Wednesday, April 27, 2005
I just walked out of my Food History seminar tonight with a new appreciation for the fact that not so long ago we women were still hunched over the floor and cooking over an open fire.
Did you know that America was the last industrialized nation to accept the new invention that became the stove?
Religious men far and wide in America railed at the pulpit against allowing the family to retrofit their hearth to have a coal (or wood based) stove thus elevating women from the back breaking drudgery of cooking at the open hearth and allowing them to work upright something we had all done from primal animals thousands of years before. These deacons, priests, ministers and men of the cloth considered the stove to be evil, or the devils work. They rallied and cried that if women had a range in the house or a stove they would suddenly have free time thus leading them straight to the path of hell.
Free time!
A sin!
Imagine all the free time these women would have after raising the children, running the family household, doing the laundry by hand with lye soap, preserving the harvest, sewing the family clothes by hand, obtaining enough water to cook and clean and cooking all of the family's food.
These women might save..oh say...an hour or two from being a slave to stoking the fires.
With this new invention they might no longer have to reach into an open hearth and swing the crane arm around to bring the pot of stew closer to them while adding more wood and tending the flames underneath. They might not have to burn wood for over two hours in the beehive oven in order to reach temperatures hot enough to bake the families bread. Their petticoats might not ignite into human torches by the sparks of the open fire.
The next time fair readers think of these women and how this freedom came not so long ago as you stand over your cooktop and stir your pot of soup.
We've come a long way baby indeed.
Posted by
Bakerina at 10:42 PM in
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Dear Bakerina: I heard somewhere that it’s especially nice to drop a cardamom pod into a cup of tea. Intrigued, I bought some cardamom (almost 40 and I’ve never bought cardamom?) and steeped a pod in my tea. Tonight as I sipped my tea, I googled cardamom+pod+tea and your site came up. What a treat. I wish you lived in Chicago so I could buy your bread...if it’s nearly as enjoyable as your writing… Thanks for giving me something really nice with which to enjoy my tea and cardamom.
Wow, interesting stuff! And, I won’t go into a rant about organized religion and women. Well, except to say, you have to wonder what these preachers’ wives thought.
mmmmm. i’ve sharpened my stick. who’s got the marshmallows?
Back in the kitchen, woman!
Yeeks. That sounds so weird. It is surprising it took so long for the equal rights ammendment to come around.
Those guys were basically idiots, not seeing the value of women having free time to contribute to life in so many wonderful ways.
Yep. Progress is great. I’m so glad that all this progress triggered by the industrial and post-industrial revolution haven’t, say, led to a doubling of the rates of depression in, say, just the last 50 years.
People were miserable before and everything is better now that we have all this free time.
While I can’t knock the advantages you point out for stoves, I can safely say that the microwave has offered not one iota of net improvement in my family’s life and it has lowered the overall quality of food for millions. Microwave mac&cheese, or popcorn or… .
What equal rights amendment? That fell apart long ago, my dears. Twas never ratified.
Maybe I’d be less depressed if I hunched over fire. I’ll have to try that. Oh, that’s right. I have no fireplace. Maybe that’s why I’m depressed.
Perhaps an additional reason people were so opposed to the stove is that it removed the hearth from the home. (Now, of course, we have TV, which serves a similar purpose.)
Indeed, more time for the women to get into the kitchen and make me a pie. Oh to be young and watch South Park.
I am all for women in the workplace. When a woman can bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan, it gives time to the guys to goof off and play playstation 2. 
(Gosh that is SO sexist. Man, I’ll pay for that one.)
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Dear Bakerina: I heard somewhere that it’s especially nice to drop a cardamom pod into a cup of tea. Intrigued, I bought some cardamom (almost 40 and I’ve never bought cardamom?) and steeped a pod in my tea. Tonight as I sipped my tea, I googled cardamom+pod+tea and your site came up. What a treat. I wish you lived in Chicago so I could buy your bread...if it’s nearly as enjoyable as your writing… Thanks for giving me something really nice with which to enjoy my tea and cardamom.