Burner Stove Quotes

I'll accept your apology on one condition." He folded his arms across his chest. "Anything?" "You trust me." I cocked my head to the side. "I trust you, Cam." "No, you don't." He walked over to my small table and pulled out a chair. "Have a seat." Sitting down, I tugged the hem of his shirt down as he headed back to the stove, putting the tiny skillet over the burner. "If you trusted me, you wouldn't have reacted the way you did," he simply said, cracking an egg. "And that's not me judging you or any of that kind of shit. You got to trust me that I'm not going to be an ass or freak out over that kind of stuff. You have to trust that I care enough about you.

Blue must be worn for protection. Moonstones were useful in connecting with the living, topaz to contact the dead. Copper, sacred to Venus, will call a man to you, and black tourmaline will eliminate jealousy. When it came to love, you must always be careful. If you dropped something belonging to the man you loved into a candle flame, then added pine needles and marigold flowers, he would arrive on your doorstep by morning, so you would do well to be certain you wanted him there. The most basic and reliable love potion was made from anise, rosemary, honey, and cloves boiled for nine hours on the back burner of the old stove. It had always cost $9.99 and was therefore called Love Potion Number Nine, which worked best on the ninth hour of the ninth day of the ninth month.

I wanted to bubble over the top and douse the confusing fire that burned in my belly. Or else I wanted to turn the stove off. I wanted to sit cool on the burners of life, lid on, and steady.

She was the kind of person who would see a pot overflowing on the stove and come and tell you about it, instead of picking it up and moving it off the burner. And then she would be proud of herself for acting quickly in a crisis.

As if this was more than she could imagine, Amiee asked, “What about a stove with more than two burners and an oven that actually works?” “All yours,” Steve assured her.

The most basic and reliable love potion was made from anise, rosemary, honey, and cloves boiled for nine hours on the back burner of the old stove.

In my country, we read the patterns in the grounds of Turkish coffee to predict the future. It’s a very ancient practice. Some people call it tasseography.” She shrugged her shoulders. “To me it’s fortune telling.” Mary had been bustling around a one-burner stove a

I was told that I should never lie or cheat or steal, for instance, but my father—a sometimes Jew, he called himself back then—was far more likely to focus on the practical. Never go out in the rain without a hat, he would tell me. Never touch a stove burner, on the off chance it still might be hot. I was warned that I should never count the money in my wallet in public, or buy jewelry from a man on the street,

In the civilization of our times, it is normal, and almost obligatory, for cookery and fashion to take up most of the culture sections, for chefs and fashion designers now enjoy the prominence that before was given to scientists, composers and philosophers. Gas burners, stoves and catwalks meld, in the cultural coordinates of our time, with books, laboratories and operas, while TV stars and great footballers exert the sort of influence over habits, taste and fashion that was previously the domain of teachers and thinkers

We know what we need when we get it, Brock Stewart had once said. Elinor understood this to be true whenever she heard Jenny in the hallway, when she looked up from her work in the garden to see a light burning in the kitchen. She knew it when the kettle on the back burner of the stove whistled, when the back door opened and shut, when the house she lived in wasn't empty. She hadn't understood how alone she'd been until she was no longer alone. She had cut herself off...

Then he pulled back and looked at her shirt again. “Is this really true?” She nodded. “Every word of it.” “Okay, then. I say you won’t.” “Won’t do what?” He bent his head to whisper into her hair, his breath hot against her ear. “Before lunch, you won’t go to bed with me.” Elle reached around behind her and turned off the burner on the stove.

At that meal in the small kitchen, Diane hadn’t identified the girl’s race. And when Belle had asked, had the girl with Lawrence been Negro or white? her sister-in-law had blushed and said she couldn’t remember. Belle knew then, even if Diane didn’t suffer from a medical condition, she truly didn’t care what race somebody was. Instead of pleasing Belle, this discovery made her furious, and she walked to the stove, though the burners were off and had cooled. Belle stirred a pot of lukewarm greens to cover the noise of her loud breathing. Her outraged exhalations, as she considered that Diane was a white woman who could walk through the world and stay blessedly unaware of the color line.

The very first thing I remember in my early childhood is a flame, a blue flame jumping off a gas stove somebody lit... I remember being shocked by the whoosh of the blue flame jumping off the burner, the suddenness of it... I saw that flame and felt that hotness of it close to my face. I felt fear, real fear, for the first time in my life. But I remember it also like some kind of adventure, some kind of weird joy, too. I guess that experience took me someplace in my head I hadn't been before... The fear I had was almost like an invitation, a challenge to go forward into something I knew nothing about. That's where I think my personal philosophy of life and my commitment to everything I believe in started... In my mind I have always believed and thought since then that my motion had to be forward, away from the heat of that flame.

I took a step toward her, but she turned from me and stomped back to her car. I watched her drive off. After a moment, I walked up the limestone steps and through the phantom oak-and-glass front doors of the house where I grew up. I paced the hall, entered the long rectangle of dining room, rested a hand on the carved cherrywood mantel, then passed into the kitchen. The house was so real around me that I could smell the musty linen in the cedar closet, the gas from the leaky burner on the stove, the sharp tang of geraniums that I had planted in clay pots. I lay down on the exact place where the living room couch had been pushed tight under the leaded-glass windows. I closed my eyes and it was all around me again. The stuffed bookshelves, the paneling, the soft slap of my mother's cards on the table. I could see from the house of my dark mind the alley, from the alley the street leading to the end of town, its farthest boundary the lucid silence of the dead. Between the graves my path, and along that path her back door, her face, her timeless bed, and the lost architecture of her bones. I turned over and made myself comfortable in the crush of wild burdock. A bee or two hummed in the drowsy air. The swarm had left the rubble and built their houses beneath the earth. They were busy in the graveyard right now, filling the skulls with white combs and the coffins with sweet black honey.

