Reply #14: Another oven story [View All]

[eleny]

When I was in high school back in NYC, I had a friend who is Yugoslavian. Some of the aunts and uncles built houses in upstate NY. All the family would help in the construction. First, they would build a tiny cabin on the property so they could stay there while working on the new house on weekends.

My friend, her cousin and I once went up there for a weekend. The tiny, one room cabin had to have electricity and perhaps running water. But to get to the story about cooking facilities - it was a flat stone slab. The slab butted up against the better part of one inside wall. Access to heat it was from an opening outside. We fed the wood into a hole in the outer wall of the cabin and the stone slab heated up.

We made spaghetti that first night. Heated up a big pot of water and got to goofing around while the pasta boiled and we almost had mashed potato-like pasta! The slab got really hot!

The next morning, my friend's mom and dad arrived. Mom immediately fired up the slab and set to baking Yugoslavian nut roll pastries. She really knew what she was doing!

I was 16 at the time and it's over 40 years later. The memories of that weekend, exploring the area with it's tiny vacation cabins is still clear. But the star of that getaway is still the stone slab stove.