Cooking with the gas turned off!

That is the slogan for the Chambers kitchen stove. That 's the Ebay photo of our new/old stove. We bought it last May and spent the next 2 months restoring it. It is my favorite stove ever and I mean ever. Ours is a 1950 model. The small door on the lower right is a utility closet and not a small oven, as is sometimes advertised. The large door is the oven and above it is a griddle with a broiler underneath. There are 3 burners with a thermowell behind the front one on the right. There is a small shelf at the top with a light underneath it. This little baby weighs in at 450 pounds. Isn't it a beauty? The slogan comes from the fact that it is so well insulated that you fire up the thermowell or oven, put the food in for a certain amount of time and then shut the gas off and let everything finish cooking on retained heat.

I have to take a moment now and talk about how great the Net is. Through the efforts of lots of interesting and generous people, just about anything a person needs to know is available. There is a wonderful site that lets you download - for free -literature, advertisements, cookbooks, time charts, etc. for the Chambers stove. Also there is a wonderful forum where people will tell you not only how to restore them, but where to get parts. What a wonderful resource. It is: http://www.vintagechambers.com/

Anyway, in the photo our stove looks pretty good, but it actually needed a lot of help. For cosmetic reasons, we replaced the oven door, as it had a chip on the side and had the top and shelf re chromed. We tore it down completely and replaced the insulation in it and my husband repainted all the interior portions (they don't show when it is assembled) with heat proof paint. We replaced all the aluminum tubing with copper and on and on. Now it proudly sits in my kitchen and cooks like crazy. My husband and I both have a background in mechanical drafting and we know good engineering when we see it. Simply put, we love this stove and are so very proud of ourselves for restoring it. Here is a general observation about life: You appreciate something a lot more if you have some old fashioned elbow grease in it.

Till next time.....