Cooking in the old days
By Judy Evans
@JudyEv (381815)
Rockingham, Australia
May 10, 2020 9:13am CST
MyLotter ShannyBananny (@shaggin), in a comment on my discussion, mentioned she was buying a new stove with her stimulus cheque. The door has been broken for a long time and now the temperature gauge has stopped working. It sounds a really good use of the money.
It reminded me of my Mum’s Metters Stove which was de rigeur before the days of gas and electric stoves. I’ve used two photos. The top photo shows the oven door better but the bottom one shows the two small doors behind which a fire would be burning. You just had to gauge the heat of the oven. You’d stoke the fire up for scones or just keep it ticking over for a casserole. By opening the two small doors, you’d let some of heat out if the fire was too hot.
Some wonderful meals were cooked in these stoves despite the lack of a temperature gauge, etc. If you remember these well and know all about them, then my apologies for ‘bending your ear’.
And now I’m wondering where that saying came from. 
25 people like this
26 responses
@sallypup (69157)
• Centralia, Washington
10 May 20
Your writing brings me back to my two years in Northern Idaho. No electricity, running water. And cold. Oh heck on those woods winters. And a toddler to look after. Frozen boots in the morning. Worst ever on trying to cook pasta cause you have to keep the wood burning super hot AND consistently hot or your pasta turns to glug. I did love that old wood burning cook stove, though. Tiger cat walked on its upper shelf- me worrying and yelling cause what if he burned his big feet?? And the grocery store was about forty miles away so you wanted to not waste your food.
3 people like this
@sallypup (69157)
• Centralia, Washington
11 May 20
@JudyEv Yes we had scary days and there was once when hubby had to be harsh with wee daughter. We were trying to walk the last half mile to the cabin. Neighbors had helped us get to town. Small or not, she had to walk or freeze cause us adults were packing in heavy supplies. I still feel terrible for daughter but sometimes you have to do what you have to do.
2 people like this
@popciclecold (40215)
• United States
10 May 20
I am glad they knew how to use it. I never saw one like that.
3 people like this
@kobesbuddy (78833)
• East Tawas, Michigan
10 May 20
My father spoke of his mom's oven and stove, but I hadn't seen an image, until right now. Dad also talked about homemade pie packed in his school lunch, it had a hint of taste like kerosene
3 people like this
@kobesbuddy (78833)
• East Tawas, Michigan
11 May 20
@JudyEv I think kerosene was cheap, Grandma used it in their lamps, also. I'll bet those fumes were awful!
1 person likes this
@BelleStarr (61463)
• United States
10 May 20
I do wonder about bending your ear as well. In Canada when I was a child my aunt had a wood stove and certainly made some delicious food
2 people like this
@JudyEv (381815)
• Rockingham, Australia
11 May 20
It would take a lot of pots on top and had the oven as well.
@xFiacre (14784)
• Ireland
10 May 20
@judyev Our stove in Africa was a wood burning one with little doors that were opened or shut but I never knew why. No temperature guage, though I did catch the cook spitting on it from time to time to see if it was hot enough. (Yes we had a cook). Same goes for the smoothing iron. It was filled with burning charcoal then spat upon before being applied to shirts. The iron had to be hot enough to kill what we called putse flies who liked to lay their eggs in damp seams.
3 people like this
@moffittjc (128829)
• Gainesville, Florida
10 May 20
I'm glad I never had to cook on a stove like that. I would have burned every single thing I tried to cook on it! I have that problem now even with modern stoves! haha
3 people like this
@DocAndersen (54399)
• United States
10 May 20
love those old stoves, we had one in the mess hall at scout camp. I learned to cook on that!
1 person likes this
@DocAndersen (54399)
• United States
11 May 20
@JudyEv i learned to put ketchup on my eggs that summer while some of the group i was with learned to cook.
some really bad eggs. in the US we would call it Cajun-style, in the rest of the world you would just say blackened~!
1 person likes this
@JudyEv (381815)
• Rockingham, Australia
11 May 20
@DocAndersen I can just imagine some of the food at a Boy Scout camp. 
1 person likes this
@Butterfingers (66603)
• India
10 May 20
Yes it's a good use of the money received as stimulus
3 people like this
@just4him (323168)
• Green Bay, Wisconsin
11 May 20
There was one of those stoves in one of the houses my parents rented way back when I was too young to remember very much, but I remember that stove. I think it was when we lived on the farm for a couple of years. I remember my dad would take a crowbar like tool to lift the burner plate so he could insert the wood. I don't remember anything more about that stove.
Nice pictures of the stove.
1 person likes this
@JudyEv (381815)
• Rockingham, Australia
12 May 20
There were two iron circles in the top that you could take off with the tool you describe but wood was usually put in through the two front small doors - at least with these types of stoves. Saucepans were sometimes put over the holes when the iron circles were removed. Being closer to the heat source, the contents would come to the boil quicker.
1 person likes this
@dgobucks226 (37621)
•
14 May 20
Thankfully those temperature gauges today takes most of the guess work out of cooking. You could ruin a lot of meals by trial and error
1 person likes this
@arunima25 (93194)
• Bangalore, India
11 May 20
I had not seen anything like that. Thanks for sharing. I have seen mud stoves made by hand in old days here and they did it in rural areas till recent. The food cooked on charcoal or wood on them tasted really good.
1 person likes this
@arunima25 (93194)
• Bangalore, India
11 May 20
@JudyEv Other than appetite we can't rule out that it tasted better with patient and slow cooking.
1 person likes this
@LowRiderX (22901)
• Serbia
11 May 20
I saw something similar, old stoves are still used in rural parts of the country
1 person likes this
