Staying Warm

My parents' house was heated solely with a wood burning fireplace when I was a child. I have many memories of coming inside on a cold winter day and standing in front of the fire to warm myself. We'd hang our wet socks and gloves all around the fireplace to dry before we went out again. There was nothing that could warm you when you were chilled to the bone, like standing in front of that crackling fire.

However, there were drawbacks to this method of heating. The further one was from the heat source, the colder the environment. On very cold winter nights, we would close off our bedrooms and sleep around the fireplace in the living room. One particularly cold winter, we hung a blanket over the entrance to our hallway in addition to closing all the doors and the family lived in the front portion of our home.

When I was in High School, they added a wood burning furnace. This allowed them to utilize wood as a fuel source and have the heat piped to each room of the house. Brilliant!

Though I live on the same land where I was raised, I'm in a different house. We are fortunate that we live on a fairly large plot of forested land. Trees are abundant. It only makes sense to utilize the fuel we have available in abundance. We prefer to harvest standing dead timbers. The live trees we cut are usually selected to improve the health of our forest. Overgrowth is not healthy. This is one of the many things my dad taught us about forestry management.

I chose not to utilize wood as my only fuel source for heat. Between the extra dust, ash, wood chips and having to cut, haul, split wood... I wanted something a bit more convenient. But, I also wanted to be practical. We have a wood burning stove in our living room in addition to an electric heat pump. We burn a fire on the really cold days and nights to reduce the efforts of our heat pump and reduce our electric bill. And, it's still really nice to come in from the cold and stand next to the fire to warm up. Oh, and if the power goes out (as it does when the ice is bad) we still have heat!

One winter we had ice so bad that we were isolated for 2 weeks. Our power was out for 5 days, we ran out of propane (our cooking fuel source) and the pipes froze. I became resourceful and recalled experiences from my youth. The wood stove became not only our source of heat, but also water and food. We are fortunate to have a creek in our backyard. Buckets of icy water were heated on the stove for sponge baths, brushing teeth, and cooking. Toilets were flushed with snow and ice melted down in pots on the stove. Stews were made on the stove. Potatoes were roasted among the coals. I'd forgotten how good potatoes roasted in the coals could taste.

Since I was reminded, I now bake my potatoes among the coals on cold days. Baking potatoes in the oven takes a long time (an hour or so) and uses a lot of fuel. If a fire is already burning, it is simple to toss the taters in the ashes and let them roast.

I decided to do this yesterday. On my pantry prowl the other day, I noticed we had about a dozen sweet potatoes that were about to go bad. What does one do with so many sweet potatoes? Roast them! And then, use some for pie, some for bread, some to eat warm with butter.

That's what I did. I washed the taters, coated them in shortening, wrapped them in heavy duty aluminum foil and tossed them in the ashes of the fire. The taters that already had bad spots and would not roast well (about 4 of them) were peeled, the bad spots cut out, chopped and boiled. Now, boiling sweet potatoes is my least favorite method of preparation. They just don't have as much flavor. But, rather than waste them, I could boil them, mash them and use them in bread.

Roasted sweet potatoes have an incredible flavor. Slow roasting them among the ashes helps the sugars to carmelize and the flavors to reach their peak. I love to eat them warm with just a pat of butter. But, having so many, I decided to make sweet potato pie with those leftover after supper.

Today, I'll be baking in the kitchen!