Okay...so I am glad you asked. I am going to suggest that you do not buy the Miele. I have the 36" in my home and it will be leaving shortly. It is a very long story but I will tell you that the outer glass is very breakable on the 1134 model. Two have already broken -one in transit to my home and one at my home. The second one was the fault of my contractor but to have TWO break (SHATTER) it should make you think twice. I also know that Miele has had many issues with this glass and will probably be changing the door shortly. Having said all that --the range is GORGEOUS and I am very sad to see it go. I have decided to just go with a dependable Viking. The Dacor is very pretty but I am not sure if they have worked out the kinks with their ovens? I hope this helps.

CLKW, you can make your own danged matzah balls! Texas is a big place, so I don't know if this is hundreds of miles away from you, but they had Kenny & Ziggy's in Houston on TV. E-mail me if you need a recipe. I think you really need to research more on the manufacturers' websites. Read through the operating manuals and get to know the appliances before you make a decision. The portable unit Dan linked looks like a a good unit. When I landed here induction wasn't very popular in the U.S. so I wanted to try it and got the cheapest one I could get on Amazon (Mr. Induction). It was enough to convince me. Commercial units like Dan's have different kinds of controllers than home units do. This one has thermostatic control, whereas home units have levels numbered from 1-9 (some with half stops). Cooktek (also commercial) has 1-100. Zoneless, as has been said, is also different, though the controllers are similar. I forgot to answer up topic about the self-import. If you do that, talk to your insurance first about it not being UL listed and get a letter for your file (kept at your agent's office) that says it's okay with the company. Talk to your electrician about wiring. And talk to your local servicemen. I wouldn't go with the De Dietrich. People were self importing these all over the place a couple of years ago, but when things went wrong they had orphan appliances. Instead, if you find an AEG, for instance, that you like, talk to the local Electrolux service and see if they'll take care of you. There likely won't be a warranty, but if you need a fix make sure someone can fix it. And know that the timers won't work right because they use the frequency of the electricity to mark time and they're different here and there. My serviceman said to just make a conversion chart. Re steamers, the in counter is more like a using a bamboo steamer in a wok. The combi-steam oven is an oven which also has steam. Very different. The steam is the same, but the mode of cooking is different. You'd have to ask someone more familiar than I with the in counter steamer, but I'm not sure all leftovers will fit. They'd have to be shaped correctly. Plus, people have said that you can just put a plate of dinner for a straggler in the combi-steam to refresh, which you can't in a counter steamer. It's not a bad appliance--just be aware of what the different ones do and don't do. You can't stack three different brands of ovens three high. I think you're getting a little star struck. Okay, for getting a crisp crust on bread in a normal, electric oven, use a pan of water. For steaming vegetables, use a steamer basket in a pan of water on the stove. I suppose you could use the oven, but getting it right would be hard. You can also use a plastic steamer basket in a microwave, in a corningware pot of water, or a bamboo steamer basket in a wok of water. There are other ways too. In a Gagg combi-steam, put in perforated pan in oven. Oh! You might want to look into the KitchenAid Steam Assist oven. That's a full sized oven with some steam. Not as fancy, not as expensive, but a full sized oven with a trick up its sleeve. I don't understand this sentence: Can I get steam oven results by sticking a pan of water in the combi oven and using microwave and oven to cook my leftovers? Have you tried that? I haven't tried any of it because they're just finishing my kitchen now. The combi- doesn't need a pan of water, so I think there's a typo somewhere. I haven't used the pan of water with leftovers. If it's just for myself, I'm more likely to zap it if I want it hot (and often would rather have cold). If it's for more, I'll redecorate it and put it in the oven. If you want more info on reheating and refreshing with the combi-steam, search on Gizmonike. Re prices, I don't think the Gaggenau convection oven is all that much different from the Miele, especially since you're already at the top of the scale. The Gaggenau combi-steam is more double the currently available Miele steam oven because the latter is steam only. For the same price as the latter, you could get the KA. I don't know much about the KA, but it's an oven with some steam, not a steam appliance. You'd have to find out more, but I don't think you can just put stuff like veg or rice in to steam only. But I don't think you can probably stack it with the Miele either. A lot of it depends on what you want to do and how you want to do it. It's very hard to know when you're not all that used to cooking well. It'll be more fun and easier in your new kitchen, but maybe you should start trying these things now. Put a custard cup or ramkin or whatever you have with water in your oven and see what happens. Steam some stuff on the stove. Etc. Fancy tools make life easier, but everything you do is much easier when you know the basics behind them. In school we had to calculate cube roots and natural logs even though we had calculators and there were tables in the back of the math book. Same with kitchen tools, before you use a food processor, learn to use a knife. Before you use a dough hook, learn to knead. Before you use a steamer, learn to steam on the stove. That way you'll learn what things are supposed to look and feel and taste and sound like, and won't be relying on machines to tell you what to eat.

