Thanks Linda. :) It's my mother's. She came from and lived in several towns/counties near where old Ohio pottery and glass manufacturers were concentrated. Which is why I suspected an Ohio company. She told me many old pottery, stoneware & pieces were abundant (or used to be) in barns, attics, garages, in her younger years it was everywhere. Some so abundant then, they just sort of took it for granted. She had a lot of old Roseville, McCoy, Imperial Glass etc. but gave a lot away when moving. *whimper* Then when I started collecting she told me how much she regretted not keeping it. Me too! ;) But thankfully there are some remaining, she knew my love of antiques and old things. I'm sure my grandma (her mom) had some too. (Imperial glass in particular.) My mom's pieces have beaded edges & handles, I'll be posting some of those pics later. Glass is so tricky, I really do need to learn how to ID it. I have a compote she gave me years ago, saying it was my paternal grandmother's. Mom always called it 'strawberry glass' but there are no strawberries in the pattern, all I know is it's very old per my mother. I suspected the crock was around turn of century give or take, older than my mom by a generation. So that's why I strongly suspect it came from that area, based on how long she lived there.

Another perspective. We have a used brick, with fire brick and tile liner wall with three fues, one for the master bedroom (fireplace has wooden/Dry Wall finish) one to the basement and one on the main floor which support a large fireplace with a large wood storage bin (with it's own exterior door for loading, we don't us it for that for obvious reasons), all finished inside with used brick. The whole unit is on an exterior wall with the flues exterior to the house proper all enclosed in used brick, real brick, may have block underneath, I don't know. I don't recommend it if you're going to use it for heating, and I'd recommend it for decorating reasons only if that's real important, and would ask why not use brick veneer? Then the flues could be enclosed in an insulated structure that would help keep the flues warmer, cutting back on smell and improving the draft and heat utilization when heating with wood. Of course if you're using the fireplace "open" you'll be doing good to break even on heat gain/loss. We're having the chimney people out on Tuesday to clean two of the flues, maybe power clean the flue to the main floor, it is used the most, and then install a "LockTop" damper at the top of the main fireplace flue so we can close a "storm door" like damper when the unit isn't in use. All this will run about $800, something to keep in mind when one thinks they are saving money when burning hard wood, we did use an insert in the main and it did heat well. We've been here almost 20 years and have burned upwards of two cords in a season, less in recent years. Not sure what all has changed, it isn't the used brick construction, but we have noticed an increase, under some weather conditions, of the old fire smell, thus the above mentioned work is intended to correct...we will of course have to remove the insert as the damper requires access to a chain coming down the flue for its operation, we'll just use he fireplace for ambiance on a few times a year going forward. The subject of smell has been on the forum many times, and there is a general consensus that an exterior masonry chimney is more problematic than an interior chimeny or one in an insulated enclosure, as is done, I believe, in most stainless chimney installations that have a simple frame box around the chimney to cover its route to the roof.

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.

The prunes might loose a bit of their shape, but not the taste or the texture. I usually cut portion size pieces, wrap them in wax paper and plastic bag and freeze them for a couple of hours, then take them out of plastic bag, wrap them in Press 'n Seal and back into plastic bag or in vacuum bag. Defrost mostly for about 1 hour on counter but of course you can go the slow route in the fridge. I treat it like a baked frozen pie.