open fire cooking...

thousands of years man has cooked on the open flame

thinking of that is surely humbling isn't it?  we have so many modern conveniences that sometimes we wrap ourselves up and then get caught up in that wrapping and don't remember how things "used to be" for our fellow brethren before the late 18th century

if you count wood burning ovens, then you're still not that far away

think about that for a minute

wood fired cooking was the predominate source of cooking up until about 160 years ago

that's it.......160 years is all

my grandfather is 95, so it was just 65 years before him 

(roughly speaking of course)

this is not the type of cooking for everyone, and I understand that, but doing it once and awhile is an extremely eye opening 'event'

and I mean event!

The children and Jason all heard of me reading to them aloud some passages of books like psalms or something about wood fired cooking......recipes that were found in this awesome 1970's camping/cookbook....and some much needed modern day inspiration for using foods in healthy ways.

Our oldest son is always willing to please my culinary challenges, so he went out there with me to 'start the fire' at about 5pm.....

We eat late in the summer to avoid cooking in the heat, and this area is shaded by the mature pine trees on the north side of the kitchen garden....

After a tree fell from a storm we have used the thick pieces of the trunk for our seats -  

 

by 5:45 the fire was ready

a tripod with a grill is all I have used thus far

just make sure you set it up before you start the fire, or it will make your job alot harder :)

also a point of note....wearing long skirts without a thicker apron on front to hold it down is not a smart idea....thus I would highly recommend if wearing a skirt, wear your thicker denim one, not the light airy one that could quite possibly get very very close to setting your skirt on fire.....

though this would help flame the fire, burns are nothing to joke about!

the wood was started with using pine needles and some twigs

once it got going, we added some smaller logs he had split and some left whole

another point of note.....he did all the splitting with an axe

he looked about 24 when splitting that wood

it wasn't hard because the wood was very dry and the axe sharp

this was another way for children to be a part of the cooking even back before stoves

cooking with your children doesn't always mean they are slicing the produce, but it goes back farther than that with the gardening, the preparation, the setting of the table, the hand picked posies from the gardens...

all this week I will be featuring open fire cooking and different techniques

all by trial and error...

xo+fired up blessings,