This will be the first story of a series of articles about “Old Traditions and Modern Trends.” As many of you know, old traditional items are again becoming very prominent. For instance, the wood heater, or more correctly stated, the wood burning heater, has again become a popular item. A few years back we lived in a house and had a heater in our basement living area.
I remember seeing a cartoon that had a picture of a heater made of wood with the caption, “Wood Heater – Guaranteed to Burn for Four Hours.” They do work better if they are made of metal and you burn the wood in the heater. Anyway, there is just no better way to warm on a cold winter night than to back up to a wood burning heater and, as they say at the local cafe, “toast your buns.” Ah, this is the best heat in the world.
In order to keep moisture in the house, you need an old iron kettle to set on the heater with water in it. When the heater gets too hot the kettle will boil over and you can see little beads off water skip across the top of the heater and disappear in a puff of steam.
You can also cook on the wood burning heater. We cooked a chicken on ours one Sunday morning while we were at church. It baked real well. As a matter of fact, it cooked so well that it collapsed and was lying flat in the bottom of the pan. A flat chicken looks kind of funny.
Granny sure did fuss at me, since I was the one who advised her to cook it on the heater. You can’t judge a book by its cover and you can’t judge a flat chicken by the way it looks. That flat chicken was delicious. I have, however, been a little more cautious about advising Granny how to cook. We moved and no longer have a wood burning heater.
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