Bread, stones, and ice...
I live in northwest Arkansas and we were hit last week with an ice storm that knocked out the electricity for around 200,000 people- me included. My power was off from Tuesday morning until Saturday night and, as the strong independent (hard-headed) woman that I am, I elected to stay in my home with my cat and try to ride it out until the electricity was restored. Thank goodness I have a gas grill with a side burner and had an almost-full tank of propane. I was able to make bread, apple crisp, grill steaks, make brats cooked in beer with caralmelized onions and German potato salad- well, you get the point- nothing stopped me from my passion of COOKING. The bread-baking was a little dicey, and I was beginning to have withdrawals from the house filled with the smell of bread baking when the power finally came back on. I was reared in the country on a farm where we made-do with what we had. My mom's house was drafty and the bedrooms were never heated, so my mom took large rocks and sat them in front of the stove to warm, wrapped them in newspapers, and tucked them under the covers to warm our beds. I was wracking my brain trying to figure a way to NOT have to get into an ice-cold bed when my sister, via telephone, reminded me about the heated rock thing- "Don't you have any bricks or rocks in your yard?" she asked. No, but I do have quarry tiles and a pizza stone- wooooohoooooo! I put them on the gas grill, warmed them, wrapped them in towels, and voila! a snuggly warm bed throughout the night. One word of caution- towels are flammable, and hot tiles can give you hot buns in more ways than one.....Even Alton Brown would be proud of my "multi-tasking." And by the way, I love this website- I have learned so so much in the last year from you guys. You rock. And so do my oven stones!!