You can become an Oven Saleman now, by reading from our experts here on GW, I bet you know more than most the appliance sale ppl that folks run into? You can talk intelligently now about convection, infra red, etc etc. I wished I had known about this site before I redid my kitchen (2006) alto I only made one big goof (a fancy cooktop) and was "saved from another mistake" cause my cabinet maker, My kitchen remodeler as well as the company that sold me the pop up vent all said it would fit, only wife said it wouldnt--and I argued with her saying 3 people told me it would. She was right, so I had to take a bath on that pop up, and intall and outside vent--which we really like. Had I read GW first, I would never have bought the thing. Gary

On the rangehoods, what is it that has you stumped? I assume that you've searched here and read the threads on the pros and cons of OTR units. (If not, search on "OTR"). Are you thinking you will need to match the brand of stove you choose? Strikes me that matching would be a concern only with that GE slide-in range's retro-Jetsons cat-eye styling on the oven door glass. Otherwise, I wouldn't worry about "matching" the OTR brand to the stove. You might want to consider the LG model with the "extenda vent" that slides out towards the front stove burners. (Search on "OTR + LG" to find threads discussing this unit. Can you be more specific about why you like the slide-in stoves? Do you just like the look better than that of free-standing stoves? Maybe you are you thinking that the more-open cooktop means putting using large pans together? Maybe something else? Will the stove butt tightly up against the backsplash? Will you have tile or granite behind the stove for a backsplash? Some slide-ins are designed so that their tops do not fit flush with a wall in order to allow you to fit a piece of countertop across the back, giving a more built-in look and preventing "stuff" from falling behind the stove. Some GE slide-in stoves (and I do not know if the GE Profile P2S975SEPSS is one of them) have a flat back so that the cooktop goes flat against the wall behind the stove. Except that it is not uncommon for kitchen walls to be a little bowed in older houses, so you may still have a gap in that event. For those kinds of situations, you may want to check on getting a back-guard acessory. These usually are a thin backsplash often about 4" tall and 1" thick and serve to keep things from spilling or rolling off the cooktop into the space behind the stove. Often, they extend the oven venting above the level of the burners so that your oven exhaust/convection is not blowing the flames of the rear burners. If memory serves, the GE profiels ones run around $100. (The GE Cafe ones are something like $300). The Bosch stove looks like a nice unit except for the ceramic-glass on the cooktop surface. It may look spiffy in the store but, to me, it seems as though cleaning would be as problemmatic as with a glasstop-radiant-electric cooktop. You have to immediately wipe-up any sugary spills (those etch the glass surface) and will have the same razor-blade scraping and cerama-brite work. Which $1k Frigidaire are you looking at? When I was shopping for a stove a couple of months ago, I looked at the FGGF3056KF which seemed like a lot of stove for the money. As I recall, it had two big burners (17k-btu-hr and 15k-btu-hr), a griddle burner and griddle top, and claimed to have third-element convection in the oven (so-called "true-convection.") Apparently, there is a 120v oven heating element wrapping the convection fan. (Usually, you need an electric oven to get that feature). My experience with third element convection (on my previous stove, a GE dual fuel) was that the third element was handy if you regularly bake multiple sheets of cookies but, judging from my experience with convection in my present gas stove, does not make a noticeable difference over a plain convection fan for other kinds of baking and roasting. (Some personal preferences led me to pass on this stove. While I recognize the advantages of a black cooktop, I just do not care for the look. I wanted my biggest burners in front but this has one right front and one at left rear. I do not care for griddle burners in the middle of my cooktop nor the smaller-sized griddles that come with these stoves.)