Hi you Ice Cream Boy fans, I have had one of these for years. It's vintage is more like late 70's, early 80's. Finding your posts reminded me that I have one that's been in storage for a long time. One memorable ice cream was maple-walnut which would be really good with small bits of black walnuts as an alternative to English walnuts. Walnuts worked very well, not big pieces though. Another was a vanilla with small bits of chocolate, little bigger that shavings, but lots of them, yum! I'm going to have to retrieve mine (got to find a place for it; my house is very small) and get creative again. I am thinking of goat milk ice creams as my system doesn't like cow's milk, though cream is okay. I once had goat milk ice cream that tasted like the ice cream that I grew up with made by my grandparents when I was young with milk, extra saved cream and eggs from their farm and turned by almost everyone in the family for many, many get-togethers in their big two gallon ice cream. Great memories.

I'll second what cooksnews said, but add a couple of additional comments. First, it seems to me that you've pretty much answered your own question. Second, the supposed difficulty of cleaning a sealed-burner stove is, it seems to me, a function of the cooktop surface and the depth of the burner wells. My old GE dual fuel, with its shallow burner wells and burner plates required a lot of attention and frequent applications of Barkeeper's Friend. My new pro-style NXR with its stainless cooktop surface and deep burner wells is much easier. Pull the burner grates, spritz with windex and wipe with a microfiber cloth. As for whether you would be "happier" with a 15k to 17k burner configuration than with the 22K-plus open burner Blue-Stars, ARs, or CCs, who knows? There are a really wide variety of reasons why some folks are passionate about high-powered open burners. Some want to use round bottomed woks and get closer to the "true taste of the wok" or something they feel is reminiscent of street-vendor pad-thai. Some feel that, without an open pro-style burner, they cannot get sufficient low temp burner evenness to make the exquisite sauces they make. Some of them need or want to be able to blast three or four shrimp in tiny pans heated to very high temps. Some of them feel their cooking style really benefits from the higher btu-hr power. Some are like car junkies for whom there can never be enough horsepower. Some of them need the high hp or btu to supprot elitist snobbery and feel superior to us peasants who tastes and skills are far less refined than their own. Some just like the look better. Some people will have a mix of some or all of the above reasons. Personally, for my cooking, I have absolutely no regrets or problems with having sealed 15K-btu-hr burners for what I cook. My NXR burners will heat my cast iron pans hot enough to burn off the seasoning if I choose to do that, although I could also do that with the 12K btu-hr burners on the old GE. Personally, I don't feel that a steak has to be seared at temps sufficient to melt lead. I have not owned a round-bottomed wok for a decade and do not feel bad because I do not have one. The NXR's low heat settings, like those on cooksnews' DCS, are plenty low enough for me to melt and hold chocolate in a small pan for hours. There is one difference I have observed between my stove and cooksnews' DCS. For high heat applications, the burners on my stove work better with pans larger than eight-inches in diameter. For example, boiling six quarts of pasta water will take me 22 minutes. Doing this with a 10-inch-diameter pot will bring the time down to less than 15 minutes. In a 13-inch diameter kettle, it takes less than 14 minutes. That said, I have no problem searing steaks or sauteing in 10 and 12 inch fry pans. For me, making blackened fish or chicken does not require more heat than I have available. Also, I certainly can and do use small pans. Boiling water for morning oatmeal takes 3 minutes in a 5-inch sauce pan. I can melt and hold chocolate for hours in that small pan, too. Frankly, I find cookware construction makes a bigger difference to evenness than the burner design for what and how I cook. Now, if I had one of the open burner stoves, maybe I could boil that pasta water in 12 minutes instead of 14 but that is not a big deal for me. But, again, whether you will be happy with a "lesser" stove is such a subjective judgment that, except for bragging rights, it will be hard to say how "happy" you will be.

Awww, look at the little blonde cuties. I am mother of 3 of the darkest haired, but whitest skinned, children you'll ever see. Dark hair I understand but white skin must come from DH's Irish mother as he and I are both olive skinned. amylovesbud, love your blog! And your sweet handle, so nice to see people still in love after years of marriage. Sixteen years (21 years together) as of this Friday for us...and guess what???... robinlovesben! Oh yeah, and enjoy that new faucet!!! Just wait till it's actually mounted on a countertop with a sink below it! I look forward to that blog entry! ;o) Robin

Big box and discount stores often have a different number. Sometimes there are slight differences in the model, others it's just an identifier that you got it at Costco. Maybe do a shout out to Trevor or Jakvis who might know how to unpack the model numbers? From looking at the listings I've been able to figure out that the "30" is for a nominally thirty inch wide range. The 4B seems to be for four burner. (The 36" one is 6B.) I think the V2 is for the height of the back--vertical level two. (edit: Correction from John_Williams50--V2 is for Version 2) "SS" on other appliances is often "stainless steel", but I don't know if that's so for BS. If so, "C" near the end would be for "color".