Aga off – Sunshine On!

I love my Aga – everyone knows that. It’s an undeniable fact.

It is at the heart of my kitchen and warms the house gently in the colder months here in France.
However, there comes a time of year when it starts to take on a furnace like quality and overheats both the kitchen and us.

I think we reached that point last night. We went to bed and we were forced to open one of the large windows on our first floor as the heat from the Aga was creeping up the stairs to our open plan bedroom and slowly was beginning to gently poach us. The central heating has been off for a while and I have been giving the Aga a day by day appraisal whether to switch it off or not.

Last night the dial was switched to zero for the coming months of summer, and we descended this morning into an airy cool kitchen – windows wide open and shutters tightly closed. Dark, shady and so so cool.

Like many of my fellow villagers I am lucky enough to have a “cuisine d’ete” where I can cook outside the house to make sure the entire house is protected from the heat of unnecessary cooking heat emanating from my gas cooker which is also a feature in my kitchen.

I have decked out my compact summer kitchen with a two ring burner, a halogen oven, a slow cooker, loaned from my Mum plus one or two other gadgets, all of which get an airing during the warmer weather.

So, I have yet to swap the larger cooking pans from the gas cooker oven to the now cooled Aga ovens, check the gas bottle to ensure it is full, and we are ready to go on to summer time cooking.
Unless it rains or the temperature suddenly drops of course…