Friday, October 7, 2011

An Aga In The Kitchen?

What is an Aga, anyway?  Well, for those of you who don't already know, it's a cooker, a stove, a large kitchen appliance that takes care of all of your cooking needs.  You can roast a turkey, bake cookies, melt chocolate, boil potatoes, and keep the plates warm, all at the same time. 

You find them a lot in old English farm houses, and that is where I met my first Aga.  I was away for the weekend with a friend, at a house belonging to a family I'd never met, an old, chilly, bug-infested place with multiple staircases and pokey little corners.  I was supposed to sleep in a particularly spidery box room, with the daughter of the house, but the cold and the spiders were keeping me awake, so I crept down the stairs and found the kitchen.  There, in pride of place, was this wonderful 4-oven Aga, gently warming the massive stone-floored room, waiting to be needed. 

I fell in love with that Aga, it was beautiful, practical, warm, reliable, comforting, solid, charming. 

When we were first dating, I told my husband about this previous love affair, and he confessed that his grandmother's house had housed a similar solid-fuel stove, and that he loved them, too.  We declared that, one day, we'd have an Aga. 

That was 20 years ago, in the south of England, when we were young, and had big dreams.  Now, 20 years later, we still have big dreams, but we also have 2 daughters, and a mortgage, and we live in Washington, USA.  We've come a long way from those youthful dreams, but they never left us, and now we are beginning the demolition of our kitchen, in order to install the Aga of our dreams.
He's in pieces in the garage right now, rescued from someone else's garage where he had been resting for quite some years. Luckily, we get to give him a new lease of life! 

3 comments:

  1. Hooray!! I can't wait to hear all about your Aga, and the renovations that happen to accommodate the Aga, and the lovely meals you'll create with the Aga, and the amazing knitting that will be done while waiting for the meals to finish on the Aga :)

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  2. I love how dreams do come true! :0)Keep the reno stories coming... they're inspiring! xoxo

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  3. We look forward to hearing your story and admit to being great Aga fans too. We would Sooo love one but our current kitchen is too small. Good luck with the renovations. Nikki Cheasley

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