Mon Piano de Cuisine...

...that's what the French call it, whereas the British call it RANGE COOKER and in German there is just this so appropriate saying:

EIGNER HERD
GOLDES WERT

which means something like a cooker of your own is worth gold.

Many many years I have been dreaming of a range cooker. My dear SIL in Cheshire got one after many years of longing for an AGA and eventually got hers and never stopped praising it in the highest tones.

On a musical note, mon piano de cuisine really deserves to be related to music. Kitchen music at its best! I never knew that I could cook so virtuosic. I never knew that playing the piano in the kitchen can make you dance. I never knew how much fun it was to get huge applaus after a great piano performance and people afterwards having fullfilled, happy faces (and tommies).

Those who know me, if I want, I want it all! It had to be the biggest, nicest and most multiperforming cooker. My kitchen is now a concert hall and my piano fills it with music with equally as many note keys than on a baby upright.

Of course, as always, when one wishes for something so badly, there are many obstacles to pass before one can get it. My first obstacle was: I wanted gas for the cooking but we don't have city gas. Then I saw that there was a brand who provided modifications to the gas burners so that Butane gas could be used. Once I saw the possibility of realising my dream, I went out searching.  Last year, I finally found a shop here in Belgium - which was in fact in France - but it was advertised as Belgium. Because  here, we have always the worst deck of cards for choice, price and customer service. To cut a long and disappointing story short, I never ended up with my heart's desire but had big troubles to get my money back for a non-delivered furniture.

Then happened the slight incident with a bottle of Moët & Chandon Rosé Impérial to be opened by EG to celebrate the fact that our next grandchild is going to be a girl ---- by opening the bottle, it slipped out of his hand on the ceramic top cooking field ---- luckily the bottle stayed intact! Only the glass on top of the hob broke. So it had to be replaced.  I was no more into making music in my kitchen, as I had postponed my dream to the next house. I just looked for a replacement of the old ceramic top in our online-shop. Then I saw it;

There was a whole collection of range cookers to chose from! And they had the very model I had already gone for a year before! And it was SALES period! And it was in stock!!!

I called EG in his office (still working then) and told him: NOW YOU ARE COOKED!!!

The rest is weeks of work of modifying the kitchen and the dairy, as there is not enough space to lodge the gas bottle for the cooker in the kitchen.

And as one thing leads to another, after some weeks of work, EG meanwhile being retired and able to concentrate on that job, the transformation took place, the piano took place and the whole kitchen is tiptop now.

Hymne à la joie - Beethoven!!!

Before:

After:

Now:

Sheer cooking pleasure!