Blast From My Past...Woodstove Baked Potatoes

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We truly appreciate our simple life...and by simple we don't mean 'easy' we mean 'uncomplicated'. In a sense that's why people love camping, or 'roughing it', because of the simplicity of it. Nobody cares if you wash your dishes the old fashioned way (by hand:-) instead of a dishwasher. Nobody cares if there is a little sand tracked in the floor of the tent or camper, that comes with the territory and you just sweep it up. Nobody cares if you wear the same shirt or skirt several days in a row, that's simply what you do when you're not worried about what everyone else thinks. Nobody cares if you just wing your meals over a fire and eat whatever you have without making a big fuss. That's simplicity and is what we appreciate in our lives.

Since we heat with wood, cooking with the woodstove is just the normal thing to do and it doesn't get much more simple than wrapping up a potato and putting it in the woodstove to cook. It's a simple, unconventional way of cooking that goes right along with the simplicity of 'roughing it'.

All you do is prepare a potato as you normally would for baking...wash, dry, poke holes and in this case, wrap in foil. (No we are not big advocates of aluminum foil but we pick our battles.)  Put it away from the fire in the corner of the woodstove and let it sit in the heat for an hour and then check every 15 minutes...



...until it's done.
Big enough for two meals!


This potato was not grown by us, we found them being sold from a local potato farm 50 lbs for $9. Our potatoes were hit pretty bad by the potato bugs this year so we wanted to supplement our supply. Potatoes are a main staple for us in the winter because they store well. Sweet potatoes are our favorite but you don't find them growing around our area. 

Baked potatoes are so versatile other than mashed and fried, you can also use them to make a soup more hearty, put in stews, add to scrambled eggs, mix in with almost any hot dish or casserole, make potato pancakes and by making extra to have on hand, you can have a quick lunch or dinner by just warming them up and putting some vegetables or gravy over them.

Potatoes have gotten a bad wrap (other than aluminum foil:-) in that they are empty starches but God, who created the heavens and the earth and all things in it, called it all good. Potatoes are a powerhouse of nutrition, very inexpensive, hearty and filling as well as a wonderful food to share with others.

If you don't have a wood stove then keep in mind whenever you are going to turn on your oven, toss in some potatoes (they don't have to be wrapped in anything either) to cook alongside whatever you are baking. If your meal gets done before the potatoes are finished cooking (an average of about an hour) just turn off the oven and leave them in there until they are done as the oven will still be warm enough to keep them cooking.

Each little thing you do to save time or save energy on cooking will in turn make you more efficient and save money. The small things add up and in the long run you will reap big rewards!

Have a joyful day and God be praised!

 Love in Christ,
Sister Deb
The biblical gospel...