Warning.................This is a really boring post but I'm sometimes short of ideas!
All the best cooks use gas! and that was my reason for having an LPG cooker installed as soon as I could after moving here. Towns and a few villages in Suffolk have natural piped gas but I'm much too out in the sticks.
I've used a gas cooker for all except just a few years since moving into my first home in 1975, mostly LPG and it makes no difference to the cooking whether its mains or cylinders. Of course I have to organise delivery or fetch the cylinders myself, which I don't mind because they are available in lots of places.
They are only small cylinders so I just wiggle the empty one onto the sack barrow and then shove it in the car. I always keep a spare and that's easy to move using the sack barrow again from the workshop around the house to where they stand. My spanner that fits the cylinder connection is in the garage and has a bit of tape on it so I always know which one it is and all that needs doing is shutting off the gas and connecting up the new cylinder and then turning the gas back on.
Then next time I'm out in the car it's easy to call in to the hardware place or a garage and pick up a refill. They cost about £36 now. Using gas like this is much easier than it once was because years ago there was no automatic switch over device which meant that the gas would run out in the middle of cooking and often I wouldn't notice, resulting in flat sponge cakes or very late meals. Now the switch over device starts using gas from the new cylinder as soon as one is empty. Its also easy to see when a cylinder gets close to empty as the little window under the pointer gradually turns red with a dial moving round in it.
Nowadays even these little 19kg cylinders have to be chained to the wall and the emergency shut off sign is obligatory too. The black pointer above the window is turned to whichever cylinder is being used. So you can see that the right hand one is the one being used and it's nowhere near empty as there's no sign of the red dial appearing in the window.
And this is where the gas ends up
Leaving this cooker behind when it's gets round to moving house time will be a wrench, maybe I'll take it with me but it's not an easy thing to shift, not heavy but big.
Back Tomorrow
Sue
What an absolutely lovely cooker and it fits perfectly in that brick alcove. How long do the cylinders last?
ReplyDeleteWell things have moved on since the 7 or 8 years I used Propane, no switch over, chains to wall or notice on wall, all good of course. I got to the point when I could no longer move the cylinders so now it is electric with oil heating. No gas in my village at all, or many others in my part of the world, I do miss it for cooking.
ReplyDeleteI absolutely love your stove. It's wonderful and I understand why it will be hard to leave it behind. I wish we had the option for small tank gas here in the US. Gas cooking is the best way to go.
ReplyDeleteI'm a gas lovin' gal as well. Only time I was 'forced' to use electricity was in an airforce quarter - worst two years of my married life. We had more 'spoilt meals' in those two years than the rest of the other 56 lol
ReplyDeleteThat is some gas stove you have there - I'd be wanting to take it with me as well
Boring? No way, it's fascinating, especially for someone who has never cooked with gas, let alone using cylinders. I love, love, love that cooker. It's just perfect.
ReplyDeletexx
(at home, I mean. I cook with gas at Dad's)
DeleteIn our old house we has an enormous great Calor tank and a tanker used to come and fill it up. Then we built this house and knocked that one down. We changed to oil and installed an Aga. We have another enormous tank filled by a tanker and it costs about £3,000 to fill it. It lasts about 9 months. I love my Aga but they take some getting used to. I can see why you wouldn't want to leave your cooker behind!
ReplyDeleteYe gods thats a huge gas bill about £350 a month!.
DeleteMy Dad and sister have always used gas for cooking like this in NZ, although my Dad could use a slightly more update system like yours as sometimes the gas does run out during cooking as happened on an occasion while I was over there this year when we go a bottle that wasn't properly filled! My sister has the same oven/cooker as you by the looks of it, only a different colour. She loves it too.
ReplyDeleteI'm a gas gal too but am in the process of selling my house to move and am almost (but not quite) resigned to the fact that I may have to convert to electric. Reticulated gas is on my wish list but is not available everywhere - more's the pity.
ReplyDeleteI cook good meals and have always used electric and have no failures. I do not have a microwave so my electric oven is used for everything and I cook from scratch, not just heating up. I guess 50 years from a Baby Belling on a bedsit landing shared by 4 floors and no hot water to a Zanussi fan oven now (already in the house when I moved in and my first ever fan oven) has trained me well. I am an old fashioned cook and still do stuff like Cro describes today on his blog, and just for one!
ReplyDeleteAn interesting topic, I love your cooker. I have always used gas but then I moved here I had a gas top but a electric oven and has it was almost brand new so preserved with the electric, fortunately I don't make cakes anymore so I get by with the oven. I remember when we had a caravan we had to use the bottled gas.
ReplyDeleteHazel c uk
Lovely cooker. Have to avoid gas though,because of my asthma - it releases nitrogen dioxide 3 and formaldehyde.
