Never trust a skinny cook

Another question I received:

Have you cooked anything good in your new kitchen yet?

I love food. Eating it, talking about it, even grocery shopping. Italian, by heritage with a husband who has adapted well to our style of eating and loves food just as much as I do. In fact, one of the main driving factors behind working our arses off on the farm is to produce high quality, ethically managed food for the two of us and our extended families. 

I love cooking too, although in recent years my time in the kitchen has suffered tremendously due to time constraints. Being closer to work now, that's one thing I' d like to see change for the better. So imagine my delight and surprise when I was appliance scouting, on my birthday no less, and found the perfect stove. I'd been cooking on electric for years while secretly pining for a gas range which I greatly prefer. The new house has propane for heat and cooking so I immediately began shopping. 

I wish! Not my kitchen. 

My dream stove is a commercial Viking 6 burner convection range with an indoor / outdoor central grill. I saw the price tag ($15,000!) and my dreams quickly shifted gears over to the appliance department at Sears. 5 burners - check. True convection - check. Slide-in - check. Large capacity - check. Self-cleaning - check. It was a floor model and it was on sale, *big time* to the tune of nearly 75% off full price. I casually draped myself across it until the salesman was available. 

And that's where my luck ran out. 

Two months later I accepted delivery once we had possession of our new house. It was installed incorrectly and unusable. Weeks later a service call ended in "I'm not allowed to fix that." Weeks after that and hundreds of dollars later on a plumber we had a partially working range and a recommendation for another Sears service call. Weeks after that we had another service call confirm that we needed more parts. Weeks after that we had another service call that ended in "Its as good as its gonna get."

Now I'm generally an even keeled kind of person. But Sears tested my limits. I spent hours on the phone that went nowhere. Except maybe to India. I drove to the store. Three times. Two different stores. I relied on friends and my own employees to be at my house for all these useless service calls. Customer service online chat hung up on me, Yes! Hung up on me online! I wasn't even being mean. In fact everyone had been telling me I was being too nice through the whole ordeal. 

I had a plan though. 

No, I wasn't going to risk jail time, I'm too busy. But I think I found the answer. I started calling the service request line and requesting service calls for a non-working brand new range. Every week. Appointment after appointment. And when you keep calling they move the appointments up to higher priority. And when you call again they move them to days that are more convenient because when you live in the country a technician is not always in your area. And when you schedule appointment after appointment with no signs of stopping, your stove gets fixed. And Sears cries uncle and does the work they 'weren't allowed' to do on the very first service call. 

So to answer your question, have I cooked anything good in my new kitchen... I cooked for 2 months using an electric skillet and griddle. We have had a properly working range for about 2 weeks now, finally. And the most exciting thing I made was a new recipe for a green tomato pie. I don't like to be wasteful and there are always copious green tomatoes on the vines after the summer heat has dissipated. A favorite past recipe is for green tomato mincemeat which makes excellent fall tartlets. In the interest of time I was looking for more 'instant gratification' so I whipped up a green tomato pie, and then another. 

Tastes like a perfectly tart, rich apple pie and it was a big hit at the office and at a later clam bake. Here is a link to the basic recipe, I made some changes, of course, added a bit of green apple and dried cranberries and reduced the sugar a bit as well. Enjoy!

http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/green-tomato-pie

And remember. . .