Norm Matthews

I was idly reading this topic a while ago and found that many people thought Blue Star was a great range. I looked on the internet and found a dealer selling them about 3/4 mile from here. I went to look at it and another place as well. The upshot of what they said was that it was built for COOKING. It was a restaurant stove built to be acceptable to domestic building codes. Basically it was a tank. It reminded me of the Garland I had in the restaurant I had all those years ago. I also saw some more modest stoves and decided I'd actually prefer a nice pick-up truck instead of a tank. They told me that GE was doing some really good things with ranges and a double oven appealed to me. What cinched it was to learn that new technology had drastically brought down the cost of installing a new gas line in my house. My glass top stove that was not all that old was acting up. The smooth glass top always needed cleaning and the mess was always cooked on. I spent more time cleaning it than cooking with it. The left front burner would not turn down sometimes. I never knew when I'd turn back a few minutes later and find it was cooking at top heat even though I'd turned it down. The other front burner would not heat up very fast. I'd go back after a while thinking it was time to flip whatever was in the pan only to find it had not started cooking yet. I ordered the stove I wanted and it was installed today. It has a double oven with steam clean option and convection in the lower one. The center griddle is replaceable with either a reversible cast iron one or a regular grate. My first food to cook on it is a hamburger with the buns being toasted on the griddle. Tomorrow I'll bake some bread in the upper oven. edit PS In a few months I think I will have the range hood replaced with a matching over the range microwave.

I have bookmarked the page to order some too.

I think it's aged in used bourbon barrels rather than actually having bourbon in it. Bourbon must be aged in new charred oak barrels. After they have been used once, they are sold for other uses. Scotland uses them for aging Scotch, for one example. The charred wood will be saturated with bourbon smell and flavor when used for the first few times with the Worcestershire sauce though.

There was a steak in the freezer that was too big for either one of us so I grilled and split it. I still could not eat all of mine. The thought of it sitting there defrosting made us hungry and so we ate early. We had it with grilled corn, salad and mashed Yukon gold potatoes.

The recipe is at the blog at the bottom. The kids started for me to keep track of what I cook. I kept forgetting stuff that they would ask me questions about later on. The recipe is at the link at the bottom of this post (normmatthews.blogspot)

Needs a bottle of beer instead of water and a tablespoon of cocoa powder added.

My son loves the Mexican chicken he gets at a food truck so I thought I'd try a version of it at home. I used the Weber grill and a Rick Bayless recipe for road side chicken. It was a lot like what we get but lacking a goodly dose of Tabasco that they put on it here.

Before I started making the chili, I was thinking I'd serve beans on the side but by the time I started cooking, I was so frazzled I forgot about beans. At first I went to Whole Foods because I thought they'd have some ingredients that HyVee didn't.. like whole spices and pure chili powder-not a blend. They only had one of those and chuck steak was $9. a pound. No thanks. I went to HyVee to get the rest of the stuff then across the street to get one bottle of beer. The liquor store was locked and the inside was empty. I went to another liquor store and got a bottle of beer. When I got home, I dropped the beer and it broke in the driveway. I spent the next ten minutes cleaning up all the broken glass and decided to make the chili without beer but when I started reading the recipe again, I realized I forgot to get any Ro-Tel. I decided to go to the Mexican grocery just down the street and pick up another bottle of beer on the way home. The Mexican store didn't have Ro-Tel tomatoes and no one even knew what i was talking about when I asked so I went to Hen House to get the tomatoes and picked up some tortillas while I was there and got another bottle of beer on the way home. So I started making the chili about two hours later than i had planned. Glad my son liked it. I think I need to do some tweaking with it next time.... and double check my list before I leave the house. PS Hen House didn't have any RoTel on the Mexican aisle. It was with the rest of the tomatoes so maybe it isn't a Mexican food item after all.

It was a change. I cut it smaller than the recipe said to but if I make it again, I'll chop it even smaller. I am tempted to add some beans too. (ducking) It was very spicy and I cut back on the heat at that. I wanted to try a different recipe because the last time I made my recipe, I felt it was not as good as I used to think it was.

i tried a Texas style chili for dinner. (No beans, chunky beef and spicy)

Clear matte latex based paint should be OK. Like Pastrygirl says, it should not be a problem with a napkin ring.

