Cooking with WOOD!

Well, it's official, the old propane range is in rather poor shape.  We can use the burners, but the oven is out of commission.  So...we are either going to need to use the toaster or the wood stove. 

The wood stove is more fun.  I made the cornbread in the dutch oven.  Learned I had to shut off the blower on the stove, but after that, it cooked up nice.  Absolutely perfect consistancy and crust.  I am going to try some more things over the coming weekend and this time, try to remember to take pics.  I would suggest anyone with a stove try this, it's neat-although odd to see a pot in the living room!  Cast iron is the way to go, it's so even and consistant.  We used the frying pan to make eggs and bacon, and they warmed up nice and were non-stick-more so than our stainless pans.  Plus the bacon helped season the cookware too!

Uh, about that china cabinet...

It's a project in progress for now.  In otherwords, I got side tracked!  It's cleaned up and sitting in the living room, waiting for me to get the time to mess with it.  For now, it's fine as it is-perfectly shabby and cottage chic! 

I got distracted by our wood stove.  We went to Tractor Supply on Black Friday for a couple of new jackets, and I saw cast iron cookware on sale.  It got me pondering....could we just use our stove to cook on instead of the range?  Well, we might just  be doing that!  We picked up skillets, a dutch oven and deep pan and I'm fixing to give it a shot.  Especially after checking our propane tank and seeing it had dropped 10% in a week or so!!  It seems our kitchen range may be on the way out, since we don't use the propane for heat.  We're watching to see if it is just the oven or the range in general.  In the mean time, I'm "cooking up" some recipe ideas for the stove, including chicken soup in the dutch oven.  Lopi has a recipe on their site for frying pan corn bread, I might even try it tonight!

Here's the cabinet as it sits: