9 Days Later, the REAL BLUES and my Oven Died

So that week in the last blog had us going almost every night to some venue and watch, listening and dancing to R&B mostly and a bit of blues.  On the Sunday before the Tuesday that the music died at Napa Smith's Brewery.  Something happened to kill the jams on Tuesday night.  Hell if I know, when I last saw Ronnie he was wearing a cap and a striped towel over his head...Arabic-like appearance but it WAS Ronnie!  That was  Halloween night, D'Jeena and her band played at Napa Smith with Ronnie running around ignoring us.  Who knows, we haven't been back since.  Sad.  Frustrating too!

Last week, Wednesday I think, the damned oven lost it's mind.  The hours before it was baking a 29 cent/lb 14lb bird that I had  brined with onion, celery, sage and oregano.  The bird turned out fine, great actually...but the damned oven did the temperature probe thingie, shit, shit, shit and there seems not anyway to reset the bloody thing.  Sooo after much piddling and screwing around we decided a replacement was due.  So off to Amazon, eBay and Craig's List looking for a double oven or even a single of similar duty.  We drifted out amid the rains of the week to the Habitat for Humanity's store and found a Dacor double oven for only 90 bux!  Dacors are some of the MOST expensive ovens and such that you can buy!  Upwards of $6000 for some models! 
 Examples thanks to Google Search...

 We had not the truck so ventured home to check the Dacor with all the usual sources, Consumer Reports, Amazon etc. Only to discover this model had a terrible and lengthy list of problems!  Sooo off to look in Craig's List Sacramento and there it was, the oven of my dreams, a GE Profile 27" beauty!  And, the price?  $390 bux!

These things cost boys and girls, this one lists for 1899 USD!  So off to West Sacramento we went.  We arrived at the super nice Ukrainian couples residence about and hour later and there it was!  In perfect, nearly not used condition!  Beautiful!  So with a bit of tugging and groaning loaded it in the truck's bed, tied it down and off we went!  The next day we connected with a neighbor, Mary and her son, he is a brawny, strong-as-an-ox guy that we both have great respect for.  He's friendly and capable as they come...We get our eggs

from him!  The next few days were spent sorting out how we were going to house the beast.  The oven sat in our living room.  As I was checking the necessary cabinetry, I saw many part numbers that indicated the size of the oven.  Up to this point it seemed to be a 27" oven...but, as it turned out it was a 30" one so it would not fit in out existing homemade funky cabinet!  So the search was on for new cabinetry to replace the now too small one!  Damnit! Shit, shit, shit! For about 400 USD a cabinet designed for a 30" oven was available.  After sorting out all the available options we decided to rework the existing one, it's not pretty but it fits the scene in our kitchen.   So starting Saturday I began the rework.  Now the cabinet has the oven and our extensive collection of cookbooks.  All book shelves had to be trimmed as the new stove ate the space alloted for the cookbooks, oh joy!  Then Sunday afternoon after several delays because of my difficulty with the electrical connections we (Ronnie and his mate Matt) slid the new unit into it's cabinet!  From then til this afternoon I've been deconstructing and reconstructing that bloody cabinet. Many screws, drilling and sawing the shelving unit that is the rest of the cabinet configuration.  It's nearly done, needs some painting and caulk to hide the less wonderful details but...we have a new stove and it works well having baked 6 loaves yesterday to brown beautiful.

I'm really happy for the end result..