Charlie got it for me at Christmas time. It is the 8qt. size. As near as I can tell it is the Duo 8 qt, not any of the more advanced ones. I don't think they had any of the other fancier ones when I got mine. I told Charlie I was thinking about getting one and he told me I was NOT allowed to get anything for myself between Thanksgiving and New Years. If I had got one myself, I probably would have got a 6 qt. one but I am glad he got the bigger one. I doubt I would have been interested in one that did more than the plain manual one does either. It cooks pot roasts in less than an hour when it takes all day on the stove top, oven or slow cooker.

Our dinner was a pork shoulder stew with green chilis, onions, apples and lime juice. I took a picture of it without the broth because I thought it would look better that way. We added the broth before we ate it. Second picture is the leftovers with the broth. Apples float. Pork doesn't.

I don't know it the Texas Toast has sugar in it. It is a commercial brand. I'll try some home made Sourdough bread tomorrow. I do put sugar in it to the amount of about 1Tb for a 2 loaf yield. Thats about .001 ounce per slice.

Very nice. I will look into it if there are any concerns that arise with the GE before I buy it.

Five is Defcon 1, stand by the smoke alarm on mine. I just did Texas toast on 2 and it was almost over done. See the picture.

@rotuts I don't have an issue with the griddle. I doubt I will use it much. I expect I will replace it with a regular grate like on the other two sides. @lindag I just got a C Steam Oven and am not impressed with it so far. It's so small for one thing. I also have a B Smart Oven which is very nice and I use it all the time but both take up limited counter space in my small kitchen.

@lindag Just because. No real reason except once in a blue moon I may need two. I like the smaller one for most of the cooking I may do.

@lindag Thanks for the mention. I had an electric GE stove top and and an electric GE oven recently. Both were good. The guy at the appliance store said GE is doing some good things now days. @Smithy That looks nice but I notice it's a slide-in and because I may put in new counters in the future, I think I need a free standing model now.

It looks like the same. I have it with one letter different : JGB890SEJSS

I think this might turn out to be long and hesitated to even start but I'll try to keep it short. I cooked on gas stoves in my 20's and 30's. I had a 36 residential one at home and a Garland at the restaurant we had for about 7 years. For the last 40 plus years, I have cooked indoors on electric ranges. The latest one is a glass top and although it was OK for the first couple of years, the cooktop is constantly needing cleaning and the main burner won't always turn down when I want it down. I have decided to put in a gas stove in the next few months, maybe sooner. The first one I looked at was Blue Star. Then I looked at some others. Technology has changed quite a bit since the 1970's. I don't really need a tank in my kitchen. I rarely cook for more that two and most frequently, just use the stove to make an omelet or two. I cook whole meals a couple times a week. My turn at Thanksgiving meals comes once every three or four years. I think I have settled on a GE double oven range with a 18,000 btu main burner and varying lesser heat on the other ones. I welcome any comments on my thinking. I have not made a final final decision but I like what I see in the GE.

Corning sold Corningware in 2000 and the new company made them out of a stoneware based clay which did not have the traditional characteristics of the older stuff. I had some, not knowing it was different and one chipped and cracked within a couple months. I read that in 2008 a similar type ceramic used in the original ware was reintroduced.

I mentioned in the baking thread that I made bread for the first time in the CSO. It tasted fine the day it was made but not so good a couple days later. It was dry-ish. I cut the crust off, cubed it and put it in the freezer. Maybe I will put it in some meatloaf. I made some more of my regular recipe (sourdough) in my regular oven like I usually do to the temperature I always use and it came out sooo much better. I am not inclined to try to mess around with the CSO to see if I can do better. After 4 or 5 tries, I finally got a slice of toast to come out edible. The others were overcooked. First one came out black and smoking.

I didn't take a picture of dinner tonight but it was Colorado Sauce Enchiladas.

There was a Corningware one piece handle with a twist end that tightened it on to the short handle end so it could be used like a stove top pan handle. I don't recall if it was oven safe.