Commentary
As the temperature cools here in Texas, I get to use one of my favorite possessions—something I truly cherish: my wood cook stove.
My Kitchen Queen is a sight to behold. She has a 48-inch cooktop, with one side blazing hot right over the fire and the other side resting over the oven, where the heat is gentler and steady. The top has multiple round plates that can be lifted with a small cast-iron tool, allowing you to look down into the flames. There are glass potbelly windows on both the firebox and the oven, glowing like little lanterns when she’s burning bright. Two stainless steel rails stretch along her sides for hanging towels or drying rags, and behind her stands a stainless steel back that holds the hot water heater. Above sit two large bread boxes like a crown. She’s a beauty anyone would be proud to have as the centerpiece of their kitchen. She sits just to the right of our front door, framed by white subway tile that reaches the ceiling and highlights her black and glossy presence.
I never would have spent the money on a wood cook stove myself. But when my grandmother died, my mother wanted to buy something for both me and my brother—something that would prepare us for whatever might come. Something useful. Something lasting. Something with real value. She chose the Kitchen Queen.
There’s a deep satisfaction in stocking the fire, keeping a pot of water on the back to humidify the house, letting a broth or soup simmer all day so anyone can help themselves, baking sourdough, roasting vegetables, or frying breakfast in cast-iron pans right on top. It slows life to a rhythm that makes sense.
The stove also has a water-heating component that holds two large tanks of hot water. If my water heater ever failed, I could still bathe my children or wash the dishes. It’s practical in a way modern appliances rarely are.
Someone recently looked at the large stack of wood beside our house and said, “That is a northern-states pile of wood, not a southern-states pile.” We laughed because it’s true. We enjoy fires in the winter—and we enjoy cooking with them. Our main living areas don’t have central heat; only the bedrooms and bathrooms do. So the fireplace and the Kitchen Queen carry a lot of responsibility. They warm the heart of our home.
Honestly, the stove feels like she deserves a name beyond Kitchen Queen. The coziness she brings stirs memories of early mornings in Vinalhaven, Maine, with my grandparents, pancakes with my Uncle Scott, the smell of wood smoke—a childhood wrapped in comfort. Both the house I grew up in, in Ithaca, New York, and my grandparents’ home had wood cook stoves. It’s a family thread.
When we installed this stove, Scott cooked every one of his meals on it for the first six months. That stove was his pride and joy for that entire season. I think it made him feel what I feel—a connection to those early years when life was simpler and the pace was human. Now he’s building his own house on our property, and my father and I bought him a wood cook stove as a housewarming gift. He laughed when he opened it and said, “This was the whole point of building a house—because you can’t have one of these in an RV.” And he’s right.
My mother, her twin sister, my father, my stepmother, my brother, and both of us—me and Scott—have wood cook stoves. Does that make us extreme? Or simply people who appreciate the satisfaction of cooking over fire and heating a home with resources from our own land?
And I have to add this: I’m so grateful for my husband and for his year-round commitment to collecting wood and keeping the fires going. I might not feel quite so nostalgic if I had to do that part myself—but I’m lucky to have a husband who takes joy in it.
If you ever have the opportunity to install one, I highly recommend it. I wouldn’t have spent the money before owning it, but now that I know the value, I’d pay three times as much.
My husband mother, in Mexico, cooks most of his meals over an outdoor fire. It’s beautiful and traditional in its own way, but it doesn’t compare to cooking over wood indoors on a cold or rainy or snowy morning. A wood stove slows you down. It warms the bones of the house. It brings you back to yourself.
I was on a podcast recently, and the host asked me, “What do you think is the American obsession with modernization?” I don’t know that I have the full answer. But I do know this: In a world moving faster than any human mind was meant to process, there is something profoundly grounding about doing things the old way.
Every time I put down my phone and spend a little time with my kids or my husband, undistracted, I return to dozens of messages. And that’s just the texts—not the emails, not the other notifications. The world barrels toward us at a pace no generation before us has ever known.
But fire—what my father calls Channel One, the first channel humans ever watched—asks nothing. It offers warmth, steadiness, presence. Cooking on that fire feels ancient, familiar, and deeply human.
My wood cook stove brings me home—home to my childhood, to my family, to a pace of life that reminds me what truly matters. It warms the room and the spirit. And in a culture obsessed with speed, novelty, and convenience, it anchors me in something enduring.
It reminds me what it is to be human.
