Let me start at the beginning. In the back of the house, beneath the outdoor faucet, there are two flexible black tubes coming out of the ground. I assume these are polyethylene pipes. Each has a six inch, spring wrapped "hose saver" at the end, but neither reaches the faucet. I've tested them using a short garden hose to connect them to the faucet, one at a time - no manifold or Y. I've added a cheap plastic back-flow valve to the faucet. Walking in the direction of one of those underground pipes, in about 20 feet there's the first of several in-ground round valve boxes. I think they're NDS 6" boxes. In the box, there's a brass T connecting pipes in and out of the box. The base of the T is pointing up, with a brass ball valve (one of those with a straight handle that turns 90 degrees), and male threads at the top. Connected to those threads is an ordinary plastic hose-end quick-connect (female on the quick-connect side, so this has the spring mechanism). The top of the quick connect is just below ground level, so that the box cover fits over it. There are two or three more such boxes in the lawn, at about 15 to 20 foot intervals. Continuing beyond the last box is a perennial garden that has several above-ground spray heads on risers at various heights. The second in-ground pipe at the faucet feeds the far part of the perennial garden. I don't recall off the top of my head whether there are any valve boxes for this zone. There's similar stuff for the front yard. Connecting water to one of the pipes below the faucets results in the spray heads at the far end of the run working. I've tested one of the in-ground boxes by connecting a very cheap pop-up spray head with a couple of adapters. With the valve opened at that box opened, the spray head works - as do the remainder of the fixed spray heads at the end of the zone. While this sort of spray head has enough distance to reach the next valve box, it doesn't have nearly enough distance to reach the edge of the lawn in the perpendicular direction, so I need something stronger than a 15' spray head. Using a $3 spray head like this is pretty hokey, but has the advantage of not needing a hose.

For stir-frying, burner shape is as important or even more important than burner power. I test drove the Miele and Dacor cooktops as well as the BlueStar rangetop we chose. (Not an apples to apples test but at first I was hesitant to give up the space to a rangetop - then when I found out how much better the BlueStar performed for stir frying I changed my mind.) The 15K BTU burners on our Bluestar that are about the same power as the Miele and Dacor burners stir fry much better because they are much more efficient at delivering heat to the bottom of the wok and they do it very evenly. The 22K BTU burner on our BlueStar is even better. When I tested the Dacor and Miele with a chicken stir fry, I put in half the chicken at a time to sear to not overload it and it still wasn't a perfect sear. When I tested the BlueStar, it was a hot day and my DH had packed the ice chest so carefully that the chicken was mostly frozen when I took it out to start cooking. But if I was going to sacrifice my drawer to the rangetop it better be good so I put in all the chicken at once and the BlueStar immediately had it sizzling and seared perfectly. The food really tasted different cooked on the BlueStar. I highly recommend calling around the appliance stores to see if you can find one with the types of burner you are considering hooked up so you can try a stir fry recipe on the burner. I took the same wok and recipe ingredients to each cooktop/rangetop I was considering and learned a lot by doing that. If Bluestar offered a single burner version of their rangetop, that is what I would recommend to you. If you don't have a chance to do that, what you want to look for is a burner that has a shape to deliver heat efficiently and evenly to the bottom of a wok. An example of a bad type of shape is the sealed burner like on the Dacor and Miele cooktops. These have a flat circular top and flame comes out of the side of the circle. The higher you turn the burner up, the more the flame shoots out to the side; no flame goes up in the center of the burner. An example of a type that works really well for a wok is the BlueStar burner shape where the flame comes straight up out of the burner. The burner shape has a circle of flame at the center of the burner and 8 star rays of flame coming out from that circle. The center grate comes off the burner so that the wok sits right down into the flame and heat is delivered to the whole bottom of the wok. This is very similar to the wok arrangements I saw in China. A friend has the DCS wok burner and that does a very good job. We have the Miele oven. I'm very happy with its cooking performance but I find its controller kind of annoying at times. Its heating is very stable and accurate. It cooks bread well. Things I don't like: Maximum timer setting is 59 minutes and 59 seconds. I'd gladly give up the seconds to have a timer that times longer than an hour. If you put in the time and then forget to hit the button that starts the timer, it waits a bit and then cancels the timer. Too many modes - for example they have a proofing mode that only allows two temps (both higher than I would usually want to proof at) and a defrost mode with a wide range of temps (which is what I use for proofing because I can set it to 80 or 90 degrees). One ends up having to learn little tricks like which baking mode lets you set the temp up to 550 degrees (most of the modes stop at 500). If the BlueStar ovens had been available when we were choosing, I'd have been very tempted to choose them. I'm short and the side opening door would be easier for me. The one downside is that they aren't self-cleaning and I'm rather addicted to not having to clean my oven. How is your breaker box occupancy? Ours is full. If you want to add that other oven at a later date, will you have a 220 V breaker spot open? That might be one reason to choose between gas and electric ovens.

Sally, Baking with Julia is one of my favourite cookbooks. I use her recipe for French bread and it is her recipe I use for Croissants and the Pain au Chocolate. I can highly recommmend both recipes. If you are really in the mood for baking you can't go wrong with the croissants. Make half croissants and half Pain au Chocolate. They freeze well too. I know that there are a few more recipes in that cookbook that I have made, but unfortunately, Moe already boxed up all my cookbooks so I'm without any cookbooks until after we get moved. Or until I have at least 80 feet of bookshelves built. LOL! Ann

I saw a show on FoodTV last holiday season on Honey Baked Ham & it is a sugar/spices dry rub melted to create a glaze with blow torches. Each ham is individually torched. Unfortunately, I didn't pay attention to what they were putting in the rub mix. :( I'm not even sure there's actually honey in the glaze?! Search the FoodTV website...you might be able to find an article with "clues". I'm pretty sure I saw the episode on "Unwrapped". /tricia