Ray in New Orleans

I dunno. (makes scales with hands).

College hotties... Suck-ass stove. College Hotties... Suck-ass stove.

It all comes down to, how many hotties, and how many of them like a dirty old man.

HA!

Get your crawfish rig on the balcony, and cook with 100,000 BTUs.

YES... Electric sucks. Do yourself a favor, make a box cake mix. Figure out the cold spots in your oven. If you have more than 6 feet of countertop, I have kitchen envy.

I agree about electric stoves, but look at it this way, college hotties don't eat anyhow. Or they eat and barf it all back up right away so it doesn't matter how bad the cooking is. Concentrate on your roguish charm and make plenty of new friends! ~LA

Fire makes me nervous.

Quel, fire makes me happy.

Quel, my daughter is the same way about fire, ever since the time she set her thumb on fire and had to go to ER. But she's with me on the stove issue. Electric is just too hard to work with. We're almost to the point of starting to use microwave popcorn for family movie night because we can't get the hang of cooking it in a pot on an electric stove.

And if you know me at all, then you know that for me to eat microwave popcorn in my own house means that I have been brought LOW.

With you on the microave popcorn. Hell, I hate microwave ovens. The only thing I use a microwave for is to re-heat certain leftovers (chinese or indian), or to defrost frozen items. I won't cook in it and I'd always rather use a pan.

I could go without a microwave way before I could go without a food processor.

I'm convinced that natural gas is unavailable residentially in Tucson. I've never had a gas stove in any place I've lived in the 20 years I've been here.

I've learned to make perfect popcorn on my stove. I'd tell you my trick but it proabaly won't work because the fucking things are all different. Well, I can try.

Heat pan over high heat. Add oil and popcorn and cover. Once it starts popping keep it on high for what you think is halfway through and turn heat down to medium high. When the popping slows to a couple of pops a second, turn the heat all the way off. Of course you know all the simple stuff you normally do when popping so I left that stuff out. The heat management is what I'm aiming for here. If your stove just happens to be a twin of mine, you're in good shape.

Oh yeah, and Kroger brand popcorn is great. Hardly an old maid to be found.

I'd starve to death without a microwave. I eat a lot of leftovers and canned foods.

After hearing my wife complain for years about the fact that our stove in the condo was electric, I was prepared to have my water boiled in seconds on the gas stove at the house. Color me underwhelmed. And tired of waiting for the water to boil. Because it wasn't any faster. Seemed slower to me, in fact, but maybe that's the carbon monoxide talking.

And now the oven's broke too, dammit.

Nobody wants gas because they want to boil water faster (I mean, unless you get a higher BTU gas cooktop, which some people do). But it's ngt nothing to do with speed. It's all about temperature control. With gas, you turn down the flame and you've instantly changed the amount of heat you're applying, and you can SEE the flame and know what you've done. With electric, you have to wait for the coils to cool, and you don't have any visual indication that they're doing it, or how fast.

So when you boil water, you do crank the heat up all the way and put the lid on, right?

YES. And I still feel like I'm trying to boil water by rubbing my hands together or something. Takes forever.

I would gladly trade the 'temperature control' I have for the ability to much more quickly cook the 99% of things I cook that take a lot longer on the gas stove.

Like Alton Brown, if I just want to boil water, I've abandoned the stove altogether in favor of an electric kettle. Much, much faster.

Yeah, gas stoves are way better.....unless a roofer steps on your meter and breaks it and then you have no gas. Got thru Katrina with no gas interruption but all it took was one clueless roofer. Oh well, at least I have a roof!