Here they are: the last of the electric meatballs.

The POS electric stove that came with the otherwise luxurious Berea-Rose is scheduled to be replaced with an honest-to-goodness gas range later this week. That means next week's issue of meatball bounty will be prepared on some real equipment.

I can't wait. Placed the order yesterday at the local Home Despot, scheduled my delivery for Thursday. Which means Thursday night we dine like mobsters!

But I gotta give the old unit its due: it turned out week after week of damn-good meatballs and kept pace with the unreasonable demands we placed on it to celebrate several holidays in Mastandrea-food-proportions (especially last Thanksgiving, where we red-lined the old bitch to crank out a more-than-adequate turkey feast).

Still, I haven't been able to use my cast-iron pans to their full potential, and even something simple like making Turkish coffee or warming a pita is unnecessarily challenging.

So maybe I'll keep a few meatballs aside from this week's series as a collector's item. WWVS? He'd say "Someday it'll be worth money." Maybe he'll lend me one of his baseball trophy mounts! Anyone have a pen that'll write an autograph on a meatball?