The News From Here

I know this old man who has several, let’s just call them minor weaknesses so we can avoid more derogatory terms. One has always been cookware. Don’t ask where that came from because that is totally unknown and personally I wouldn’t venture a guess. Well a couple of weeks ago he was doing a little garage sale’ing and saw 3 reasonably good stainless steel pans. A 9”& 12” skillet and 12” oven pan. They were in good overall condition but the previous owner obviously thought that a dishwasher would clean stainless steel cookware after being scorched. At $1 each it was a no brain’er for the old goat. He just had to have them. The 9” skillet he actually had a use for but the others it was just that weakness thing I mention earlier I suppose. He walked away with them and was happy for a while. Then the idea hit him that he would not be happy unless they looked right. Right meant not necessarily looking like new but as close as he could come to it. Well folks this old man soaked, scoured, and scoured & soaked those suckers for over a week. During the process a bottle of degreaser, ½ a can of scouring powder, one scouring pad and a lot of time were invested. So after well over a week of effort his additional culinary equipment was placed in the “ready to use” cabinet awaiting actual use. I’m pretty sure that if the old man would truly evaluate the time and the materials investment and pay himself minimum wage he could probably have bought the one pan he really wanted new. Now you’d think the experience would result in some lasting change of thought about such things but personally I wouldn’t bet on it. He & I are pretty close in fact we are so close that we sit in the same chair.