ReplyDeleteSounds like you are all organized and know your way round changing the gas bottles.
I have a similar gas cylinder set up at the van but there is no automatic switch between one tank and the other, which can (and has) resulted in a sudden cold shower!! I just narrowly avoided this two weeks ago when my longest ever lasting cylinder ran out. For some reason, not something I usually dob before I hop in the shower I checked in the boiler cupboard and yes, the boiler had shut down as the gas ran out. Luckily Alan was at the van with me for the weekend and could nip out and switch us over to the other tank cylinder … phew!!
ReplyDeleteLove the cooker, and yes I prefer cooking with gas, but we don't have any gas at home in Wales. The Aga is electric, run off the solar panels and the heating is oil. Having another tank installed would have just been an unnecessary expense as I had gotten used to cooking with an Aga by the time we moved there.
You sound very proficient at changing your own gas bottle, you really do have lots of brilliant skills. I really do admire you, I know how hard it can be to acquire some of them but once mastered you have so many 'strings to your bow'.
Oh I do so miss cooking on gas even though I haven't had gas now for over twenty years.
ReplyDeleteWe did consider LPG but couldn't afford it at the time and now there is nowhere for the tanks to go as the outside oil boiler is where they would have to be.
I'm just green with envy of your cooker :)
Hugs-x-
I love cooking on gas. It seems so much easier to control the heat especially on the top bits. What I miss is a grill. American ovens tend to have there 'grill' down at the bottom of the oven and frankly I can't be bothered to get on my hands and knees to cook down there - stupid idea.
ReplyDeleteI love gas, I had an electric cooker when I first moved in but soon went over to gas. I have a range cooker, I love all the different size ovens. No energy wasting here.
ReplyDeleteoil heating and no gas for miles , theyre now telling all those who have fitted wood burners with council permission that they must be removed on environmental grounds , people arent very happy about that one
ReplyDeleteI’ve got gas at home and electricity in the holiday chalet. As I get older I’m preferring the simplicity of the electric cooker. A wire cake rack on top of an electric ring produces the conditions for unbeatable toast as long as you don’t wander off and then realise the kitchen is full of smoke! It resembles a toasting-fork-over-a-coal-fire kind of taste.
ReplyDeleteLove that cooker with all the pans hanging so handy.
ReplyDeleteBriony
x
Ohhhhh, what a beautiful Cooking Nook!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteOh mercy, it will be very hard to leave the Nook behind. Even if you do take the cooker.
We have direct delivery natural gas, for our stove. Only thing that needs cylinders is the BBQ cooker outside.
Again, what a beautiful Cooking Nook!!!!!
😊 😊 😊 😊
Why do you have to reply to comments, on your blog....??????
ReplyDeleteWhy not simply go read/comment on, the blogs, of the Dear Bloggers, who leave comments here????
😊 😊 😊 😊
We're on mains gas, as was my last house, and in the one before that, we paid a small fortune to have it brought down from the road. Cheaper in the long run, and I expect the current owners are grateful! I like gas for the responsiveness, especially in turning the heat down quickly.
ReplyDeleteI had a solid plate electric cooker in a flat in my early 20s, and melted my favourite bowl by placing it on top of the cooker before the hotplate had cooled down. Less likely with gas!
Oh, now I have cooker envy. And I just adore the little sign hung above. X
ReplyDeleteI have a gas hob for the first time in my life - to be honest I am a little scared of it.
ReplyDeleteAre those 6 burners I see. The most I've ever had was 5 in the last house and that was LPG. We had two very large tanks buried in the back yard because I also had a boiler/water heater on LPG that was heating our floor and an LPG clothes dryer. Now I have electric which I don't like as much but am not cooking as I was either.
ReplyDeleteI loooove my gas stove (cooker). We live on a farm and have a huge 500 gallon tank as we use it for the furnace and hot water heater as well. The RV uses LP gas as well. It is just so much easier to regulate. At one point I had a flat top (induction) range top and hated it! I just didn't feel "in charge" enough I guess! LOL
ReplyDeleteI am the opposite to you - I have gas for heating the house and the hot water tank but cook with electricity. The kitchen is too far from the gas pipe - it would be a major job to get the stove hooked up. Plus gas stoves are quite a bit more expensive here. I do have a gas fire in my family room which I turn on on cold evenings.
ReplyDeleteOur calor at the caravan in Scotland is more like £40 for the same size cylinder. I find the cooker does not cook like our piped gas that we used to have at home, we have to have the temperature gauge higher. Love that cooker.
ReplyDeleteGorgeous stove!! That would be a joy to cook on.
ReplyDeleteGod bless.