![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/111.jpg\" "\\"1\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nThis (along with my children) is my pride and joy! A two door electric Aga, nine years old, British racing green, weight 900kg, well-used…One of the few possessions without which I really think that my life would be poorer. I stroke the Aga on an almost daily basis. It is unrivalled in the cooking of English Christmas lunches (large turkey with all the trimmings), casseroles, pizzas and pies. It keeps our living room and kitchen warm night and day in winter and summer. It has been used to dry washing; with a sleeping bag in front to warm frozen children coming in wet from playing in the snow; to warm gently a sick hamster and for a multitude of other things. And I love it. (As does Bumble Bee the cat, who spends large portions of her life curled up in front of it)<\/p>\n
About ten years ago we decided to rip out some interior and exterior walls and put a new kitchen into our house. In his foolishness (he really had no idea whatsoever what would result) my very nice husband said that I could choose exactly what I wanted for the kitchen. I cook a lot, you understand, and spend considerable amounts of time tied to the kitchen stove.<\/p>\n
Boy, did I know what I wanted!<\/p>\n
(And you can see her above!)<\/p>\n
Had I known what would be involved, (six months of sweating blood and a million phone calls in three languages) there is a chance that I wouldn’t have gone down the path. But that would have been a shame.<\/p>\n
At the time, mine was only, to the best of my knowledge, the 4th Aga in Switzerland. A friend of a friend has one in Z\u00fcrich, the singer Shania Twain has one in her villa in Gstaad and there is some other lucky person somewhere. By now I’m sure there are more. It was moreover, the very first electric Aga – which unfortunately meant that I had to go through all the multitude of rigmaroles to get the official permission and certification for such a strange and wonderful thing ( and was branded a loony at an official level).<\/p>\n
Agas are incredibly British – although designed originally by a Swede in the 1920s and pretty much unchanged in their design since then. They are the salvation of many draughty old Victorian piles, where they create a warm enclave in the kitchen and can also heat the water and warm the radiators. Because my home is modern, well-insulated and has underfloor heating, we didn’t need the water-heating benefits, but believe me if I could have, I would have….<\/p>\n
So. My Aga. Orderered from England (expensive, but they truly do last a lifetime), delivered via Germany and constructed by a nice little chap who came from Northern France. When the palettes containing the pieces were initially delivered, a young Swiss delivery man stood at the bottom of the steps to our front door with a perplexed expression. He had two pallets on the back of a van, each weighing approximately half a ton and no way whatsoever of moving them. He was duly sent away and told to come back with a crane, which he did two days later. The pallets were lifted to the front door and left there. No chance of theft. No-one could lift them. The Frenchman unloaded them piece by piece.<\/p>\n
As he built the AGA, all other construction work in the house came to a halt and open mouthed workmen stood behind him watching what was going on. They had never seen anything like it and probably never will again.<\/p>\n
My husband was deeply, deeply sceptical at first (he is Swiss after all and this was most definitely something very English and very strange), but he has come round, seduced by the wonderful cooking and by bottom-warming in winter. When friends visit us for the first time the Aga is always a discussion point and I think he may even be secretly proud (although he raises his eyebrows and shakes his head as though to say without words ‘I married a crazy woman’ or more politely ‘my wife exhibits slightly eccentric tendencies’).<\/p>\n
Although in a fire for practical reasons I would choose to save my children and my quilts, I would not be without my Aga (and actually now that I think about it, it’s so indestructible it would probably fare pretty well in a fire.)<\/p>\n
Happy cooking,<\/p>\n
Helen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
or….the way to an English girl’s heart…. or….what crazy foreigners do in Switzerland to totally convince the Swiss that they are off their heads… This (along with my children) is my pride and joy! A two door electric Aga, nine years old, British racing green, weight 900kg, well-used…One of the few possessions without which I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQtrc-aS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=674"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":676,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674\/revisions\/676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}