The pace of my winter kitchen is so very different than that of the summer or early fall one. In summer and fall there’s a constant busy hum as food is brought in from the garden and processed in some way before being stored for these winter months. The winter kitchen by contrast is one of slow, warming, deliberateness.
Bone broths and soups are slowly simmered all day on the regular kitchen stove or when a fire is required to keep the house warm all day, on the wood stove. (Ignore the mess, wood stoves are dirty I’ve come to embrace it.) We’re hoping to finish the rock work around the wood stove today so there won’t be any fires until the work is done. The house will still need some heat, however; so I’ll be using the electric oven to render some pork fat into lard.
The kitchen serves triple duty around here it seems – it serves as a way to provide literal heat into the home while also fueling our bodies with nutritious food and finally as serving as a hub of home, a hub that quite literally feeds our souls.
How are you using your kitchen these days?
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I love your wood stove “mess”! Looks very homey. My winter kitchen is more like your summer kitchen as I am bringing home goodies from the CSA where I volunteer in Homestead FL. Tomato season is just starting in south Florida.
I canned heirloom tomatos last week and the week before that, bread ‘n butter pickles. This is my first season canning so we’ll see how they turn out later.