By Michael Kaufman
As one who does much of the cooking and baking in our house, I looked forward to using our new, state-of-the-art, slide-in gas range. The new range was carefully chosen by my wife Eva-Lynne after a painstaking search and review of the literature, not to mention countless discussions with the patient staff at Michael’s Appliances in Middletown. The folks at Michael’s have become accustomed to her repeat visits and Lieutenant Colombo-like style of questioning. (This is a woman who took almost a full year to decide on a new toaster oven after the venerable old Black and Decker I bought used on eBay finally went kaput.)

The new range replaces a recent vintage GE model that worked perfectly. Its only crime was that it was not a slide-in and had a panel that would protrude above the new countertop, thereby marring the esthetic appearance of our renovated kitchen.(My suggestion that we just lop off the offending protrusion was not well received.) We sold the GE on Craig’s list (a whole nother story there) and are now the proud owners of a beautiful new….Electrolux! Not only can you cook and bake with it: Slide it all the way out and you can vacuum the floor too. (That isn’t true, of course, but who knew Electrolux made anything besides vacuum cleaners?)

We’ve had the new range since before Thanksgiving and it seems to work okay once you figure out the basics. But it has so many gizmos that it comes with a daunting 52 pages of instructions. We didn’t find the instructions, buried in a tray in the warming drawer, for several days, during which I mainly stared at the new range and continued to cook with the electric fry pan we’d been using during the renovation. Once, I accidentally tapped the “touch-activated glass control panel,” which suddenly lit up and made a ding sound. A few icons popped up: a light bulb signifying the oven light; a box with the numeral 3 inside and the words “control lock” underneath, and the words “upper oven” and “lower oven,” each accompanied by a timer clock icon.

Just for the heck of it I tapped the light bulb icon. Sure enough, the oven light came on. I tapped it again to turn it off. It stayed on. I tapped it again….and again, to no effect. Just as I was beginning to panic (“Uh oh, did I break it already?”) my frenzied tapping achieved the desired result. (Turns out you have to tap twice to turn the light off.)

Emboldened by my success at turning off the oven light, I tapped “upper oven” and was greeted by a dazzling display of 35 icons, many of which I still don’t understand even though I’ve leafed through the instruction book a few times. Why is there a heart with a wrench sticking out of it? What is the difference between “conv bake,” “conv roast,” and “conv convert?” Why are there three numbered hearts, each with the words “my favorite” underneath? I just want to cook and bake like I always did! This is worse than trying to figure out how to turn on the heat in Eva-Lynne’s car, another recent gizmo-laden purchase that mystifies me when I drive it.

With company coming the next week I had to get some experience cooking with the Electrolux before they arrived. I enlisted my daughter Sadie for tech support and together we opted to use the “perfect turkey” icon. According to the instruction book all we had to do was plug in the probe attachment inside the oven and insert the probe into the turkey as shown in the illustration. The Electrolux would take it from there. It would signal the precise moment when the turkey was perfectly roasted and turn itself off.

We had some flexibility regarding the temperature so we decided to set it lower than the default setting. (Hint from Heloise: Roasting meat at a lower temperature over a longer period results in a moister, more tender roast.) For some reason, however, the touchpad refused to cooperate and kept reverting to the 350-degree default setting anyway. Maybe it was an omen.

After Sadie tapped “Start” the oven made a strange whirring noise and a symbol on the touch screen spun around. After one hour there was a ding to announce that our perfect turkey had reached the desired internal temperature. Perfect it was….to make soup with, although a few slices of breast meat could be salvaged for dinner. The stuffing I made was excellent, along with the giblet gravy I’d prepared in a pot on a burner, which mercifully turned on the old-fashioned way via a simple twist of a knob.

A recent email from my cousin Jon in Virginia suggests that I am not alone in my frustration with the recent onslaught of gizmos. Jon is about a decade younger than I and a lot more tech savvy. He works in the wireless industry, which he says “changes like the weather patterns in South Florida, i.e. if you don’t like the climate, wait a few minutes. The new rage in the world of wireless is the creation, sale, and implementation of applications for one’s cellular handset or tablet.

“Whether you carry an Android, iPhone or BlackBerry® in your pocket, there are geniuses around the world giving birth to an app you cannot live without,” he writes. “These magical gizmos span from the ridiculous to the sublime. For around ninety-nine cents you can download a gadget that charts your business vehicle mileage, reads books aloud or even blows out the candles on your birthday cake….

“Despite the tsunami of instruments available, the industry has struggled mightily with one cherished component for years: voice recognition. Whether you are battling a robot voice when trying to reach a customer service representative for human assistance or you are attempting to have your cell phone provide information or complete a task, voice recognition software has gotten the better of all of us. Remaining calm when this software is unable to decipher a simple command, is a mind numbing horror….

“In the 1968 science fiction classic, 2001 A Space Odyssey, an astronaut asks HAL (the villainous monotone voiced computer) to “open the bay doors.” How different would the movie have been if HAL responded ‘Did you say oven the clay boars?’ or ‘Pope on the gray floor?’ I imagine the astronaut might have eventually hurled himself into space rather than continue this futile banter with a machine.”

Jon is currently testing two voice recognition programs he says are equally confounding. “I am not certain what prompted me to take on this assignment. Perhaps I hoped such a challenge might earn me a few months of rest in a sunny facility with soft walls.” If I don’t learn how to master our new state-of-the-art slide-in Electrolux gas range soon, I’ll be right there with him.

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

Tags: Michael Kaufman

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