Before is part of Chapter 2 from: Grandmother Brown's Hundred Years. The whole chapter is on the Iowa History Site. This is a very long chapter. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "After periods at the Brice House or in Logan or Somerset, we were always glad to get back to our own father's dear old home. Nowhere else did we have the same conveniences. We did most of our work there in the summer kitchen. That was where we had the big brick oven. We used to fire it twice a week and do a sight o' baking all at once. We'd make a hot fire in the oven, and then, when, the bricks were thoroughly heated, we'd scrape out all the coals with a big iron scraper, dump the coals into the fireplace, and shove in the roasts and fowls, the pies and bread. At other times we'd use the open fireplace. It wasn't nearly so difficult to work by as people think. When we went to keeping house in 1845, Dan'l and I, he bought me a little iron stove, a new thing in those days. It was so good, and would only bake things on one side. I soon went back to cooking at an open fireplace. "You know the look of andirons, crane, spit, reflectors. Our heavy iron vessels were swung from chains. When we wanted to lift the iron lids off, we'd have to reach in with a hook and swing them off. They had a flange around the edge. Many of our dishes were baked in Dutch ovens on the hearth. We used to bake Indian pone - that is, bread made of rye and corn meal - that way. We would set it off in a corner of the hearth covered with coals and ashes, and there it would bake slowly all night long. In the morning the crust would be thick but soft - oh so good. "For roasting meat we had reflectors. Some joints we roasted in our big iron kettles with a bit of water. And others we put on three-legged gridirons which could be turned. These had a little fluted place for the gravy to run down. Chickens we could split down the back and lay on the gridiron with a plate and flatirons on top to hold them down. Oh, how different, how different, is everything now, encumbered with conveniences! Debbie Clough Gerischer Iowa Gen Web, Assistant CC, Scott County http://www.celticcousins.net/scott/ IAGENWEB: Special History Project: http://iagenweb.org/history/index.htm Gerischer Family Web Site: http://gerischer.rootsweb.com/