boat cooking

As the days turned into weeks and the weeks turned into months I began to regret the decision to throw out the crusty old stove that was on our boat when we bought it.  Sure, the cooking grate was completely burned through over one burner, there was a large gap in the back of the oven that did not look safe at all, and it was coated with grease but, hey, it was a stove.

I did my best with my little electric skillet, I really did.  I became inventive and creative and really, really familiar it’s little electric temperaments (like half the electric coil being blistering hot and half the coil basically cold).  The non-stick finish was decidedly Stick and was starting to flake off in a couple of places.  I never felt like it was clean since I couldn’t submerge it in water.  In short: I was longing for a real, honest-to-goodness stove where I could use my fully washable pots and pans…

We spent the time saving our pennies and researching stoves.  Our initial thought was a Dickinson Mediterranean stainless steel beauty.  We realized that we were going to be spending a lot of money on looks with no discernable cooking advantage.  So we moved on.  My next choice was a Tesco 3-burner baby.  My mind made up, I began looking to purchase.  There were none in stock in the entire world.  Really.  I called the company, they were at least 3 weeks out.  Same with everyone who sold them online.  They don’t keep them in stock (said one man on the phone, shocked that I would even think such a thing), they order them from the company.  Well great.

I really, really wanted to have a stove to cook on for Thanksgiving.  Unfortunately money in hand doesn’t mean a stove in the boat.  It turns out that a large stove-sized package takes many weeks to deliver and we were getting down to it.

Finally we found a stove on Defender.com that was in stock and available for pick-up.  It’s a 2.5 hour drive? Perfect!

We drove to Connecticut and purchased a stove, some propane tanks, a new wheel and new propane lines.  (We hadn’t planned on the wheel but it was on clearance and such a bargain…)

The stove sat in the car overnight then it sat in the galley for a week while my Better Half ran new propane lines and fixed a potentially major problem with the propane system.

He had to drill a 2 1/2″ hole through the steel from the propane locker to the inside of the boat.  A hole that took 4 days to drill.

However, we finally had a stove!  It is glorious and I am soooo happy!