Because Everyone Needs to Vent

Mar 6th, 2008 by Marilyn

Thanks to all you eagle-eyed readers who participated in yesterday’s brief but glorious blog contest, “Name That Shiny House Part.”

A little too eagle-eyed, perhaps, given the swift end to our little game. Methinks you all have house parts on the brain. Get out! Take a walk and don’t go near Home Depot or Lowe’s for a week!

Anyway, you were right. We are finally installing a range, or “vent,” hood over Thermy, our monster stove. (Josie names everything, even, no especially, the appliances)

Thermy was not particularly nuts about having grown men stand on his burners with power tools.

I was not particular crazy about Frankenhood here sitting on the newly-paid-for marble. So I put down a nice checked tablecloth, and we all had tea.

I wish! More like “we all had welding.” So many steel parts and flaps and ducts were cut and soldered and riveted onto this big clanging thing, and all in the name of moving air safely from one place to another.

We needed a 48″ hood to safely cover the range top, but with a motor that big, we’d hoped for an exterior vent – ostensibly keeping more noise and more smoke outside. So our heating & cooling guys devised a restaurant-like system where a large, shiny, mushroom-shaped fan motor is actually outside, decorating our patio like a diner back alley, and the ducting vents right out to it.

All we need to complete the scene now are a few fry cooks on their smoke break.

So the ceiling still needs patching and the whole thing will get copper-clad, but after using the kitchen-window method for 14 years, we were itching to try it out.

Wham! I slapped two peppercorn-crusted steaks into a fiery pan, dropping each one dramatically for maximum sizzle.

Then I looked up. Lots of smoke, but at least it seemed to be vertical. I threw in a few hunks of butter, and then – why not? – a long pour of sherry, for sauce and for splatter.

The pan now nearly aflame, we stared at the billows going up.

“Is it going in there?” I asked Greg. He stood near the stove, examining the smoke.

“I think.”

“It is going up,” I offered, turning the steaks.

“I don’t know,” he said. We both stared like we were waiting for a new pope.

“Go outside,” I said. “Go check the fan and see if it’s working.”

He stepped out the back door, then poked his head back in. “I smell steak!” he called. “You can smell steak out there.”

Aha! Steak-out-there is good. But it’s so quiet, and it’s hard to tell.