Tropicalsenior

I was watching an expert on antique cookware and the evolution of what we call the Dutch oven was interesting. A lot of the early ones were made of or the same material that bells were made from, but bronze doesn't play well with a lot of food and can cause poisonous reactions. Cast iron didn't have these problems and was much cheaper to make. A lot of the earlier ones with legs had the legs welded on instead of being cast on the pot. He said that one good indication of age is wear on the front legs. They're usually shorter from being dragged in and out of the fire. The Dutch oven was a definitely an important part of Frontier living. For many families it was the only piece of equipment that they had so they had to use it to bake, roast, stew the food and wash the dishes.

As you said before, salt was King. Without salt there was no way to preserve meat to feed the soldiers or the ships crews. And the colonists would never have made it through the winters without some form of food preservation. If they had succeeded we would still be saying God Save the King.

The Townsends did a short video on the importance of salt in the colonies during the Revolutionary War. The British felt that if they blockaded the colonies from receiving salt that they would have to surrender.

I've never been backpacking but I have been camping and what you say is so true. A warm bath or shower is heaven compared to bathing in a cold mountain river. I've lived in seven states and three countries so I have pretty much learned to adapt to a lot of different situations. I've cooked in kitchens everything from the size of one in a closet to one so large that I had to run a mile to fix a meal. But if I really think about something that I would never give up it has to be my automatic washing machine and my dryer. I remember my mother washing with a ringer washing machine and having to heat all her water in a copper boiler on the wood range. In the winter time she would bring the clothes in from the line frozen stiff and stack them on the kitchen table until they thawed enough to fold. I've lived for short periods of time without my dryer in the last 60 years, but never again. That's one repairman I have on speed dial just in case.

I understand that. It wears me out just thinking about all the work that you do for these beautiful meals.

Yes, please! Since my eyes no longer permit me to read for very long, I've been watching a lot of YouTube and the BBC has done a marvelous job presenting several series about people that have spent an entire year living and running farms during different periods of time. They lived on a Farm during medieval times, the Tudor period, Victorian, Edwardian, and during World War II. They aren't just reenacting the period, they are actually living the lifestyle that these people would have endured. It's a fascinating series and it certainly makes you appreciate the times that we are living in.

That would be fascinating. I think that salt is probably one of the most underappreciated items in our kitchens. Some of us have problems living with it but we certainly could never live without it. Many of our expressions, like salt of the earth, come from Salt and a lot of our words, like salary, are based on salt. Thanks @Raamo.

Gorgeous bread! And happy to hear that you are baking and cooking again.

I'm not at all familiar with the Anova oven. Possibly it has a higher heat and a stronger fan. But I have a regular countertop convection oven and it can't even compare to the air fryer. The air fryer does things in half the time with a much better browning effect. I do know that they are selling a lot of smaller ovens with the air fryer feature but a friend of mine bought one a while back and said it was worthless as far as the air frying feature.

Oh good, I'm not the only one that has those.

That's exactly what I was talking about. Depending on the length of time that it would cook, they either set it on top of the fire with coals on top or they did bury it.

To be perfectly truthful, I don't know exactly what cut of beef if it was. The closest that I can figure out is that it was a rump roast with the bone in. Sometimes they roasted the whole side of beef and that definitely went on a spit in front of a roaring fire. The scullery maid got off easy on this one. It was either the pot boy or the low man on the totem pole in the kitchen that had to sit there and turn it for about 8 or 10 hours. Then some sadistic idiot invented the treadmill for a dog. They They even had a special breed of dog to turn it. It looked like a cross between a Spaniel and a dachshund and is now extinct. I can't imagine what incentive they used to keep that poor little guy running.

Not necessarily over coals but in early kitchens a very necessary tool was the cast iron Dutch oven. For more tender cuts of meat, they would put it in the pot and put it on the fire, usually with more coals heaped on the top of the oven. For the tougher cuts like they would use for pot roast they would add liquid to braise the meat so that it could cook for a much longer time. As stoves evolved, it migrated to the top of the stove or, as we do now, even into the ovens. It seems that one of the most popular ways nowadays is just to throw it in the slow cooker. It is still a pot roast.

I just went back to watching some of the Townsend's videos and the first one that came up was about the evolution of biscuits and it explains so much about the difference in at leavening agents since that time.

At least you are upright. My only experience with ice skating was a school outing where we went to a fairly big-sized pond. The idiots had set up the fire and the food on the other side of the pond. I crawled across on my hands and knees. Never went ice skating again.

