Illustrated guide to the wood stove and it’s accoutrements.

What I love about wood cookstoves is the large flat cooking surface with variable surface temperatures. Something that needs high immediate heat is positioned over the firebox but the pasta now boiling can get slid to the right onto a slightly cooler surface over the oven. The closer I slide it toward the side reservoir, the cooler the stovetop surface. Sometimes if I am canning and my canner is taking its sweet time to get up temperature, I will pull out the eye of the stovetop and put the canner directly on open flame.

The decision to put in a cook stove was actually not made quite so lightly. We try to minimize our use of fossil fuels if alternative energy sources can be found. For many energy uses, alternatives are readily available, but cooking is a tough issue. However, we all need to cook, and many of our foods don’t have the same nutrition if they aren’t cooked. Many are certainly less palatable. Solar ovens work well under the right temperature and culinary conditions, but early morning is not the right time or place to make granola in one. Solar electricity may be an option, but resistance heating eats up precious solar-produced watts faster than anything.