Old time Kitchens

[Teresa]

I love to cook and I have always said that It doesn't matter iwhere it would be, I would still love to cook.

I would like to try my hand at working in this kitchen. I bet it would make me really appreciate the room and the conveniences of modern day kitchens.

When looking at pictures, I hope that everyone knows to click on the picture so it will enlarge to its original size.

[genealogynut]

I used to love to cook, too, but it was cleaning up the mess that I hated.  I am fortunate enough to have a dishwasher.

Can you just imagine trying to cook in a kitchen without any air conditioning, no electricity at all, wearing long-sleeves, and a full-length dress with high top boots in the middle of summer, slaving a way trying to can some vegetables? Don's grandmothers went through that era.   I always wondered how those women kept from having a heat stroke.  Maybe they did!!!!  Who knows? 

I know in those cook stoves they used corn cobs, wood or maybe coal for fuel.  Before the cook stoves can along, the women used to have to cook in open fireplaces, which meant almost everything was thrown together in one pot.

I count my blessings every day.

[MarineMom]

When I was a young mother back in England I lived in a house that still had a coal burning cookstove in it (there was also an electric stove) I used to cook on the coal stove in the winter months it made excellent stews and casseroles, was wonderful for rising bread dough, kept the house nice and warm and kept us in hot water. I really enjoyed it but only in the winter.

[Jo McDonald]

What wonderful pictures.....more memories for me.  I always remember the stove that Mama cooked on -- it had the greatest water reservoir....and in the winter time that warm water to wash cold hands and faces in was GREAT.  We had a lot of chores to do, of course, since we lived on a farm.  Horses to feed hay and grain to, cows to bring in from the pasture, put in the milk barm, in their assigned stanctions, feed them grain and milk them.  Then carry the milk to the house, run it through a cream seperator, take the milk out in buckets and feed it to the pigs, calves, dogs and cats.  My brother Jack and I had the job of feeding the bucket calves, and when they were weaned from their Mothers' we had to teach them to drink from a bucket.  You would put your hand down in the milk, push the calves' head down in the bucket and stick your finger in the calf's mouth so he could suck and think it was his Mother's teat.  Lordy, when they decided to butt their head against the bucket, like you see little calves butt their Mother when they are feeding, the darn bucket would hit me in the shin, and hurt like the very dickens, but you couldn't stop until they had drank all of the milk.  Hot weather, cold weather, rain or shine, the chores had to be done, twice a day.  I LOVED THE FARM LIFE, and my sister absolutely hated it.  Bless her heart, she would offer to do anything at all in the house, to get out of feeding the live stock.  We all milked the cows..Daddy, Mama, Jack, Helen and I.  We milked 20 cows by hand twice a day, and there were no days off---NEVER!!  If I told all of my good memories about growing up, I would be sitting here for the next month, typing away.
  Life was good to me - and still is.

[Teresa]

Thanks for sharing mama..
I always loved to sit and listen to all of you when you would get together and recount old times..and I don't think that has changed.
I caught myself reading with a grin clear across my face..and with rapt attention.

[Janet Harrington]

That's the only time that you paid rapt attention to your mama.

[Teresa]

I am going to "rapt" you right in the kisser..

[Janet Harrington]

Mama and Mama Jo, 

Teresa is being mean to me.

[Wilma]

Shame on you, Teresa.  Janet, what did you do to her?

[Janet Harrington]

I just told her that this was the only time she ever paid rapt attention to her mama and she said she was going to "rapt" me in the kisser.  Waa Waa