Before Thanksgiving, one of the stove eyes on our glass range cracked. I had to make do with three burners through the holidays.
The whole experience made me wish we had a gas range. Mamaw and Papaw had one in their kitchen when I was growing up.
As a little girl, I lit a sparkler on the gas cooktop. I got scared when it caught fire and dropped it in the trashcan. The trash went up in flames. Papaw came running and tossed the can out into the creek.
The fire left soot on the side of the oven. It wiped right off with a little soapy water.
Years later, as Mamaw canned hamburger soup, her pressure cooker exploded. The lid hit the kitchen ceiling so hard that it left a dent. The dent is still there.
Somehow, the range survived. It was like a Timex – it could take a licking and keep on ticking.
I looked into putting a gas stove in our house to replace the broken range, but it would have cost us an arm and a leg. Not only would we need to buy a new range, but we’d have to run gas lines to the house, too.
Instead, we settled for another electric glass top. It has a built-in air fryer and five stove eyes.
When I told the girls about the new stove, they looked confused.
Eyes? What do you mean, eyes?
I reckon I don’t use the term enough. I picked it up from my grandparents.
In old wood stoves, that’s what the burners looked like. They were circular holes in the cast iron oven. The fire within looked like a pupil in the center.
I still call them eyes, sometimes. What do you call them? Is it a burner or an eye?
Eye, as long as I can remember. I bought a glass top for Glenda like yours. It has 2 ovens with convection in 1. Gas stoves are great, instant heat to your pan or pot. My favorite is still my grandparents wood cook stove, it was a Warm Morning brand with a water heater and warming box. I can still taste the cornbread and biscuits from that oven.
I looked at the ones with double ovens. I seriously considered getting one – it would make Thanksgiving so much easier. But I’ve been wanting an air fryer and I like that I don’t need to buy a whole new appliance. And that sounds delicious! I never had the pleasure of eating food prepared on an old wood cook stove.
I relate to the burners in old wood stoves. I split the wood and stoked the fire that kept my Grandmother’s stoves burning. A strange story of looking into the pupil of an eye in a roaring fire within an iron stove is revealed in the poem, “The Cremation of Sam McGee” penned Robert W. Service. Sam McGee was from Tennessee where the cotton blooms and blows. He froze to death in Alaska, but before doing so, he asked his friend to cremate his remains because he could not tolerate the cold. In doing so, his friend opened the door of the stove and saw Sam McGee. He sat “in the heart of the furnace roar; and he wore a smile you could see a mile.”
Both sets of my grandparents had wood stoves for heat. It’s something I miss. I never had the pleasure of experiencing a cooking wood stove, though. 😉
Stove eyes for me too : ) I love that folks still use the old term. I’d love to have a wood cookstove, well I would love it until summer arrived : )
Same! I can’t imagine having to use one during the heat of summer – especially in Eastern NC. lol