I decided to chime in on this old thread as I have now had my Aga for ten years. It was an (expensive) leap when we were planning our house and my husband was skeptical. When it was installed in our open kitchen on concrete floors he said it looked like an expensive car parked there. That was then. Now we cannot imagine our kitchen life without it. And the kitchen IS the heart of the home. Keep in mind a few things: we live in the Pacific Northwest where it is cool and rainy about 9 months of the year. In the summer though it gets very hot (90 degrees) off and on. If it is gong to stay that hot for a week or more, we turn it off. And spend the next week complaining about life without it! Once you turn it back on it takes overnight to come back to heat. Our AGA is electric, a decision we made carefully. Again, we live in the PNW where electricity is relatively cheap, but more importantly, we decided to use energy we had a hope of generating ourselves. We will never be able to generate propane. And while I have cooked on a wood stove for years, I wouldn't really recommend it if you have other choices. We've never had it serviced ( we live quite a ways out in the country), but we have had the electrical element fixed twice (in 10 years). Why do we love it? It makes great toast. We cook pancakes for the grandchildren directly on the simmer plate; the ovens are wonderful and no waiting for preheating nor turning it down when going from 450 to 350 for a recipe; we also drape ourselves over it in the morning and at night and whenever we come in from gardening in the cold and wet; dogs love to be near it; our big open kitchen/living/dining room is not adequately heated by the radiant floor heat (ground source heat pump) at least not at the levels we are willing to turn it up to, and the Aga provides gentle heat to that end of the room; I can heat my slippers in the 150 oven; we also "iron" our table napkins and anything else you want ironed by folding them while slightly damp and letting them sit on the warming plate for a while, flipping them once and:presto, flat and ironed table linens. I have a lot of experience cooking with gas, propane and induction. Induction would be my (non-Aga) choice by far, but we would not really like to contemplate our kitchen life without the red classic four door beast.

I don't recieve food stamps and never have. I wouldn't know if someone in the store was using them or their own cash. That being said I agree the system is not run correctly. My husband is almost 68 and has always been a hard worker but weeks ago he became very ill and had to stop working. We are raising our grandsons ages 7&8 . For the first time in our lives we ask the state for help for groceries. We went into the assistance office and filled out papers and submitted doctors letters..we were denied any help..they said my husband will return to work eventually in the next month and we will have an income again. I could not believe this, my husband has always been a hard worker supporting his family and yet we could get no help to feed these children..I am so sick of the struggle this month and to ask for help after a life of never doing so to be turned down...words can't even describe the feeling of ...no where to turn....so who does get help? Old people can't get it after a life of hard dedicated work to feed children. ..who does get the help? Drug addicts? Young able bodied? Who?

It is hard to beat the French ranges for aesthetics. They are beautiful. I think for some they are very functional as well. If you cook with cast iron I would consider something with a star shaped burner. While I love cast iron for its nonstick properties and that you can get it hot, it is a poor conductor of heat and the star burners would spread the heat out more. BlueStar and the American performer both have this type of burner. I tend to cook with really big pans and when I have to go to 14", I have heavy gauge aluminum to make the heat even. The depth of the range top is important if you cook with big pans. Some pro style ranges are deeper than others. Some have little lips that stick up on the back that limit the size on the back burners. We have frequent gatherings for 20-60 so I also need a big oven. I have a 36" range and wall oven but if I were buying now I would consider a range top and two wall ovens. This way you can pick each part based on what is best for you. The wall oven can be placed at eye level and can be replaced if it goes bad before the burners do. As to griddles. Built ins can be more stable but the are add ons that are fitted and stable. You can have more heat with an add on. Most built ins are limited to 15-18K BTUs vs 2x the BTUs on your two burners so even with 2 15K burners you have 30K if you need it. A big consideration to me is the metal that makes up the griddle. Steel and cast iron griddles whether built in or add on tend to have zones of heat. Many users like this because you can have an area to park cooked food and keep it warm. I like to be able to use my aluminum griddle at times because it heats very evenly and allows a much bigger area for cooking. Mine from Royal industries is 15x23 so 345 square inches vs something that is 11x23- 253 square inches and the cooking area may be less if it has cooler areas being made of steel or cast iron. Aluminum griddles are most often coated with a non stick coating but Royal makes theirs both ways. The aluminum griddle is also lighter weight than steel. It is still thick to allow good conduction if heat. I believe the chef king steel and royal industries are both 7 gauge. The bare aluminum will season over time but steel seasons much faster. Steel or cast iron take a long time to heat and a long time to turn up or down. Aluminum heats quickly and changes quickly. A built in griddle might have a thicker layer of steel but check the specs from the manufacturer. Built ins may have a thermostat to control the heat so you can more easily reproduce ascertain amount of heat.

Ummm, John, why not just make a good empanada or hand-pie? A proper short-crust pastry dough will work much better than puff pastry anyway. It will absorb juices without getting soggy. Cheddar or Gruyere seem to work best, of the ones we've tried. Chevre, for example, simply disappears: you can smell it but the flavor just gets lost. We just came back from a swing through Sonoma Cty, where "the first and only New Zealand meat pie" bakery opened up in Windsor, BurtoNZ. Pretty darn good pastry for a small operation, we thought. Not the best (there's a great chef in our city who makes a short-crust pastry to die for) but easily better than any of the popular gastropubs have offered us. Brought a bunch of different ones home to try. Their minced beef and cheese is cooked crumbled ground beef mixed with shredded Cheddar, which melts to make a tasty cheesy filling. All pies are a little on the 'dry' side, as they're intended to be eaten out of hand without dripping all over your shirtfront. Surprised to find they reheated perfectly in the microwave, too, proving that if you use a good pastry dough you can make this stuff ahead of time, which can come in handy! You can take a look at their website, if you want. There's only a couple of pictures of meatpies, though: http://www.burtonzbakery.com/. I didn't realize the Yelp photos of meatpies were so bad; I should have taken photos of the ones we bought since we tried 9 of the 10 available. Normally we're big on the fillings but not on too much crust - but these fillings were almost all in perfect proportion to a double-crust hand pie. The only exception was the breakfast one: scrambled egg and bacon. Not enough bacon, no cheese, the scrambled egg just got lost between the double-crust and tasted bland. We are low-salt users, but this one needed some oomph.