My Grandma cooked on a wood stove kitchen range. Her stove was far bigger than anything you see in museums or in catalogs today. It was six feet long, White porceline covered the front and back area above the cook top, and both sides as well as the back. On the left side was the fire box, with an ash hopper below. The oven was next to the fire box in the center of the stove, and to the right of the oven was the water reservoir, it held about five gallons. The cook top stretched the full width of the stove, and had large and small round removable plates. Grandma had some kettles and skillets that would fit into the openings made when a plate was removed. Above the stove was a large warming oven, about two and a half feet wide, and eighteen inches tall, with a big door that opened from left to right.
During the winter this stove was the center piece of life around her house. It not only cooked, it kept the kitchen, dinning room, back bedroom, and upstairs, warm. From the time I was a little boy, I would sit on the wood box, four feet long, two and a half feet high, and two feet front to back. There, I was out of the way, and close enough to the stove to feel the warmth.
For breakfast Grandma would have my Mom make the biscuit dough. Mom would sift out a mound of flour on the side board. Using her hand she would make a small depression in the middle of the mound of flour. She then took a jug of homemade buttermilk, and pour a small amount in the center of the flour. She then used her hands to mix the flour and buttermilk. Eventually she would have a batch of dough she would work, mashing and rolling it with her hands, till she liked the consistancy. Then she would powder the sideboard and roll out the dough with a rolling pin. She then used a cutter, made from a tin can, and cut the biscuits out of the rolled dough. Then she would line the biscuits up in a baking pan. She would fill three baking pans with biscuits. She would put one pan in the oven at that time. As those baked, she would add the other pans, so their times for being done would be staggered.
Meanwhile my Grandma would remove the plates over the firebox and replace them with a griddle, or large skillet. She would then start the bacon or sausage and sliced potatoes, frying. Grandma would open a large jar of homemade cream style corn, or in later years two cans of cream style corn. She would heat the corn on the back of the stove where it was not so hot. As the biscuits neared being done she would start the eggs. She would cook the eggs sunny side up, with runny yolks for my Grandpa, and anyone else that liked them that way. The rest she would scramble. She always cooked at least a dozen. When the bacon or sausage was done she used the dripping in the pan to make either red eye gravy, or thickening gravy as she called it. Her thickening gravy would have flour stirred into it to make it thicken up.
When everything was done she would call everyone to the table. We would move to the dinning room table and all find a seat. Someone would say grace then before anything was brought out of the kitchen. Then here came the food.
The biscuits would be so hot you could hardly hold them. And as the first batch was taken from the large plate a fresh batch of hot ones would be added.
When the meal was more or less done, my Grandpa would take out a big jar of Clover Bottom brand corn syrup. He would pour out a big dolup on his plate, then pour some onto my plate. (I always sat beside my Grandpa). Then we would take a big slab of home made butter and work it into that syrup. Once it was blended well, we would take a hot biscuit and break it open. Using the biscuits we would sop up all that syrup and butter. It usually took two or three biscuits apiece.
After the meal, Grandma would take the left overs and place them onto smaller plates. These were all placed on the table in the corner of the kitchen, and covered with a clean table cloth. By mid morning when we got hungry, we always knew where to go for a snack. Those cold biscuits and bacon or sausages were great. What was not eaten then, became part of the next meal.
Ya know, that food was never refrigerated. It just sat out there in the kitchen at room temperature for hours, then we ate it. No one ever got sick, or had any kind of problem eating it. Maybe growing up and eating like that helped me later in life when I went to the middle east. I was the only one in my shop, that never got sick from eating on the local economy over there.
