When Women were Cooking Finally on Stoves

Thanks to Appalachian Coalfields spot on Facebook!  I tend to share these great collections.  But the ones I've gathered to share here are 1. in case you don't have Facebook, or 2. some comments about the cooking methods women have used through the years.

I love looking at the kitchens of yesterday.  We've come a long way...(think how many years women stooped by a fireplace to cook!)  Here are some more fun sepia photos at Sepia Saturday.

A woodburning stove offered a hot top to cook on (standing up!)

Preparing the food in a home with electricity...notice the little fan behind granny.  These kitchen dressers/pantries are such a great design to help women cooks.

Yes, that's how you got the hot water for use in the hand cranked washing barrel.  This stove had a hot water heater attached behind it, but I think it was still coal or wood fired.  Wouldn't have needed that chimney otherwise.  Not likely to have electricity but that photo has a lot of light in it, so maybe the house was wired.

Shorpy Historical Photo Archive :: Mrs. B. Bakes: 1917

A kerosene stove, (on left) according to comments on the Facebook post.

A bit more modern, with an electric stove.  Women were still canning the fruits and veggies.  And that's a pressure cooking canner, much faster, but you had to know what you were doing.  Notice the hot pads hanging by the stove...just like we used to make as children on these little looms with loops of colored materials.

Within my lifetime, many areas of the Appalachians received electricity, when the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) ran poles and wires up into the mountains...(40s and 50s).  So the old coal, kerosene and wood stoves gradually were replaced.  But many women preferred to use propane, and had tanks right outside that were filled by trucks.