The police think maybe it was the gas. Maybe the pilot light on the stove went out or a burner was left on, leaking gas, and the gas rose to the ceiling, and the gas filled the condo from ceiling to floor in every room. The condo was seventeen hundred square feet with high ceilings and for days and days, the gas must’ve leaked until every room was full. When the rooms were filled to the floor, the compressor at the base of the refrigerator clicked on. Detonation. The floor-to-ceiling windows in their aluminum frames went out and the sofas and the lamps and dishes and sheet sets in flames, and the high school annuals and the diplomas and telephone. Everything blasting out from the fifteenth floor in a sort of solar flare. Oh, not my refrigerator. I’d collected shelves full of different mustards, some stone-ground, some English pub style. There were fourteen different flavors of fat-free salad dressing, and seven kinds of capers. I know, I know, a house full of condiments and no real food.

He rolled and thrashed in his bed, waiting for the dancing blue shadows to come in his window, waiting for the heavy knock on his door, waiting for some bodiless, Kafkaesque voice to call: Okay, open up in there! And when he finally fell asleep he did it without knowing it, because thought continued without a break, shifting from conscious rumination to the skewed world of dreams with hardly a break, like a car going from drive to low. Even in his dreams he thought he was awake, and in his dreams he committed suicide over and over: burned himself; bludgeoned himself by standing under an anvil and pulling a rope; hanged himself; blew out the stove’s pilot lights and then turned on the oven and all four burners; shot himself; defenestrated himself; stepped in front of a moving Greyhound bus; swallowed pills; swallowed Vanish toilet bowl disinfectant; stuck a can of Glade Pine Fresh aerosol in his mouth, pushed the button, and inhaled until his head floated off into the sky like a child’s balloon; committed hara-kiri while kneeling in a confessional at St. Dom’s, confessing his self-murder to a dumbfounded young priest even as his guts accordioned out onto the bench like beef stew, performing an act of contrition in a fading, bemused voice as he lay in his blood and the steaming sausages of his intestines. But most vividly, over and over, he saw himself behind the wheel of the LTD, racing the engine a little in the closed garage, taking deep breaths and leafing through a copy of National Geographic, examining pictures of life in Tahiti and Aukland and the Mardi Gras in New Orleans, turning the pages ever more slowly, until the sound of the engine faded to a faraway sweet hum and the green waters of the South Pacific inundated him in rocking warmth and took him down to a silver fathom.

Sue stepped into a haven that smelled of candles and lemon-scented dish soap, a cabinet of curiosities, one of which was the bathtub smack dab in the middle of the small kitchen. Bob Roy’s railroad flat was four tight, connected rooms, each stuffed with koombies, knickknacks, doodads, furniture pieces of any style, shelves, books, photos in frames, trophies bought from flea markets, old records, small lamps, and calendars from decades before. “I know,” he said. “It looks like I sell magic potions in here, like I’m an animated badger from a Disney cartoon.” He lit a burner on the stove with a huge kitchen match, then filled a shiny, Olde English–style kettle with water from the tap. As he prepared cups on a tray he said, “Tea in minutes, titmouse. Make a home for yourself.

[...]a man and a boy, side by side on a yellow Swedish sofa from the 1950s that the man had bought because it somehow reminded him of a zoot suit, watching the A’s play Baltimore, Rich Harden on the mound working that devious ghost pitch, two pairs of stocking feet, size 11 and size 15, rising from the deck of the coffee table at either end like towers of the Bay Bridge, between the feet the remains in an open pizza box of a bad, cheap, and formerly enormous XL meat lover’s special, sausage, pepperoni, bacon, ground beef, and ham, all of it gone but crumbs and parentheses of crusts left by the boy, brackets for the blankness of his conversation and, for all the man knew, of his thoughts, Titus having said nothing to Archy since Gwen’s departure apart from monosyllables doled out in response to direct yes-or-nos, Do you like baseball? you like pizza? eat meat? pork?, the boy limiting himself whenever possible to a tight little nod, guarding himself at his end of the sofa as if riding on a crowded train with something breakable on his lap, nobody saying anything in the room, the city, or the world except Bill King and Ken Korach calling the plays, the game eventless and yet blessedly slow, player substitutions and deep pitch counts eating up swaths of time during which no one was required to say or to decide anything, to feel what might conceivably be felt, to dread what might be dreaded, the game standing tied at 1 and in theory capable of going on that way forever, or at least until there was not a live arm left in the bullpen, the third-string catcher sent in to pitch the thirty-second inning, batters catnapping slumped against one another on the bench, dead on their feet in the on-deck circle, the stands emptied and echoing, hot dog wrappers rolling like tumbleweeds past the diehards asleep in their seats, inning giving way to inning as the dawn sky glowed blue as the burner on a stove, and busloads of farmhands were brought in under emergency rules to fill out the weary roster, from Sacramento and Stockton and Norfolk, Virginia, entire villages in the Dominican ransacked for the flower of their youth who were loaded into the bellies of C-130s and flown to Oakland to feed the unassuageable appetite of this one game for batsmen and fielders and set-up men, threat after threat giving way to the third out, weak pop flies, called third strikes, inning after inning, week after week, beards growing long, Christmas coming, summer looping back around on itself, wars ending, babies graduating from college, and there’s ball four to load the bases for the 3,211th time, followed by a routine can of corn to left, the commissioner calling in varsity teams and the stars of girls’ softball squads and Little Leaguers, Archy and Titus sustained all that time in their equally infinite silence, nothing between them at all but three feet of sofa;

Here is the recipe to blow something up: a Pyrex bowl; potassium chloride—found at health food stores, as a salt substitute. A hydrometer. Bleach. Take the bleach and pour it into the Pyrex, put it onto a stove burner. Meanwhile, weigh out your potassium chloride and add to the bleach. Check it with the hydrometer and boil until you get a reading of 1.3. Cool to room temperature, and filter out the crystals that form. This is what you will save. [...] You need 56 grams of these reserved crystals. Mix with distilled water. Heat to a boil and cool again, saving the crystals, pure potassium chlorate. Grind these to the consistency of face powder, and heat gently to dry. Melt five parts Vaseline with five parts wax. Dissolve in gasoline and pour this liquid onto 90 parts potassium chlorate crystals in a plastic bowl. Knead. Allow the gasoline to evaporate. Mold into a cube and dip in wax to make it waterproof. This explosive requires a blasting cap of at least a grade A3.

