Hot stoves

Warning: I sorta went nuts with the scanner on this one. But I couldn't help it. There was just too much good stuff to choose from. A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove by Laura Schenone (641.50973 Sch274) is a "history of American women told through food, recipes, and remembrances." I discovered that the idea of "stove" can mean many things.

Here's a photo of Navaho women making fry bread in 1956:



Slaves brought technical knowledge and skills from West Africa to the rice-growing regions of Georgia and South Carolina. Here's a photo of women pounding rice in Georgia during the 1920s:



Looks like incredibly hard work.

Drying food is another form of "stoving." This photo is of a woman placing seaweed on a rack to dry, sometime between 1890 and 1923:



Finally, technology comes to the rescue in this picture of an electric kitchen in 1896. Notice that each appliance has a burner with its own electrical plug.