The fireplace is for winter cooking

The hearth of the home feeds body and soul

For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved fireplaces.

Gas-burning fireplaces may be better than nothing — wonderful for people who can’t or don’t want to deal with armloads of wood or sweeping up ashes. For me, though, maximum pleasure comes from the everchanging, glowing flicker and scent of a real wood-burning fireplace. It’s primal; a connection with earliest civilizations; humanity’s ability to tame and contain, and use fire. Growing up, I longed for a fireplace, and somehow talked (badgered) my parents into installing a free-standing fireplace in my bedroom when they remodeled. (As an adult and parent of three children, I can’t believe I pulled that off!) My fireplace was a ’60s classic: a free-standing orange-enameled angular contraption. My fireplace was the perfect place for my girlfriends and me, draped over beanbags, to giggle over boyfriends, consult a Ouija board and even have occasional serious discussions about our futures.

There weren’t fireplaces in my college dorms or apartments, nor in the Oak Park apartment where we lived during my husband Peter’s dental school years, or in the house we rented when we moved back to Springfield.

The very first thing I did after we signed the papers to buy our 150 year-old farmhouse was to call a chimney sweep to put the boarded-up fireplaces in working order. Our bedroom fireplace had a hand-pegged walnut mantle; wood lath had been nailed over the opening. The mantle in the living room fireplace directly beneath it was gone, and the whole thing had been plastered over and wall-

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