I still remember my granmother’s kitchen, where she cooked with a wood stove and drew water by hand from a dug well with a bucket. Before any food could be prepared you had to cut the firewood, drag the firewood to the house, split the firewood, build the fire and let it burn long enough to heat the stove.

Meanwhile, you had to draw the water (most people don’t realize how much water is required to fix a full meal), go to the garden and gather the vegetables, fruits, etc. and/or go to the smoke house and get one of the hams/slabs of bacon/etc. – assuming you had any meat to get.

Then, while the stove is heating up, you cut up the raw food and prepare it for cooking, and dispose of the excess immediately because under primitive conditions vermin are a constant issue so you don’t leave scraps of any kind laying around. Then you put the food on the stove or in the oven and keep stoking the fire with more wood, watching carefully to adjust the heat with a poker as needed.

Finally you serve and eat. THen you haul more water and heat it over the fire to wash up. And dump the scraps into a bucket for the hog. Then haul your backside to bed, because you had to get up before sunrise to go hustle up some more food.