Early stages now, though, and he had an idea for a new recipe that just might give his line of barbecue sauces an edge over other brands. He chopped the tops off a handful of garlic bulbs, then fired up a burner on the gas stove and glugged vegetable oil into his stockpot. Cranked on the oven—hot—and set the garlic in the cast-iron skillet and drizzled on olive oil. To the pan on the stovetop, he added brown sugar and tomato sauce. Balsamic vinegar and molasses. Soon the scent of roasted garlic filled the kitchen, accompanied by the homey hiss and pop of bubbling sauce. In the zone, he envisioned the components for his new blend as clearly as if they were scribbled on the subway-tile backsplash behind the cooktop like ingredients on a handwritten recipe card. Mustard, cayenne, salt, pepper. His hands moved with muscle memory—slicing, stirring, seasoning, blending the sauce to a fine puree. The earlier sense of intrusion was evaporating along with the extra liquid in the pot.

YOUR STOVE It may seem inconsequential to consider your stove as a contributor to your beer’s character, but it is. If you use an electric stove and your brewpot is in direct contact with the burner element, then you are scorching malt sugars onto the inside bottom of the pot. Have you noticed that your light ales and light lagers haven’t been as light as you anticipated? Perhaps some of your brews have a discernible burnt flavor. When the hot element of your electric stove (an electric immersion-type heater will also create the same effect) is in direct contact with your pot, it caramelizes sugars during the boil. Caramelizing takes place during any kind of boil, but is exaggerated by the high temperatures of red-hot electric stoves. There is an easy, simple and inexpensive solution. Buy a wire “trivet” and place it between the pot and the stove coil. You also can fashion a simple triangular trivet from a nonlacquered coat hanger. This will greatly reduce the caramelization of your boiling wort.

Another day, sheltering beneath trees in a rain-shower, I uncovered a doorway long obliterated by undergrowth. After pulling shrubbery aside, I stepped inside a long deserted summerhouse, fronted by cracked marble columns and ironwork, the rear extending deep into the hillside. Though still filthy, even after I cleared away the tenacious vines, the windowpanes gave sufficient greenish light for me to sketch indoors. In a cobwebbed corner stood a gardener's burner that must once have coaxed oranges or other delicate shrubs to life. With that alight, I found a chair and sat with my shawl muffled around me as I sketched. The marble statues that lined the walls were fine copies of the Greek masters, with muscular limbs and serene faces, though sadly disfigured with a blueish-green patina. As an exercise, I copied a figure of a handsome boy, admiring the sculptor's rendering of tensed muscle, the body frozen just an instant before extending in action. My mind drifted to Michael, the uncertainty hanging over us, my urges to please him, my need to move beyond this stupid impasse. As I sketched the statue's blind eyes I half-heartedly followed his line of sight. I stood and looked more closely at the statue. "What are you looking at?" I said out loud. A green stain blotted the boy's cheek, ugly but also strangely beautiful, for the color was a peacock's viridian. For the first time I noticed the description, "HARPOCRATES- SILENCE", engraved on the pediment, and had a vague recollection of a Roman boy-god who personified that virtue. He held one index finger raised coyly to his lips, while his other hand pointed towards a low arch in the wall. I paced over to the spot at which he pointed. The niche was filled with gardener's trellis that I removed with rising excitement. Behind stood an oak doorway set low in the wall. As I lifted the latch, it opened onto a blast of chilly darkness. Lighting the stub of a candle at the stove, I propped the door open and ventured inside. At once I knew this was no gardeners' store, but another tunnel burrowing into the hillside. Setting forth with the excitement of new discovery, my footsteps rang out and my breath fogged before me in clouds. The place had a mossy, mineral smell, and save for the dripping of water, was silent. Though at first the tunnel ran straight, it soon descended an incline, and my feet splashed into muddy puddles. Who, I wondered, had last passed through that door?

STRAWBERRY SHORTBREAD BAR COOKIES Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position.   Hannah’s 1st Note: These are really easy and fast to make. Almost everyone loves them, including Baby Bethie, and they’re not even chocolate! 3 cups all purpose flour (pack it down in the cup when you measure it) ¾ cup powdered (confectioner’s) sugar (don’t sift un- less it’s got big lumps) 1 and ½ cups salted butter, softened (3 sticks, 12 ounces, ¾ pound) 1 can (21 ounces) strawberry pie filling (I used Comstock)*** *** - If you can’t find strawberry pie filling, you can use another berry filling, like raspberry, or blueberry. You can also use pie fillings of larger fruits like peach, apple, or whatever. If you do that, cut the fruit pieces into smaller pieces so that each bar cookie will have some. I just put my apple or peach pie filling in the food processor with the steel blade and zoop it up just short of being pureed. I’m not sure about using lemon pie filling. I haven’t tried that yet. FIRST STEP: Mix the flour and the powdered sugar together in a medium-sized bowl. Cut in the softened butter with a two knives or a pastry cutter until the resulting mixture resembles bread crumbs or coarse corn meal. (You can also do this in a food processor using cold butter cut into chunks that you layer between the powdered sugar and flour mixture and process with the steel blade, using an on-and-off pulsing motion.) Spread HALF of this mixture (approximately 3 cups will be fine) into a greased (or sprayed with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray) 9-inch by 13-inch pan. (That’s a standard size rectangular cake pan.) Bake at 350 degrees F. for 12 to 15 minutes, or until the edges are just beginning to turn golden brown. Remove the pan to a wire rack or a cold burner on the stove, but DON’T TURN OFF THE OVEN! Let the crust cool for 5 minutes. SECOND STEP: Spread the pie filling over the top of the crust you just baked. Sprinkle the crust with the other half of the crust mixture you saved. Try to do this as evenly as possible. Don’t worry about little gaps in the topping. It will spread out and fill in a bit as it bakes. Gently press the top crust down with the flat blade of a metal spatula. Bake the cookie bars at 350 degrees F. for another 30 to 35 minutes, or until the top is lightly golden. Turn off the oven and remove the pan to a wire rack or a cold burner to cool completely. When the bars are completely cool, cover the pan with foil and refrigerate them until you’re ready to cut them. (Chilling them makes them easier to cut.) When you’re ready to serve them, cut the Strawberry Shortbread Bar Cookies into brownie-sized pieces, arrange them on a pretty platter, and if you like, sprinkle the top with extra powdered sugar.

