I love my...Gemini Range/Oven!

I've always wanted double-ovens in my kitchen and when we starting looking for a new home that was on the top of the priority list, double-ovens or space to add double-ovens. Then we found our house, it didn't currently have nor have space for double-ovens; however it already had a Gemini range which I never thought about before.

Now I would have never purchased the appliances that were in our house, they are just too space-aged for me with all the bells and whistles that I would never use or figure out how to use. The stove top on our range is ridiculous with just one big burner and three smaller ones. Two of those burners do connect together to make a big oval burner and until I got an oval pan, it was very annoying - now, not so much. However it's the ovens that after a year of using that I'm starting to have the warm, cozy feelings about about.

For those of you who do not know, a Gemini Range/Oven is a stand alone range with two ovens, the top oven being significantly smaller with only one rack and the bottom a full sized oven with two to three racks. I'm sure that most of the Gemini Range/Ovens out there have (or can have) a convection oven option like mine do (mine is for the bottom oven) that cooks food quicker using a circulation fan.

Now as I've said in previous posts and for those of you who know my idiosyncrasies, I have always put my oven on strike once it hits a 100-degrees outside and I don't consider using it until it is below 100-degrees for at least a few days in a row. This is why if I have had to have an oven on for some reason during the summer (and the NESCO wouldn't cut it), I would use our toaster oven since it is so much smaller, won't heat up the kitchen as much, and will cool off that much quicker. Now that I have a Gemini Range/Oven I've actually turned on the smaller oven a few times this summer (Gasp!). It may take a bit longer to cool off after using, but it's does the trick when you need a full cookie sheet of say....chicken pieces to cook. I no longer feel the need to split the chicken pieces into two cooking batches to use the toaster oven just to stay cooler at night.

I know that this will sound crazy to most of you, but I'm an Arizona native and I refuse to line the coffers of APS anymore than I have to. Also having to live on one income makes you come up with all sorts of creative ways to save money and not having an oven on during the summer makes a significant dent in our electric bill (I'm talking hundreds of dollars over the entire summer). I will still prescribe to my old way of thinking by not having the oven on during the summer, but I will also occasionally break that rule just because I now can have a small, full sized oven on without killing the AC unit (or my bill) that night!