Kitchens...Then and Now

One of my favorite places to place a scene is the kitchen. There's just something about the kitchen that makes the scene more...homey to me. I sit at my computer, lost in a world only I can see, and I mentally stand at the door and 'look' at the room. I turn a slow circle. Take in the scarred wooden table, made of slats of solid wood not plywood or other man made materials like today's tables are made of. I explore the wood burning cook stove, count the doors, open the warmer above the burners, check to see if it has a reservoir for warming water. I note whether or not there's a rag rug on the floor and what color it is, what kind of curtains hang on the windows and where they're placed in the room. The cast iron pots and pans grab my attention from where they sit on the dry sink.

Then I mentally step inside and smell the apple pie baking in the oven, the smoke in the air from the cook stove, feel the heat of the fire needed to do the baking.

When I come back to the present I take a good look at my kitchen. The white refrigerator that often holds so much food it threatens to overflow. The bar that is used for everything from rolling out dough to eating on. And holding a collection of junk that always seems to find its way there. I see the stove that needs no wood to get it going, the one I need only turn a knob to set the temperature. The dishes and gadgets that make my life easier. And the cast iron pots and pans.

They seem to be about the only thing that has survived the passage of time. The only things that lived in kitchens then and now. Those black pots that can take a beating and still survive have stood the test of time and many of them have been used in those wood burning stoves and our modern ones.

As I place my cast iron skillet on the burner I am reminded that my grandmother fed her family from this very pan, that her mother had one just like it. That most likely my great grandmother and great great grandmother did too.

And I make sure my heroine cooks in the exact same skillet.