I woke up as the first light began to bring an orange glow to the tops of the whispering pines (and sky) above me at 5:43 but lay still to avoid waking Hope for another half-hour. She had suffered through a tough and mostly sleepless night, and I wanted to give her every second I could as the next week promised to be very stressful for her (and me), and that was if everything went according to plan. At a few minutes after six, she either sensed the growing light or my wakefulness and shifted to give me a wet kiss. We both moved down towards the slit in the bottom of my Hennessy hammock and dropped out and down onto the pine needles to explore the morning. Both of us went a ways into the woods to take care of early morning elimination, and we met back by the hammock to discuss breakfast. I shook out some Tyler kibble (a modified GORP recipe) for me and an equal amount of Hope’s kibble for her. As soon as we had scarfed down the basic snack, we picked our way down the sloping shore to the water’s edge, jumped down into the warm water (relative to the cool morning air at any rate) for a swim as the sun came up, lighting the tips of the tallest pines on the opposite shore. Hope and I were bandit camping (a term that I had learned soon after arriving in this part of the world, and enjoyed the feel of), avoiding the established campsites that ringed Follensby Clear Pond. We found our home for the last seventeen days (riding the cooling August nights from the full moon on the ninth to what would be a new moon tonight) near a sandy swimming spot. From there, we worked our way up (and inland) fifty feet back from the water to a flat spot where some long-ago hunter had built/burned a fire pit. We used the pit to cook some of our meals (despite the illegality of the closeness to the water and the fire pit cooking outside an approved campsite … they call it ‘bandit camping’ for a reason). My canoe was far enough up the shore and into the brush to be invisible even if you knew to look for it, and nobody did/would/had. After we had rung a full measure of enjoyment out of our quiet morning swim, I grabbed the stringer I had anchored to the sandy bottom the previous afternoon after fishing, pulled the two lake trout off, killed them as quickly/painlessly/neatly as I could manage, handed one to Hope, and navigated back up the hill to our campsite. I started one of the burners on my Coleman stove (not wanting to signal our position too much, as the ranger for this area liked morning paddles, and although we had something of an understanding, I didn’t want to put him in an uncomfortable position … we had, after all, been camping far too long in a spot too close to the water). Once I had gutted/buttered/spiced the fish, I put my foil-wrapped trout over the flame (flipping and moving it every minute or so, according to the sound/smell of the cooking fish); Hope ate hers raw, as is her preference. It was a perfect morning … just me and my dog, seemingly alone in the world, doing exactly what we wanted to be doing.

BUTTERSCOTCH BONANZA BARS Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position.   ½ cup salted butter (1 stick, 4 ounces, ¼ pound) 2 cups light brown sugar*** (pack it down in the cup when you measure it) 2 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 2 beaten eggs (just whip them up in a glass with a fork) 1 and ½cups flour (scoop it up and level it off with a table knife) 1 cup chopped nuts (optional) 2 cups butterscotch chips (optional) ***- If all you have in the house is dark brown sugar and the roads are icy, it’s below zero, and you really don’t feel like driving to the store, don’t despair. Measure out one cup of dark brown sugar and mix it with one cup regular white granulated sugar. Now you’ve got light brown sugar, just what’s called for in Leslie’s recipe. And remember that you can always make any type of brown sugar by mixing molasses into white granulated sugar until it’s the right color. Hannah’s Note: Leslie says the nuts are optional, but she likes these cookie bars better with nuts. So do I, especially with walnuts. Bertie Straub wants hers with a cup of chopped pecans and 2 cups of butterscotch chips. Mother prefers these bars with 2 cups of semi-sweet chocolate chips and no nuts, Carrie likes them with 2 cups of mini chocolate chips and a cup of chopped pecans, and Lisa prefers to make them with 1 cup of chopped walnuts, 1 cup of white chocolate chips, and 1 cup of butterscotch chips. All this goes to show just how versatile Leslie’s recipe is. Try it first as it’s written with just the nuts. Then try any other versions that you think would be yummy. Grease and flour a 9-inch by 13-inch cake pan, or spray it with nonstick baking spray, the kind with flour added. Set it aside while you mix up the batter. Melt the butter in a small saucepan over low heat on the stovetop, or put it in the bottom of a microwave-safe, medium-sized mixing bowl and heat it for 1 minute in the microwave on HIGH. Add the light brown sugar to the mixing bowl with the melted butter and stir it in well. Mix in the baking powder and the salt. Make sure they’re thoroughly incorporated. Stir in the vanilla extract. Mix in the beaten eggs. Add the flour by half-cup increments, stirring in each increment before adding the next. Stir in the nuts, if you decided to use them. Mix in the butterscotch chips if you decided to use them, or any other chips you’ve chosen. Spoon the batter into the prepared cake pan and smooth out the top with a rubber spatula. Bake the Butterscotch Bonanza Bars at 350 degrees F. for 20 to 25 minutes. (Mine took 25 minutes.) When the bars are done, take them out of the oven and cool them completely in the pan on a cold stove burner or a wire rack. When the bars are cool, use a sharp knife to cut them into brownie-sized pieces. Yield: Approximately 40 bars, but that all depends on how large you cut the squares. You may not believe this, but Mother suggested that I make these cookie bars with semi-sweet chocolate chips and then frost them with chocolate fudge frosting. There are times when I think she’d frost a tuna sandwich with chocolate fudge frosting and actually enjoy eating it!

