same as an Aga. His favourite book when he was little (and that he monopolised from his local library!) was The Witch in the Cherry Tree by Margaret Mahy.  It's about a witch who tries to steal cakes through wickedness.  Despite being 41 now and running his own company, he's just bought the book from e-Bay so he can try out the recipe for Gingerbread Witches in the back so I don't think he's too fussed about the new oven!!  Until recently we had a beautiful old cherry tree just by the entrance to our house but the farmer removed it as it was in the way of his ploughing.  Mr Joe claims that it's now safe to install the oven and bake some cakes as there's nowhere for a witch to land!


My lovely new cooker has two good sized, efficient, electric ovens, grill, plate warmers, storage, hot plate and lots more.  It's basically the same specification of the Rangemaster but less than half the price.  I'm now deciding what to bake/roast/grill first when it's wired in.


Happily, Mr Joe and the electrician managed to talk the man from EDF into doing a far simpler installation which avoids trashing our new sitting room by drilling through the walls to the outside and then boxing in the lovely stonework.  This also saves more money and, even better, means that the work can be done on July 27th rather than in October when the EDF workmen could fit it in!


In the meantime, this is the longest I've had a clean oven!






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