The following is part of the chapter. The whole chapter can be seen on the Iowa History Site. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ STORIES OF IOWA FOR BOYS AND GIRLS CHAPTER XXV AROUND THE FIREPLACE You have read how the pioneers came to Iowa with their ox teams, and how they built their houses. But people could not live in an empty house. They had to have a stove or a fireplace where they could cook their food. Then they needed a table and chairs so that they could eat their meals, and they wanted beds in which to sleep at night. If there were trees near-by, the pioneer cabin often had a fireplace. Around this the father and mother and the boys and girls gathered to keep warm in the winter. Here the mother also cooked the food. She could bake bread by putting the loaves in a covered pan and piling hot coals all over them. Often these pioneers did not have wheat flour. They had to eat corn bread or corn "dodger." This could be baked in a skillet or frying pan held over the fire, or it could be laid upon a "johnny-cake board," tilted toward the fire, and left to bake in the heat. Meat might be fried in the skillet. Large pieced of pork or venison or venison or turkey were often hung before the fire on a twisted string. As the string unwound, the meat turned and was browned on all sides. Sometimes, of course, the string was burned or broke and the meat fell in the ashes. A pan, usually called the dripping pan, was placed under the roasting meat to catch the fat and meat juices. Upsetting this pan meant getting the "fat in the fire." Meat and vegetables might be cooked in an iron pot hung over the coals. If the cabin were on the prairie where there were no trees, a stove has to be used instead of the fireplace. This was easier to cook with, but it was hard to get wood to burn. Often the mother had to burn the wild hay. This was twisted up into a long hard roll and pushed into the stove as it burned off at the end. Sometimes ears of corn were burned in the stove, for corn could not be taken to market and the pioneers had no money to buy coal. Debbie Clough Gerischer