A Wolf In the Door and Installed in the Kitchen

The Bertazzoni Maserati we didn't pick. 

I'm continuing this trend of departing from The Toad's original gift finding goals to discuss my new kitchen. Please forgive this self indulgent transgression.

We moved into this new house and discovered one shitty stove. I mean, it had to be decades old, or at least it looked decades old, and it pooped out a Bic lighter's worth of gas every now and then. I did manage to boil a pot of pasta on it, but overall I was not even remotely impressed. The reason why is: I had a Wolf.

A Wolf stove is sort of the epitome of at-home professional level appliances. It blasts out an incredible 16,000 BTUs of gaseous flame per burner, yet has the gentlest simmer setting available. If you love to cook (and I do, although at this point it's hard to remember actually cooking anything of note), an awesome piece of machinery like this makes true cuisine possible. I'm willing to forgo many kitchen features to have a Wolf; there will be no custom cabinetry, marble countertops, or Sub-Zero fridges in my new kitchen. Sacrifices must be made.

So Mr. Crab and I sojourned to Pacific Sales to check out excellent stoves. We hoped to save money by buying a less status conscious brand (what Mr. Crab brilliantly terms "the second shitty," the first shitty obviously being the current stove we're planning to throw off the nearest cliff), but the helpful sales guy convinced us otherwise. That absolutely stunning Bertazzoni stove? "It's like a Maserati. It's pretty, but you don't want to drive it every day," Mr. Stove Expert told us. How about a Viking? "They had problems in the past. They've fixed them, but you're not saving that much by buying a Viking instead of a Wolf." Second shitty, indeed. Finally, Mr. Stove Expert told us it was the last day of the Wolf special deal (we saved about 500 bucks). Sold!

The little Wolf that could. This is not my kitchen, by the way.

So there it sits, the Wolf stove. It's a little one with big cooking potential. It has the pretty red knobs. It can sear anything to a crisp. We're grateful to have it. And The Toad recommends it heartily, even though we will be eating Mac and Cheese out of the box in order to fund it.