Thursday, September 26, 2013
It begins
Welcome folks, The first post! I don't really know how to start.This is about old school food. The way it used to be. There is something special about food made the old fashioned way. It just tastes better. A propane grill or even a charcoal grill can't compare to an open fire and cast iron cookware meal. Nor can it compare to bread baked in an antique wood fired kitchen stove. I already have an outdoor wood cooking site on our property, but have yet to buy a wood fired stove for the kitchen. So the first steps in this instructional blog is going to be finding, buying and installing an antiques wood fired cook stove. So far I have looked at 2 stoves, a Kalamazoo Prince and a Home Comfort. The Kalamazoo had a huge crack in the front of the stove so that the oven door would not close. The Home Comfort was in nice shape, but was missing some key parts. If I can find a source for the parts, I am going to try and buy the Home Comfort stove and do the repair work myself.
This is a Kalamazoo Prince stove. A very nice model and pretty easy to find.
This is the Home Comfort model. I prefer this model to the Kalamazoo.
Both were made in the 1920s or 1930s and both are enameled models. Both have warming ovens and both can burn wood or coal. Either one would work well, but for some reason I like the Home Comfort one better.
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I was going to reply to you on my blog, but I thought I might as well just comment on yours!
ReplyDeleteIt is great to see the pics above. Both stoves look good, but I think you've made a wise choice. I remember someone telling me that the Home Comfort ranges are definitely a hardier brand of stove than the Kalamazoo because the Home Comfort ranges were made with malleable iron. At any rate, congratulations! You are entering a brave new world, but it will have many rewards.
Thanks Jim! I am looking forward to getting things going. I am putting it on the other side of my kitchen as that is the only place it will fit in my home. It should also help with the winter oil heat bill and I may try coal as well since it is $275.00 a ton here.
DeleteDo you mind telling what area of the country you live in? I'm interested because you mentioned burning coal. Coal is unavailable in our area of Iowa, but I have had two opportunities to experience burning it back when I was using the Qualified range.
DeleteThe first time I tried it, I bought just a few pounds of it from a dealer on Apple Creek, Ohio, when I had gone out to visit Lehman Hardware. I don't know for sure what kind of coal it was, but I think that it was soft coal. It made a terrible mess inside the cookstove, with its soot forming things that looked like thick black cobwebs. I had to take the stove apart and give it a thorough cleaning afterwards and swore off ever trying coal again.
Three years ago, however, my wife's grandparents broke up housekeeping and I was given the chance to salvage whatever coal I could find that was still left in the fuel bin in their old wash house. The coal had been there for at least fifty years. I brought it home, spread it out on the sidewalk to dry in the sun, and then burned it, and I have to admit that I really liked it. It burned hot and clean, so I assume that it was hard coal. I don't like the smell of coal smoke at all, but I can see real advantages in it. Furthermore, there are some stretches of land in the Midwest where there simply aren't enough trees for the residents there to be able to be very serious about burning wood, in my opinion.
When I was in college at Iowa State University in Ames, you could buy coal there at the time, and the fellow told me that his biggest market was with people who used it in their wood stoves to hold the fire overnight. The Amish down in Redding also burn it some, but one lady told me that they assumed that burning coal in their Gem Pac cookstove was the reason that they had had so much trouble with their grate. Therefore, I have no desire to try it in the Margin Gem, but I'm looking forward to hearing about how well it works for you.
Jim,
ReplyDeleteI am in Southern NH and found an ad on craigslist.
Here is the link.
http://nh.craigslist.org/bfs/4050532351.html
They claim it is top shelf stuff so I plan on getting a bag and trying it out and if it is good, I'll load up the truck with it.