EASY FRUIT PIE   Preheat oven to 375 degrees F., rack in the middle position. Note from Delores: I got this recipe from Jenny Hester, a new nurse at Doc Knight’s hospital. Jenny just told me that her great-grandmother used to make it whenever the family came over for Sunday dinner. Hannah said it’s easy so I might actually try to make it some night for Doc. ¼ cup salted butter (½ stick, 2 ounces, pound) 1 cup whole milk 1 cup white (granulated) sugar 1 cup all-purpose flour (pack it down in the cup when you measure it) 1 and ½ teaspoons baking powder ½ teaspoon salt 1 can fruit pie filling (approximately 21 ounces by weight—3 to 3 and ½ cups, the kind that makes an 8-inch pie) Hannah’s 1st Note: This isn’t really a pie, and it isn’t really a cake even though you make it in a cake pan. It’s almost like a cobbler, but not quite. I have the recipe filed under “Dessert”. You can use any canned fruit pie filling you like. I might not bake it for company with blueberry pie filling. It tasted great, but didn’t look all that appetizing. If you love blueberry and want to try it, it might work to cover the top with sweetened whipped cream or Cool Whip before you serve it. I’ve tried this recipe with raspberry and peach . . . so far. I have the feeling that lemon pie filling would be yummy, but I haven’t gotten around to trying it yet. Maybe I’ll try it some night when Mike comes over after work. Even if it doesn’t turn out that well, he’ll eat it. Place the butter in a 9-inch by 13-inch cake pan and put it in the oven to melt. Meanwhile . . . Mix the milk, sugar, flour, baking powder and salt together in a medium-size bowl. This batter will be a little lumpy and that’s okay. Just like brownie batter, don’t over-mix it. Using oven mitts or potholders, remove the pan with the melted butter from the oven. Pour in the batter and tip the pan around to cover the whole bottom. Then set it on a cold stove burner. Spoon the pie filling over the stop of the batter, but DO NOT MIX IN. Just spoon it on as evenly as you can. (The batter will puff up around it in the oven and look gorgeous!) Bake the dessert at 375 degrees F., for 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until it turns golden brown and bubbly on top. To serve, cool slightly, dish into bowls, and top with sweetened whipped cream or vanilla ice cream. It really is yummy. Hannah’s 2nd Note: The dessert is best when it’s baked, cooled slightly, and served right away. Alternatively you can bake it earlier, cut pieces to put in microwave-safe bowls, and reheat it in the microwave before you put on the ice cream or sweetened whipped cream. Yield: Easy Fruit Pie will serve 6 if you don’t invite Mike and Norman for dinner. Note from Jenny: I’ve made this by adding ¼ cup cocoa powder and 1 teaspoon of vanilla to the batter. If I do this, I spoon a can of cherry pie filling over the top.

A Christian’s heart for God should be like a teakettle on a flaming stove burner—hot to touch, visibly steaming, and audible.

Even homes supplied with electricity had serious problems with electric stoves. The incoming current was weak, and it took an hour to heat an oven for baking. There often was not sufficient amperage to power the stove burners while the oven was heating.

~ VANILLA BEAN CRÈME ANGLAISE ~ 4 large egg yolks 2½ tablespoons sugar 1 cup whole milk ¾ cup heavy cream 1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste Prepare an ice bath by filling a large bowl halfway with ice, then nestling a second bowl (ideally metal) inside the ice. Set a wire-mesh strainer over the second bowl. Using a mixer, beat the yolk and sugar together for about two minutes, or until pale and creamy. Combine the milk, cream, and vanilla bean paste in a medium-sized saucepan, and bring to a simmer over medium heat, stirring constantly to prevent scalding. Once the cream has just reached a simmer, remove from heat and reduce burner to medium-low. With the mixer running on low, slowly pour ⅓ cup of the hot cream into the sugared yolks. Blend until well incorporated, then pour the remaining cream into the mixing bowl. Transfer the custard to the saucepan, and return it to the stove. If it’s frothy; the air will dissipate as it cooks. Stir over medium-low heat for 5–10 minutes, or until the mixture can coat a spoon. For thicker custard, cook a few minutes longer. If the custard resists thickening, increase the heat; avoid a boil, as the egg will cook and the sauce will separate. Once the custard has thickened, remove it from the stove and pour it through the mesh strainer and into the chilled bowl. Chill the sauce in a covered container for three hours, or overnight. The custard will thicken as it cools. Makes about 2 cups.

why so early?” She brushed past him, opened the bottom drawer on the stove, and put a frying pan on the burner. “Because we’ve got to get to work—” “It’s Christmas day.

Why would your company ever change from your long-standing vendor and choose our company?” is another. As always, tone of voice, respectful and deferential, is critical. Otherwise, treat “why” like a burner on a hot stove—don’t touch it.

My wife and I can't recall how many years we've been married, but we'll never forget our first backpacking trip together. We'd just begun dating and I was her trail-hardened outdoorsman, a knight in shining Cordura, the guy who could handle any wilderness emergency. She was my...well, let's just say I was bent on making a good impression. This was her first backpacking experience and I wanted to have many more with her as my hiking partner. I'd checked and double-checked everything--trail conditions, equipment, weather forecast. I even bought a new stove for the occasion. We set off under overcast skies with packs loaded and spirits high. There was precipitation in the forecast, but it was November and too early for snow, I assured her. (Did I mention that we were just a few miles south of Mount Washington, home to the worst, most unpredictable weather in the Northeast?) As we climbed the few thousand feet up a granite ridge, the trail steadily steepened and we strained a bit under our loads. On top, a gentle breeze pushed a fluffy, light snowfall. The flakes were big and chunky, the kind you chase with your mouth open. Certainly no threat, I told her matter-of-factly. After a few miles, the winds picked up and the snowflakes thickened into a swirling soup. The trail all but dissolved into a wall of white, so I pulled out my compass to locate the three-sided shelter that was to be our base for the night. Eventually we found it, tucked alongside a gurgling freshet. The winds were roaring no, so I pitched our tent inside the shelter for added protection. It was a tight fit, with the tent door only two feet from the log end-wall, but at least we were out of the snowy gale. To ward off the cold and warm my fair belle, I pulled my glittering stove from its pouch, primed it, and confidently christened the burner with a match. She was awestruck by my backwoods wizardry. Color me smug and far too confident. That's when I noticed it: what appeared to be water streaming down the side of the stove. My new cooker's white-gas fuel was bathing the stove base. It was also drenching the tent floor between us and the doorway--the doorway that was zipped tightly shut. A headline flashed through my mind: "Brainless Hikers Toasted in White Mountains." The stove burst into flames that ran up the tent wall. I grabbed a wet sock, clutched the stove base with one hand, and unzipped the tent door with the other. I heaved the hissing fireball through the opening, assuming that was the end of the episode, only to hear a thud as it hit the shelter wall before bouncing back inside to melt some more nylon. My now fairly unimpressed belle grabbed a pack towel and doused the inferno. She breathed a huge sigh of relief, while I swallowed a pound of three of pride. We went on to have a thoroughly disastrous outing. The weather pounded us into submission. A full day of storm later with no letup in sight, we decided to hike out. Fortunately, that slippery, slithery descent down a snowed-up, iced-over trail was merely the end of our first backpacking trip together and not our relationship. --John Viehman