I'll bet there was some really good food came out of that kitchen. My mother was a magician when it came to baking and how she did it in that unreliable oven I will never know and when she got a gas stove she had a terrible time adapting. I would have loved to have seen your German Village. Bread has been so important through the centuries. Everybody had to have it because sometimes that was all they had to eat but nobody had an oven. At the end of his day the baker would let the people bring their bread and he would bake it. Some of the modern conveniences that we take entirely for granted are our leavening agents. If you wanted to bake bread you had to beg, borrow or steal brewers yeast from the person that was making the beer. Contrary to popular belief, not everybody had a pot of sourdough brewing in the pantry. Baking powder and baking soda are like a gift from the gods. Before the 19th century they didn't have it at all or anything even similar. Cookies or biscuits were as hard as rocks and if you wanted to bake a nice fluffy cake you stood there and beat that sucker for a full hour. Or your scullery maid did it if you were lucky enough to have one.

I'm an avid history buff and I love food history. Not just the history of Escoffier and the great foods of Europe but mainly about the food that the common people ate and the trials and tribulations of finding and preparing food in the difficult times that they lived. I'm ashamed to admit that I'd never gave much thought to the food of the United States except in the context of the foods that our immigrant forefathers brought to this country. That is, until I got addicted to a YouTube series called The Townsends. Jon Townsend presents hundreds of recipes from the 18th and early 19th century and what's more he prepares them on an open hearth or over a campfire. Everything that he bakes is in a brick or a mud oven. He even gives you directions to make your own mud oven, that is if you are so inclined and have enough horse dung to make a good binding agent. The series is interesting and informative and certainly makes you appreciate the conveniences that we have today. My kitchen in Costa Rica is quite primitive compared to most of what all of you are used to in the US. But it is much better than what my mother had when I was growing up. My earliest memories were of the old wood range and the icebox. We only had running water in the summer when the pipes didn't freeze. The rest of the time we had to bring it in from a pump outside. I think a lot of that early training helped me to cope with what I learned to live with in Costa Rica. How much do you take your conveniences for granted. And how well would you cope if you were suddenly thrust back into the 18th century. If you like history and you like food I highly recommend this series. It explains a lot about the food that we eat, the preparation and a wealth of knowledge about the food terms that we use today. Right now I'm curing salt pork to use in their baked bean recipe. It looks delicious. I just have to find a good bean pot and I still have to find a horse so I can make my mud oven.

Thanks, I'm afraid it's another thing I just can't get but I'm sure that this will help other people.

Today it is pretty much the same, at least the same oven technique. But if you go back into history, into the old cookbooks of the 17th and 18th century, the meat was pretty much roasted on a spit before Hearth or a campfire. Things that were baked were baked in a brick oven. These were things such as pastries, puddings, and breads. A lot of the old recipes for ham called for it to be baked in the oven so maybe that's the reason that him is baked and beef is roasted.

What heat are you baking this at? Every time I have put parchment paper in mine, it's burned it to a crisp.

It's very easy. Just preheat and throw in the food. Clean up is also easy. Most of them it's just a matter of wiping out the grease. The basket type is harder to clean up because foods tends to stick to the wires and you almost have to use a brush. It's great for roasted vegetables but I don't care for it for things like chicken or pork. It's a little hard to judge doneness and it's easy to overcook them. It's also very good for reheating pizza or any kind of stuffed bread. I think of mine more as a gadget than of something for full meal preparation. For that you have to ask @Dejah, she does amazing things in hers.

I can only speak from my personal experience, but I have used several oils when using my fryer. You really aren't going to be cooking in oil, you would just use a small bit on the outside of the food to make it brown better. If you can make the oil into some type of spray, it works a little better. The last time that I made my fried potato wedges, I had a little Bacon fat and melted that and tossed them in about a tablespoon of that and they were delicious. I have made schnitzel in the air fryer and I drizzled them with a bit of butter and canola oil. I much preferred the ones that have been prepared in a skillet. The Taste was better and the cleanup afterwards of the air fryer wasn't worth the trouble. The thing that I like most in the air fryer is sausages and hot dogs. The skin crisps up and there is not as much moisture loss. I think it pays for itself just in the convenience and quality in cooking these.

Thank you for the thought, I really appreciate that. However, even if you were to be able to send them, I would then have to go to the Customs here and pay through the nose to get them out. I learned very quickly that the first rule I had to lay down to family and friends was don't ever send me anything. I learned very quickly to live with the basics and to substitute, substitute, substitute. As I have said before, my motto became; if you can't make, it fake it, if you can't fake it, f*** it.

How strange. After 30 years I still do that and I don't even realize that I'm doing it and I certainly don't know why I'm doing it. It just makes me squirm even more about the prices nowadays.

Costa Rica is metric also, except when they're measuring Lumber. Go figure. Even stranger, Nicaragua's measuring system is exactly like The States.