So before we get into the winter cooking I want to go back 6 months to whne a friend stumbled upon a great little outdoor wooden stove online. We both think that we could sruvive for weeks in the forrest with just our wits and a hatchet, so this stove was like candy to us.
Stovetec sells numerous stoves and such but we were fixated on the 2 door recreational stove. We talked big and made palns but our pizazz petered off and we forgot about it. Then one faithful day in November last year he email ed me and said "I am getting myself one for Christmas! Do you want one?".
"Yes please!!! You are getting the one with two doors right?" I asked. A few shortly weeks later we were in possesion of out new beautiful mean green wood burning stoves.
NOw fast forward to last weekend when we were lookign at my daughters Brownies book to see what Brownie badge she would like to try for this month. And we fell upon the Outdoor Cookout badge. Now my mind opened up and shot straight to the Stovetec stove that had beenin the garage for a few weeks now and had not been used, and that was it!
Our daughter wrote a list of the materials she would need and proceeded to gather them up and get ready.
we are now ready to cook in the snow!
So the oldest attempting to earn a badge was in chage of the whoel endeavour, and I was the safety officer. Most of my conversations ended with "...and then you will burn the house down."
After she cleared a spot on the deck (don't worry a good 1.5 feet from teh house) and placed a board to hold everything we all got excited to light the stove and get a water-boiling-on!
burn baby burn! and once hte fire was lit and hte bottom door closed the flames dropped and the heat roared.And then we had to wait, which seemed to take forever, for about 10 minutes until the water began to roll and boil.
Only the hardiest of outdoor winter chefs sit on a purple IKEA chair.
The stove does have an adjustable sleeve, that you can see surrounding hte pot of water, that focuses the heat onto the pot or pan used to cook with, the tiny pot we used had a low handle which would not allow us to tighten the sleeve snuggly to the pot. So I would guess that with a tight fit on the pot it would have reduced te boiling time by a few minutes.
Well with the macaroni in thewater and steam rising all over the palce we were one excited bunch. And htat made me.....beside myself with pleasure!!! I hoped they would enjoy this, and I hoped even more that this would actually work. And I was pretty proud of myself when she had a huge smile stirring the macaroni.
the miners came out hte hills that afternoon. Drawn by the smell of the famous Elbow Noodles a la Torgerson. 
Their fascination with the stove was first, second was watching the wooden spoon steam after stirring the noodles.
After we successfully cooked a wee pot of noodles we went on to thfe best food eveer...boiled weiners. YUM!
THe middle guy was sooo excited to stir the hot dogs and talk almost not stop in the 5 minutes it took to 'cook' them, about camping, cooking, fire, pots, wood, fire again, steam, spoons, steaming spoons, and how he could cook all our suppers like this, even tea!
"...the water we would get from a stream that was by the tent. And then I would cook supper with it, and wash dishes in it, and then we would build a bridge over the stream so we could play soccer in the field on the other side...."It was a lot of fun and the weather made it absolutly awesome. The amazing thing about the stove that I haven't mentioned was that all we used was 4 short pieces of wood, maybe an inch around and 10 inces long, to cook the noodles nad the hot dogs.
So it would even come in handy when the zombies come and you don't want to be out with the hordes gathering armfuls of wood for every meal.