Water. Drinking water, water purification system (or tablets), and a water bottle or canteen. Food. Anything that is long lasting, lightweight, and nutritious such as protein bars, dehydrated meals, MREs24, certain canned goods, rice, and beans. Clothing. Assure it’s appropriate to a wide range of temperatures and environments, including gloves, raingear, and multiple layers that can be taken on or off as needed. Shelter. This may include a tarp or tent, sleeping bag or survival blanket, and ground pad or yoga mat. A camper or trailer is a fantastic, portable shelter, with many of the comforts of home. If you own one keep it stocked with supplies to facilitate leaving in a hurry, as it can take several hours load up and move out if you’re not ready. In certain circumstances that might mean having to leave it behind. Heat source. Lighter or other reliable ignition source (e.g., magnesium striker), tinder, and waterproof storage. Include a rocket stove or biomass burner if possible, they’re inexpensive, take very little fuel, and incredibly useful in an emergency. Self-defense/hunting gear. Firearm(s) and ammunition, fishing gear, multi-tool/knife, maps, and compass, and GPS (it’s not a good idea to rely solely on a GPS as you may find yourself operating without a battery or charger). First aid. First aid kit, first aid book, insect repellant, suntan lotion, and any needed medicines you have been prescribed. If possible add potassium iodide (for radiation emergencies) and antibiotics (for bio attacks) to your kit. Hygiene. Hand soap, sanitizer, toilet paper, towel, toothbrush, toothpaste, dental floss, and garbage bags. Tools. Hatchet (preferably) or machete, can opener, cooking tools (e.g., portable stove, pot, frying pan, utensils, and fuel), rope, duct tape, sunglasses, rubber tubing, and sewing kit. Lighting and communications. LED headlamp, glow sticks, candles, cell phone, charger (preferably hand crank or solar), emergency radio (preferably with hand crank that covers AM, FM, and Marine frequencies) and extra batteries, writing implements, and paper. Cash or barter. You never know how long an emergency will last. Extensive power outages mean no cash machines, so keep a few hundred dollars in small bills, gold or silver coins, or other valuables on hand.

And she told me I deserved a merit badge for it ... which was such a particularly funny, particularly uncanny thing for her to have said, because when I was about eight years old and I was a Cub Scout, all the boys in our den were sitting around in the kitchen of our den mother one afternoon, and she lit a cigarette bending over the flame from the front burner of the stove, and she set her hair on fire, and I put it out—I don't remember if I just smothered it with my hands or doused it with some Sprite or what—but she stared at me with this sort of demented look of gratitude on her face (she drank) and she said, 'I'm going to recommend that you get a merit badge for this,' and sure enough I did, I actually got a merit badge for extinguishing the fire in our den mother's hair.

I popped the tape into the VCR and watched a pretty, middle-aged Italian woman in a flowered housedress and frilly apron hold up various fish and shellfish as she spoke to the tape in rapid, enthusiastic Italian, espousing the virtues of the seafood. She was standing at a battered wooden table in what appeared to be her own kitchen. After she finished showing off the fish, she beheaded and eviscerated them, and then washed them in a chipped white enamel bowl full of water that sat on the table. She put the cleaned pieces on a brightly painted platter, chosen, I'm sure, with less deliberation than our Jonathan would have required. She poured olive oil into a large, slightly dented pot that sat on a small two-burner stove and then in a flash chopped a couple of onions and a good amount of garlic and put them in the oil. While the aromatics became, well, aromatic, she cut up a half dozen fresh tomatoes and a healthy amount of herbs and added them to the pot. She stirred everything around, and before long she had all the fish and shellfish in the pot.

Every human being is born with the capacity for joy, and like the pilot light in your stove, it still burns within you even if you haven’t switched on the burners in a while.

You are at your desk, you have set the book among your business papers as if by chance; at a certain moment you shift the file and you find the book before your eyes, you open it absently, you rest your elbows on the desk, you rest your temples against your hands, curled into fists, you seem to be concentrating on an examination of the papers and instead you are exploring the first pages of the novel. Gradually you settle back in the chair, you raise the book to the level of your nose, you tilt your chair, poised on its rear legs, you pull out a side drawer of the desk to prop your feet on it: the position of the feet during reading is of maximum importance, you stretch your legs out on the top of the desk, on the files to be expedited. But doesn’t this seem to show a lack of respect? Of respect that is, not for your job (nobody claims to pass judgment on your professional capacities: we assume that your duties are a normal element in the system of unproductive activities that occupies such a large part of the national and international economy), but for the book. Worse still if you belong—willingly or unwillingly—to the number of those for whom working means really working, performing, whether deliberately or without premeditation, something necessary or at least not useless for others as well as for oneself; then the book you have brought with you to your place of employment like a kind of amulet or talisman exposes you to intermittent temptations, a few seconds at a time subtracted from the principal object of your attention, whether it is the perforations of electronic cards, the burners of a kitchen stove, the controls of a bulldozer, a patient stretched out on the operating table with his guts exposed. In other words, it’s better for you to restrain your impatience and wait to open the book at home.

