The pan...... new but now rusty!

Lester suggested to me that perhaps we should invest in some cast iron cookware especially to be used on the Rayburn wood burning stove.

It is a good suggestion.

However, it would seem to me that cast iron cookware demands man muscles because they are heavy, this I learnt after doing a trial heft of a friend's Le Creuset pot.

Empty and lidless, it was all I could to lift the thing. With lid and full of food, ....no chance.

I have lady muscles, plus I have overdone things which involve my wrists, which are not wanting to work properly, and tend to have a think as to whether or not they will oblige me by lifting things up.

A bit of a nuisance when one is cooking dinner,

or doing anything which involves shifting things from here to there.

Have had a couple of near accidents when in mid lift the wrists have said, "No, don't want to", which is a bit inconvenient if it involves a kettle of hot water, or a pan of hot, cooked veg.

Man muscles! I need to get some! Plus two working wrists!

 

Anyways, ......cast iron cookware...

So to promote a keenness not really felt, but thought I should show willing,

I bought a cast iron frying pan from Amazon UK.

It arrived.

I was impressed both by its solidness, and weight.

But what was this!......something about getting it 'seasoned'.

However, this was not done because the instructions were written in ever such tiny writing which I could not read, so the pan was left to sit, becoming another one of those 'To Do' projects.

 

And then it came to be the time when Lester decided to cook us up a treat.

I was in bed asleep, nursing a cold.

But 'Where are the frying pans?' he thought.

He searched and searched but could not find them

(they were in the Back Kitchen stacked up with other pots ,waiting to be washed up)

And then his eyes did spot the new frying pan, clean, idle, needing to be used, or so he thought.

 

On to the Rayburn hotplate it went, in was sploshed the omelette he was making as the treat,

"Vera" he called out, "your lunch is nearly ready",

followed by "***!!!****".

Folks, for you who think about buying a cast iron frying pan, do please pay attention to the instructions on how to season it, and even if you can't read those instructions because they are in such small print, have a search on the internet  to find out.

 

For myself, my internet search has focussed on, "How to get the rust off a cast iron pan".

...because the omelette stuck to the pan, could not be got off, so the pan was left to soak, and then it was forgotten about (not really, just sort of left until I had time to attend to it),

and then things got put on top of it,

and.....

 

.....voila!!!!

My first cast iron pan, brand new, almost unused

(I had toast for lunch that day after the Omelette Project was abandoned)

but already battle scarred and covered top and bottom with rust.

 

Apparently it can be cleaned up,

apparently it is still usable,

but for the moment it still remains as a 'Project in waiting'.

I have got a lot of those sort of projects on the go at the moment.

 

So if any of you good folk can help with either 'How to de-rust' info, or 'How to season' info, I would be most grateful.

 

And that cheese I spoke about the other day...the one which threw up the most horrible smell, but which tasted really good...it is just as well I vacuum sealed two thirds of the cheese and put it away for safe keeping in my cheese fridge, because I seem to have 'lost' the remaining third.

Methinks that it has gone inside Lester's tum.

Methinks that he had a 'weak' moment and could not help but do a raid in our other fridge where this portion of cheese was kept,

which upset me a little bit because just now I had my own 'weak' moment when the urge to have a morsel of that cheese overtook me.

All gone, not a crumb left.

I could, of course, do my own raid on the cheese fridge and open one of the saved packets of cheese,

but that would be weakness because if we eat the cheese as fast as it matures, then we shall have no cheese to get us through those times when the cows stop giving us milk and no more cheese can be made.

But that means I can't have a piece of cheese now.

What to do.....

Eat all up now, or eat a portion then store the rest.....,

or keep a portion to eat but divide it up so that Lester can 'find' his own morsel,

but hide away another piece for when I have the urge to have a nibble.

Ah but then Lester would inevitably find 'my' piece.

He can't find his socks in his sock drawer, but he would find that cheese!

Bless him, I must be gracious in defeat with this, after all he has to look after our cows and put up with their shenanigans when they are in season, when they have the almighty urge to mate with anyone handy, normally Lester when he trying to milk them.
 

Oops, my wrists are complaining so I am going to close off now,

Thanks for stopping by,

and bye for now.

Vx

 

PS. To sooth my disappointment about not having a piece of cheese I toasted myself up a slice of  DIY bread on the hotplate of the Rayburn,  spread on the toast some of our DIY butter, and on top of that slathered a very generous helping of non-DIY Nutella.
And I remembered to take the meat out of the oven of the Rayburn, .....a leg of mutton, wrapped in foil to stop it from drying out because I knew that I would forget that it was in the oven (no cooking smells come from the Rayburn so one can forget that one is in the process of cooking food in it).

Wrists now thoroughly done in,

bye for now again!