Cooking with gas? Old-fashioned wood stoves once made meals a sweaty chore
I couldn’t stand the heat and wanted out of the kitchen.
It was August 1989, and Telegram-Tribune reporter Dorie Bentley and I were sweating over a food story about tomatoes because Ingrid Hilton cooked on a wood stove.
The experience gave me a newfound respect for a previous generation who canned food through the hottest months of the year as fruit ripened.
Ironing back then would have been worse. Keeping irons on the fire, hot enough to remove wrinkles and watching for soot on the iron. A streak of carbon could ruin a freshly washed garment.
The phrase, “Now you’re cooking with gas,” took on a new relevance after standing next to that hot stove.
In the 1960s, a war had been raging for about six decades — the war between electric and gas.
Weekly newspaper ads ran in the Telegram-Tribune touting the all-electric house or the advantages of gas appliances. Advertising promoted a series of labor-saving devices, including electric washers and gas stoves.
Gas and electric dryers replaced the solar clothes dryers that often were strung across backyards.
In 2019, San Luis Obispo’s City Council passed a new energy policy that paves the way for all-electric new buildings. In response, a representative of a utility workers union threatened the city with a massive protest.
Gas companies have had a run of self-inflicted disasters in recent years.
Eight people were killed in San Bruno when a PG&E 30-inch gas main ruptured in 2010.
Southern California Gas Co. was responsible for the largest gas leak in U.S. history in 2015, when a storage well spewed methane into the air for 118 days. Porter Ranch residents — 8,000 families in all — left to avoid the smell and potential health problems.
Many people like to cook with gas flames, rather than electric coils.
But few folks like propane refrigerators — and nobody uses gas blankets, only electric ones.
If I have to choose between an electric stove or wood stove, I’ll take electric.
I excerpted the following story by Dorie Bentley, published on Aug. 30, 1989, to focus on the references to cooking on the wood stove.
Ingrid Hilton says it with preservation
Food preservation is done a little differently at Ingrid Hilton’s rural Los Berros home.
Lifting the stove lid, Hilton stirred the fire with a poker, then adjusted the damper on the huge old-fashioned wood stove.
“I cook meals, bake bread, cookies and cakes, and do all my canning on the stove,” said Hilton. “Once you’re used to it, it’s no different than any other stove.” It’s also the home’s only source of heat.
“There’s lots of ways to adjust temperatures,” she said. Dampers let the heat rise. Closed the heat circulates.
“This is a water reservoir, which helps maintain even temperatures” she said, lifting a lid on one side of the huge stove.
Pots and utensils of earlier days line the ceiling and walls of the rustic home. “Everything I have, I use,” said Hilton.
Canning and cooking, said Hilton, has always been a family project. “It’s just a lot of fun.”
