Thinking and eating outside the box

Here's a post about one of my favorite things, Eating! Like every red blooded American male I love cooking on the barbeque. Well we just gave away our grill. We found a better way. Actually I should give Pelenaka her due and tell you it was her discovery. Several years ago my darling wife decided the frugal thing to do was to can our food on a wood stove. So, we went shopping and found an old laundry stove in the weeds out behind a antique shop. Spent a bit over $100.00 to get it. We (well mostly she) have used it for three years now for food preservation and it does an excellent job. It also runs for almost free, something that can't be said for our vintage electric stove. A trip around the nieghborhood with a wagon after a wind storm yields plenty of free firewood. Maple mostly, with the occasional piece of walnut, oak or cherry thrown in. Well here is the big discovery. Maple and cherry twigs and sticks beat briquets or lump charcoal all day long. For one thing they are free rather than costing $5.00 for a 10 pound bag. Second they don't require expensive starter either. A strip of brown paper bag or news paper is all it takes. One of those square black grills with the round holes meant for veggies or seafood replaces the wire grill. Pictured above is yours truly roasting hot dogs and goat chops. The goat was the last of a young buck purchased from a friend last spring for $40.00. It lasted so long because I'm the only one that will eat it. The girls had hots and burgers. The jar in the background with the red lid is my home made hot/barbeque sauce. The sauce might just become a source of income. I took a bottle to work and stuck it in the fridge. I had it once. Today one of my coworkers asked when I was bringing in more. The bottle was in the fridge almost empty. The store bought equivilent cost almost four bucks for a ten ounce bottle. It costs me three to make half a gallon of it. Maybe I'll start charging my coworkers for hot sauce. You may recognize that bit of white to my right under the tarp in the picture, as a old fashioned claw foot tub. Yup! You guessed it. In the summer when the girls go to Texas to visit dad, we turn off the hot water heater and bathe behind a screen in the back yard. We just use the old stove for what it was designed to do, heating water. Sure beats having a gas bill! Last month our expensive new fangled front load washing machine broke. I have a strange feeling one of these days, I'm going to come home and find my wife boiling the clothes on top of this stove. Imagine that! Woods