You are at your desk, you have set the book among your business papers as if by chance; at a certain moment you shift the file and you find the book before your eyes, you open it absently, you rest your elbows on the desk, you rest your temples against your hands, curled into fists, you seem to be concentrating on an examination of the papers and instead you are exploring the first pages of the novel. Gradually you settle back in the chair, you raise the book to the level of your nose, you tilt your chair, poised on its rear legs, you pull out a side drawer of the desk to prop your feet on it: the position of the feet during reading is of maximum importance, you stretch your legs out on the top of the desk, on the files to be expedited. But doesn’t this seem to show a lack of respect? Of respect that is, not for your job (nobody claims to pass judgment on your professional capacities: we assume that your duties are a normal element n the system of unproductive activities that occupies such a large part of the national and international economy), but for the book. Worse still if you belong—willingly or unwillingly—to the number of those for whom working means really working, performing, whether deliberately or without premeditation, something necessary or at least not useless for others as well as for oneself; then the book you have brought with you to your place of employment like a kind of amulet or talisman exposes you to intermittent temptations, a few seconds at a time subtracted from the principal object of your attention, whether it is the perforations of electronic cards, the burners of a kitchen stove, the controls of a bulldozer, a patient stretched out on the operating table with his guts exposed. In other words, it’s better for you to restrain your impatience and wait to open the book at home.

Things in the kitchen were, thankfully, going according to plan. Ginny's hands moved at a gratifying pace over the stove. She deftly controlled the four burners to simmer sauces with ease. A pair of solid wooden cutting boards were positioned at her elbow, piled with minced garlic, leafy herbs, and fresh root vegetables. A beautiful cut of Angus beef rested on the counter, coming to room temperature and marinating in rich juices. An elevated twist on a white chocolate cheesecake chilled on the packed refrigerator shelf. All in all, she had planned a fabulous meal. This was how Ginny had always envisioned Mesquite running, smooth and well staffed, with happy guests at the table and herself at the helm. If she thought about it hard enough, which she rarely had time to do, Ginny would say this evening was damn near perfection. Feeling sentimental, she allowed herself a pour from the bottle of chilled Oregon pinot noir in the refrigerator. She wiped her fingers clean with a nearby tea towel and watched as the golden evening light filtered through the windows, illuminating the translucent burgundy liquid in her glass. This is how it should be, she thought to herself. Happy customers in the other room, her daughter and her sister all under one roof, and a warm place to call home. She'd be content if she knew it could last.

. . . Baba filled the void the only way he could think of: a faceoff with the two-burner stove, the two pots, and a heaping bag of sabzi--fresh herbs. The permanent lumps lodged in our throats were temporarily soothed by a steaming pot of khoresh ghormeh sabzi--fresh herb stew. The royalty of all Persian stews.

This time he kicked the other shin. I felt tears in my eyes and blinked to keep them back. He backed across the kitchen to the gas stove, turned on one of the burners and the pilot lit it. On top of the oven was a soldering iron, the old fashioned kind with a wooden handle and a heavy point. He stuck the pointed end in the flame of the burner and left it there. His eyes didn’t leave my face. “All right,” he said. “Donna’s in your apartment at the motor court. Later, if you can still talk, you’ll call her up and tell her to meet you someplace. But right now I’ve got another question. What are you and your hick friend looking for up here?” “Dolly Spangler’s murderer,” I said. “Who do you figure that might be?” “I haven’t figured. Singer Batts does the figuring. Where did you take him?” “Forget about him. Just concentrate on what I say. I want the paper—the report out of the Control Board files that you and your hick friend are looking for. Where is it?” “What makes you think we found it?” He lifted the soldering iron out of the burner and looked at it. It was pink. He stuck it back in the flame. “I think you did,” he said. “If you didn’t, you know where it is.” “All right,” I said. “Franklin Hollander’s got it. Bonnie Claire and her boys planted it on him.” One of his eyebrows flickered. “If you know that much,” he said, “you know Hollander doesn’t have it any more. Where is it?” He lifted the iron out of the fire. It was nice and red now. He spat on it and it sizzled. He walked my way. “You win,” I said. “I’ve got the paper. It’s in my pocket. You want me to reach in and get it?” He stopped and looked me over, looked at my pockets and back at my face. He didn’t want to come close enough to reach in my pocket. He would have to put down either the gun or the iron and he didn’t want to do that either. “Yeah,” he said finally. “Reach for it slow. Pull it out and drop it on the floor.

I sat on the carpet and Marcus kneeled next to me, a bowl of ice and a slice of apple in hand. “You sure that needle’s clean?” I’d never had any part of my body pierced, begged Mama for years, but she refused. “Is it gonna hurt?” Marcus waved me off. “I cleaned it, quit asking these damn questions.” He stood up and went to the kitchen, turned the stove burner on, and dipped the needle in the fire before returning to me, tilting my head toward him. “What I say, Ki? I got you.” He held my gaze and it was like I was nine again, following him into the trees by the lake and watching as he and his friends lit a bowl, the way he inhaled like some part of him had

When I ask myself what makes my kitchen function for me I can begin to identify concrete needs such as having enough clean dishes for the day, enough clear counter space to prepare food safely, access to my sink and a stove burner, and an empty trash can. Suddenly all that is really required fits on a short, finite list. I can do a few things to feel like I have cared for my needs. Then move on.

Place the frozen hash browns in the bowl of a food processor. Use the steel blade, and process with an on-and-off motion until the potatoes are finely chopped. (If you don’t have a food processor, you don’t have to go out and buy one to make these. Just lay your frozen potatoes out on a cutting board in single layers, and chop them up into much smaller pieces with a chef’s knife.) Leave the potatoes in the food processor (or on the counter) while you… Crack the eggs into a large bowl and beat them with a fork or a wire whip until they’re fluffy. Stir in the grated onion (or the onion powder if you decided to use that), and the salt and pepper. Mix in the cracker crumbs. Let the mixture sit on the counter for at least two minutes to give the crumbs time to swell as they soak up the liquid. If you used a food processor, dump the potatoes on a cutting board. (If you used a chef’s knife, they’re already there.) Blot them with a paper towel to get rid of any moisture. Then add them to the mixture in the bowl, and stir them in. If the mixture in your bowl looks watery, add another Tablespoon of cracker crumbs to thicken it. Wait for the cracker crumbs to swell up, and then stir again. If it’s still too watery, add another Tablespoon of cracker crumbs. The resulting mixture should be thick, like cottage cheese. Place the ¼ stick of butter and the 1/8 cup of olive oil in a large nonstick frying pan. (This may be overkill, but I spray the frying pan with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray before I add the butter and olive oil.) Turn the burner on medium-high heat. Once the oil and butter are hot, use a quarter-cup measure to drop in the batter. Don’t try to get all of the batter out of the measuring cup. Your goal is to make 1/8 cup pancakes, and if you don’t scrape out the batter, that’s approximately what you’ll get. Keep the pancakes about two inches apart, and cover the bottom of the frying pan with them. Flatten them very slightly with a spatula so the potatoes spread out and don’t hump up in the middle. Fry the pancakes until they’re lightly browned on the bottom. That should take 2 to 3 minutes. You can tell by lifting one up with a spatula and peeking, but if it’s not brown and you have to do it again, choose another pancake to lift. Once the bottoms of the pancakes are brown, flip them over with your spatula and fry them another 2 to 3 minutes, or until the other side is brown. Lift out the pancakes and drain them on paper towels. Serve hot off the stove if you can, or keep the pancakes warm by placing them in a pan in a warm oven (the lowest temperature that your oven will go) in single layers between sheets of aluminum foil. Serve with your choice of sour cream, applesauce, cherry sauce, blueberry sauce, or apricot sauce. Yield: Approximately 24 small pancakes, depending on pancake size.

When he was three years old Jackie ran into the house crying. I asked, "What's happened? What's wrong?" He showed me his bleeding hand - the palm of his hand had been scraped. "How did you do that? It isn't bad! Did you hurt it on something dirty?" I patted the blood away with a tissue. He stopped crying; he pressed against me with his wet face. My husband said, coming into the kitchen, "Let's see what happened -" He took Jackie's hand and stared down at it. Jackie's hand was very small in his; his own hand was not clean. He had been working on the lawn mower. "Should this be washed out or what?" he said, looking at me. "You think there's some germs in it?" "I'd better wash it out." I turned on the hot water. "Maybe it should be sterilised. It should be washed out good," my husband said slowly. He stared down at Jackie's hand and for a few seconds he was silent. He loved Jackie very much; he was always afraid of Jackie getting hit by a car. Now Jackie tried to get away from him, uneasy. My husband looked strange, as if the sight of blood frightened him. "I can wash it out. I'll put a bandage on it," I said. He paid no attention to me. Instead, he turned on one of the electric burners of the stove, still holding Jackie's hand. "If it was something rusty... if it was some dirt, some filth, he could get very sick," my husband said. "The germs should be all killed." "What? What are you going to do?" "I know what to do," he said irritably, vaguely. "All it needs is a bandage...." Jackie began to cry, afraid of his father. He tried to get away. "Goddam it, hold still! You want to get lockjaw or something? Why is this kid always crying?" He pulled Jackie to the stove and before I could stop him he pressed his palm down onto the burner - Jackie screamed, kicked, broke away - it was all over in a second. "You're crazy! You burned him!" I cried. My husband stared at me. Jackie was screaming, gasping for breath, he had backed away against the kitchen table. His screams rose higher and higher. My husband stared at him and at me, very pale. "You're crazy!" I shouted at him. I ran cold water for Jackie to stick his hand under. The burn was not bad - the stove hadn't been hot enough. "I didn't mean to hurt him," my husband said slowly, "I... I don't know what...." "Putting his hand on the stove! God, you must be crazy!" There was something pulsating in me, a bright, thrilling nerve - I wanted to laugh in my husband's face, I wanted to claw at him, I wanted to gather Jackie up in my arms and run out of the house with him! I hated my husband and I was glad that he had made such a stupid mistake. I was glad he had burned Jackie and that Jackie was crying in my arms, pressing against me, terrified of his father. "I don't know what I was thinking off," he said. His voice was vague and slow and surprised. "I didn't mean...I'm sorry...." "Don't scare him anymore!" "I'm sorry. I must be going crazy...." "Where did you ever get such an idea?" He rubbed his hands violently across his face, across his eyes. "Jesus, I must be going crazy," he said. "You're just lucky the stove wasn't hot." Jackie kept crying, frightened. I took him into the bathroom and put a bandage on the cut - only a small scratch - no real burn at all.

When at last we arrived in Mannheim, I found that my apartment had been rented to a family whose young son was an amputee. I had conscientiously paid our landlady the entire time we were gone and now that I returned and needed my apartment I couldn’t do anything about it. I felt upset that these people usurped what was ours and I didn’t find much comfort when they offered us one of the bedrooms to live in. Frustrated as I was, there was nobody I could turn to. The rule of law had been suspended, so the only thing I could do was accept their offer. As I moved into what had been my bedroom, they reluctantly agreed that I could share the kitchen and use one of the burners on the stove. Climbing up into the attic, I found a bed that my husband Richard had used when he was a student. Now I had to cram onto it with the children every night and it always became a contest as to who got the pillow. None of us got much rest but the experience did bring us closer together. Frequently I wound up on the floor. Somehow I found a vicarious joy in seeing that my furniture, which the other family had been using, was becoming warped from moisture damage. It had been in a room where the window was blown out during one of the air raids. Of course this exposed everything to the weather, and so the frequent rains ruined the table and much of the other furniture. I really grew to dislike these people and with each passing day things became worse. One day while trying to balance three pots on one burner, I got an idea as to what I would do next….

If you were to touch a hot stove and burn your hand, but later were made to forget how you got the burn, your body would still have the fear of being burned. Only it would not be activated only by hear, or a red-hot burner on a stove. It would come and go at its leisure, and you would have no idea how to stop it.