When I was a teenager, I made a "Spanische Windtorte." The picture of it was so pretty, and it sounded wonderful. It is an Austrian dessert composed of meringue filled with cream. You pipe meringue in a close spiral and bake it for the bottom, easy enough. Then you have to pipe and bake many rings, which you layer up from the bottom and glue with unbaked meringue to form a round box. Then you do another close spiral for a lid. The inside is filled with whipped cream flavored with cognac and fresh strawberries. After carefully placing the "lid" on top, the outside is decorated with piped whipped cream and candied violets. It wasn't that it was difficult, exactly, it's just that it was seriously time consuming, handling the brittle meringue rings was troublesome, and decorating had to be very quick so that one could serve the dessert before the inside cream began to melt. I had to make my own candied violets as well, which didn't help. It was very pretty, but when it came to eating it you might do just as well with a bowl of strawberries & whipped cream by crumbling a few meringue cookies on top. All that work and so little gustatory umph.

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 purchasing power of a first class stamp is pretty much the same as it has always been, give or take a penny. Package prices have changed more than mail, but many are less than they used to be, while others are more. It's labor that's the big price for sending packages, however, not gas or oil. A jump in oil prices can lead to a jump in shipping prices because they've usually absorbed small cost increases for this and that instead of changing the pricing structure for awhile, but can't afford the new oil prices on their current margins. It doesn't go back down again, because there are a lot of administrative costs associated with changing the pricing structure, and in the meantime, labor and other costs have gone up some more, claiming the savings that a subsequent drop in oil might have given. Plus, for a private company, they should be amassing a rainy day fund, if they have windfalls like a drop in oil, to draw upon when it goes up the next time, to try to keep their pricing stable. I don't think the P.O., which is not the government, but answers to congress, is allowed to do that, however. I send presents to friends overseas yearly. I include the really ridiculous amount of postage in my budget. :) It goes international priority mail (there's very little savings for surface and they usually don't even allow it anymore. Gone are the days of sending books by sea mail) and they always say it takes 10-14 days, but in reality, by the time it clears customs and all of that, it takes a couple of months. Sending goodies a couple of states away should be a lot easier! And equally worth it. Nothing says love like unexpected gifts of home.

It was not my intention to highjack the OP’s thread, but am learning so much – I hope others are as well. wekick, thank you for the links and additional explanations, you’ve been so helpful. plllog, thank you for offering up so much information on the use of convection ovens, as well as… The trick is to mark out some time that you can use learning your new oven, rather than freezing up because it's different and foregoing some of the features. Thank you for that statement. I’d downloaded the instruction manual and read about the induction and convection uses/features and have been quite excited, but this thread caused some trepidation for me. I want to try and use these features, not be fearful of them. I hope with time I can make use of the convection in areas it will be beneficial, and now understand time, experimentation, and patience will be my friends. I used a dial thermometer in my current ‘regular bake’ oven, so will use it in the convection to help adjust for time (although I admit, my eyesight isn’t what it used to be, and will now have to open the darned thing to see the thermometer, loosing heat!) – I feel sure I’d not have thought of that as it’s not been used in some time and sits in a cupboard! plllog, I am embarrassed about the pâte à choux – I think it rude to correct people’s pronunciation or spelling and that was not my intention! I sincerely apologize. Trust me, words escape me all the time! For the past year I had forgotten the word ‘joconde’ (which I always spell jaconde) and in attempting to describe it have had to be creative. For the life of me I still can’t remember the name for ‘that thing’ I spread the batter with, making the indentations… not that anyone asks. I rarely say mise en place except to myself and where it’s written in my recipes, and never say maillard reaction now… I am met with the dreaded “oh, so you’re a snob’ look, and quite frankly, can’t blame my friends! “Get things ready” and “gonna brown that” just works better around these parts! Still, I like using correct terminology to myself, at least when I can remember it!