So my 30th birthday is this month, and my parents gave me what may quite possibly prove to be the best birthday present ever: the family’s old cast iron skillet! These things are AWESOME for cooking–they heat evenly, hold warmth for a long time, have a better non-stick surface than teflon (if you care for it properly), can be used on anything from ovens to electric stove tops to campfire coals, and are virtually indestructible. I can’t wait to start using mine!
As you can see from the photo, though, it needs quite a bit of work. There’s a lot of old gunk and rust that needs to be scraped off, and it needs to be tempered and seasoned. Tempering is the process where you heat up the iron to let the oil soak into the pores, so that when it cools down, you have a thin layer of oil bonded to the surface. That’s what gives it the nonstick properties and keeps it from rusting. If you wash a cast iron skillet in soap, it scrubs off that all-important layer of oil, leaving it exposed to water which makes it oxidize and rust. That’s what happened here.
Fortunately, these things are so indestructible that a little bit of rust isn’t going to ruin it. It’ll take some work to get it cleaned up and functional again, but I could use a fun side-project to keep me busy. Besides, I have a writing buddy down the street who can help me out with it. He’s a pretty interesting guy: he has a 3D printer, grows most of the food he eats, worked on film sets for a few years, does some gunsmithing on the side–like I said, he’s an interesting guy. I believe the Grantville Gazette has bought a couple of his stories, though they have yet to come out in print. We’re thinking about collaborating together, or maybe starting a podcast.
In any case, this is going to be an AWESOME project that I’m sure will keep me occupied for the next long while. I can hardly wait to fry some bacon in this thing! Bacon, and baked beans, and cornbread … mmm!
