I don’t know if there is anything more frustrating for an avid home chef than burning things that are so basic! Bacon…give me a break!

Ok, well I am giving myself a break because there is a good reason I keep burning the bacon…I have a new stove! As exciting as that is there is a learning curve!

It cooks hot and heats up fast! On my old stove 6 on the burner dial was perfection, on this stove 6 = burnt to a crisp within seconds. I’m finding that a 2 or 3 is better. Don’t even get me stared on baking…it’s a convection oven…so everything would have to be converted time wise to convection. Thankfully the convection part can be turned on or off and I have yet to jump into convection cooking. For now I’ll stick to the regular oven settings.

It’s not just a new stove either…we were able to do new appliances in the whole kitchen! I still can’t get over how lovely the new refrigerator is. I just want to stand there with the doors open gazing inside. My favorite part is what I’m calling the wine shelf. It slides back to make room for the tall bottles!

Our timing was perfect, because the night before the deliver the dishwasher died during the last cycle of dishes. All the internal workings had fallen apart and were all over the bottom of the washer. It was time.

A little tip if you are in the market for appliances. We shopped at Lowes, spent a good hour there looking at all the options, and pricing things out. Ask the salesperson to print out the spec sheets on what you want, then go home and do some research. I looked at reviews and prices on several sites online.

Then since we prefer to shop local, I took the spec sheets to Lakewood Appliance and asked if they would price match. They did more than match, they came back lower on everything except the refrigerator, which I’m not surprised because it’s a counter depth refrigerator and that depth is about $1,000 more then standard ones. If you have a small mom & pop shop don’t be afraid to shop the big box stores and then go to the smaller shop and see what they can do. Lakewood Appliance doesn’t have room on the floor to carry models of everything they have access to. So shopping Lowes and seeing everything in person first was super helpful.

Now that almost all the new appliances are installed I just have to figure out how to make the most of all the new bells and whistles. The stove man, that is my priority. I don’t feel like I can even host dinner at my house for friends because things are burning. I’ll get it down though!

If you are local to Tacoma/Lakewood I can’t recommend Lakewood Appliance enough. They have been awesome with every purchase we’ve made. They know a lot about all the different brands and options and sell what they know works, not what has the highest price tag.