(Lodge cast-iron skillet embossed with the Scout symbol. You can also get them in plain civilian. Photo Lodge Co.)

So, town started to empty out for the long weekend on Thursday afternoon. I felt like joining the anxious motorists on the happy highway south, but I am tethered to the pool for the last four precious days of hydrotherapy.

The recovery continues, albeit slowly, and I have managed to open the aperture to other things. The kitchen beckons- savory vegetable soup and stews are beckoning, and white chili and all sorts of slow-cooked autumn stick-to-your-ribs comfort meals.

I sadly cast off the Swiss Diamond ten-inch skillet. I had been wildly enthusiastic about the space-age coating, advertised to contain the dust of actual industrial-grade gemstones. It certainly cost as much as jewels.

I managed to burn off all the coating in only four years, or rather have transferred the coating from the fry pan to my intestines, which is a bit of a disconcerting thought. Furthermore, the steady process from non-stick surface to absolutely stick-to-everything resulted in food that had to be scraped off, a challenging process with the plastic spatulas that were intended not to scratch or mar the precious slipperiness.

I don’t know about you, but there is something about a fried egg sliding happily around in a skillet that conveys a sense of order and justice in this wider world, which is completely untrue. I just pretend that if I don’t break the yolks, and load up the eggs with freshly ground pepper

Four years is a pretty good run for a pan, but not in the same league as the trusty and well-seasoned cast iron fry pan I keep in the oven as a platform for slow-roasting.

You must have covers for the pans, though, and I started to look around for ideas. You can occasionally find a decently-seasoned cast iron pan at the swap meets and flea-markets. Even a rusty one can be brought back, with enough TLC: that is the beauty of cast iron.

More with sadness than anger, I retired the Swiss Diamond and took delivery of a twelve-inch skillet from a family-owned business nestled in the slopes of the Cumberland Plateau of the Appalachian Mountains, near the hamlet of South Pittsburg, Tennessee, (population 3,300).

(Lodge Skillet Pioneer Joseph Lodge. Photo Lodge Co.)

Lodge Cast Iron has been casting cookware during the first presidential term of William McKinley. The second one was not a good one for the President, as you know, but according to the Lodge website, some of the Lodge skillets, griddles and Dutch ovens are still turning out tasty dishes on still-slippery surfaces more than a century later.

The twelve-incher features stainless steel handles, fore and aft, and a nice glass top. It would be perfect if I was regularly cooking for a family or a fire-house, but alas, I am not. It takes up a major portion of the gas cooktop, and I cycle it through the oven when  I don’t have people coming over for dinner. To fill in the mission-area for breakfast cooking, I added a six-incher with a cast iron lid that is purely amazing for eggs.

The sunny-side up delicacies float over the surface as if they were on tiny ice-skates, and lend an air of certainty and confidence to the day.

The whole suite of spatulas and cooking implements needs to be replaced with implacable stainless steel, as a side light, but there are other issues beyond that, of course.
The most basic condiments- salt and pepper- need attention, too.

Since I was in domestic mode anyway, my ears pricked up when a pal wrote me about the most triumphant qualities of a $90 pepper mill, imported from Europe.
Perfex.jpg
(Perfex 4-1/2 inch pepper mill: the state of the art in grinding.)

The Perfex Co, Ltd., produces a short grinder that is supposed to be a life-time issue item. The family-owned business has been making the crank-operated mills in Saint-Étienne, France, for half a century. They combine superb functionality with sensible, no-frills design to create a true classic. The grinders are cast of solid aluminum, and with grinders that will never dull and always produce fine-to-course quantities to enliven the cooking experience, and which is handsome enough to travel from kitchen to dining table.

I went to Amazon and found the Perfex brand (there are counterfeit versions out there, so caveat emptor) and discovered that I could get one for dollars less than the MSRP, and the helpful commentary that shoppers like myself often bought the matching salt grinder and a bag of Irish sea salt for as little as $178.00, eligible for free shipping, too.

I clicked off the site without executing the deal.

Obviously things are not as bad as they appear, if people are still concerned with condiment dispensers that cost almost a c-note.

Oh, there was a nomination or something last night, too. I listened to one of the speeches on my water-proof radio in the pool as night nestled into Big Pink. The voices describing the convention dripped with sarcasm, and I smiled in the darkness, stroking through the precious last few days of outdoor swimming.

It was a great gimmick, having Democrats do the commentary on the Republican convention. In the interest of fairness, I assume NPR is going to roll out some Republicans to do the play-by-play when the Democrats have their convention in North Carolina.

Hahaha. Just kidding. I am going to go fry some breakfast. With the new skillet, that is one thing that isn’t going to get screwed up. The eggs will be Perfex.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com