Saskatchewan weather – Seclusion 101 with AnneMarie

Another chilly day in the north forty! I have places to go and things to do today, but fortunately Dan is home today to take me where I need to go.

Dan went shopping yesterday and picked up gnocchi so we could make the stew I had originally planned for supper on Sunday. Nothing like a pot of steamy, tasty, comfort food to get us through a frigid spell of Saskatchewan winter.

**Browning the beef in seasoned flour…**

**Adding the vegetables Dan chopped – onions, garlic, red pepper, mushrooms, celery, carrots, and parsnip. Add beef broth and … Into the** ***oven*** ***for an hour or so.***

**Add the gnocchi, more broth, and a can of Swiss Chalet beef gravy**… ***Back into the oven.***

**Add frozen peas..and back into the oven!**

**Ready to serve with fresh baked, buttery, Pillsbury crusty buns!**

While I was cooking the stew, I made a rediculously obvious discovery about the new stove we bought a few weeks ago. 🙄

I don’t know how frequently most people replace their stoves, but we had our last one for twenty years ago. Like this one, it was a Whirlpool, glass top, electric, self cleaning stove. Over the past twenty years, Whirlpool has made a few notable changes. Our new stove has no power outlet in the top control panel (which was so handy on our last stove since our kitchen is seriously lacking power outlets!). Our new stove has a convection fan – which I love – especially for some things like cooking thick cut bacon. And our new stove has a BIG oven. It takes away room from the drawer at the bottom of the stove but it is BIG! And big is always better – right? Except that ever since we have gotten our new stove, I have struggled to get things in and out of the oven. Especially big heavy things like Dutch ovens full of stew. What the hell?

The salesman was so excited about the big, roomy oven! What he didn’t mention (no doubt because it was so obvious) is that the big oven came with a BIG oven door. A door that anyone five foot nothing would have issues reaching across to put things into or take things out of the oven. Like really? Who do they design these big ovens for? Nobody in my family for sure. When it comes to size, I am kind of the pick of the litter. My sisters can only dream of being five foot nothing. 😧

I just called my salesman and told him that this issue might be something to mention to other height challenged home makers. I also suggested that people should be encouraged to use the floor mounting bracket that comes with these stoves, as the bigger oven door does tend to make the stove less stable than our older one. Our salesman definitely agreed that these suggestions were noteworthy and would be passing them along to his co-workers. 🙂

That is it for today. Take care and have a great day!

Tag: Saskatchewan weather

January 25th – Gnocchi Stew