The Old Skillet

When I was a kid, I usually prepared my own breakfast. Sometimes breakfast was bacon and eggs cooked in a cast iron skillet. There was a grease keeper on the countertop beside the stove. It had a filter to trap cracklings and particles of bacon. With the advent of microwave ovens and Teflon cookware, the cast iron skillet was almost rendered obsolete. It was down but not out. 

Many people have taken to using cast iron skillets again. I recently decided to use my old skillet to cook bacon and eggs again. The bacon doesn’t taste a lot different, but cooking the eggs in bacon grease opens up a whole new world of taste. Actually, it’s an old world of taste. Now my eggs taste the same way they tasted to young me, and to my parents and grandparents and great-grandparents. The iron skillet is an antique, but it cooks as well as it did when it was new.

I’ve relearned how to season an iron skillet and what screws up the seasoning. I’ve learned how to clean a pan with salt and when it’s best to just wipe out the inside of the pan.

Teflon and ceramic pans aren’t supposed to be heated past medium heat, but cast iron skillets can be used on high heat (don’t immediately rinse them with cold water – the skillet could warp). Cast iron skillets are extremely durable. At most, you might mess up the seasoning and have to re-season the pan. Not a big deal.

You can fry, bake, and sear in an iron skillet. You can go from the stovetop to the oven to the grill with the same pan. There are many recipes for cast iron skillet meals. For starters, there are 27 recipes at Southern Living, 17 recipes at Rachael Ray, and 10 recipes at Food Network.

And if you’re wondering what you can do with the bacon drippings (assuming you cook bacon), Christy Jordan at Southern Plate has some ideas.

For me, there is something satisfying about cooking in a cast iron skillet. It’s organic, elemental – the opposite of unnatural, artificial. You can use metal utensils when cooking; if you scratch the seasoning, continue cooking and the seasoning will heal by itself. Teflon gives off fumes that are highly toxic to birds. Cast iron does not. Try serving food from a thin Teflon or ceramic pan; the food will be cold before the meal is finished. A cast iron pan stays hot a long time and keeps food warm.

There is one caveat: a cast iron skillet is heavy and its handle will get hot. Use a potholder or oven mitt. If you grab the pan off the stove with a bare hand, only to realize it’s burning you, you could get a burned hand and a broken foot at the same time.

The Month of Meh

I’ve not been very active in the blogosphere lately. The days between Thanksgiving and the New Year are, for me, the Sargasso Sea of the Soul, the Doldrums of the Spirit, the Zone of Apathy in which all of my get-up-and-go has done exactly that: it got-up-and-went. I don’t know where it went, but it left a hole in my psyche – a hole that can only be filled by inserting the proper amount of junk food and excess calories into my diet. And I’ve done that successfully, according to my bathroom scale.

One of the things I do with this extra time is read a lot of news. Some of it is eyebrow-raising. For example, I read that the Food and Drug Administration has approved the sale of genetically modified salmon. Yes, mad scientists have tinkered with salmon DNA and created something unnatural – unnatural in the sense that the fish now have, uh, “features” not found in nature. I think they’ve taken these genetic modifications too far, but no one asked me. These unnatural Franken-fish are not necessarily a bad thing. I hear those same mad scientists are now working on a new Buffalo sauce to go with the new salmon wings.

“Waitress, an order of wings, please.”
“Chicken or salmon?”

Just kidding. I’m pretty sure the new Franken-salmon will not have wings. Nor will they glow in the dark.

Yet.

Anderson East

The song of the day is Only You from the 2015 album Delilah by rhythm and blues/pop musician Anderson East (Michael Cameron Anderson).

Days of Gloom

These are days of gloom. December lurks just around the corner. Today, the sky is dark and full of rain-laden clouds. The air outside is cold and moist. A little bit of drizzle falls constantly. Now and then it strengthens into rain for a while, then falls back to a drizzle. It will be like this tomorrow and the next day. Gloom and drizzle, the perfect connector between November and December. Many trees have shed their foliage and are mostly bare now. Some of the trees that keep their leaves are showing off their winter colors.

With the advent of autumn, my appetite always turns to carbs, and like a squirrel putting on fat for the coming winter, my body starts putting on pounds. In the past two months, I’ve gained 10 pounds. It’s a “winter is coming” thing. Over thousands of years of evolution, humans who put on weight as winter approached had a better chance of surviving winter. So I’m okay with adding a few pounds. I tell myself the extra pounds have nothing to do with will power – it’s all evolution’s fault. It’s out of my control; it’s my DNA. Plus, it’s now too cold to go outside and do the walking and other exercise that I had intended to do during warm weather but never got around to doing.

Yesterday I went to BK and bought a Whopper and fries. Upon leaving the restaurant, I bought their 10-chicken-tenders-for-$1.49 special deal and took it home to eat. What better way to finish off a Whopper and fries than with a bag of chicken tenders?

The day before yesterday, I went to a nearby Chinese restaurant. A banner over their door proclaimed “$5.95 Lunch Buffet” and I took full advantage by eating three plates of Chinese food. It made me happy – and a little bit guilty as the plates stacked up on my table.

Fattening up for winter is the best part of autumn. I just have to remember to avoid mirrors. And to drive to Wally World and pick up a couple more pair of knit pants with elastic waistbands. If I’m overweight and feeling guilty about it, at least I can be comfortable.

Zwette ft Molly

The song of the day is 2015's Rush by German DJ/producer Zwette with vocals by British singer-songwriter Molly (Molly Alice Smitten-Downes). An album, Rush (The Remixes), includes remixes by AirDice, Marcapasos, and Rich Vom Dorf.

Redondo & Bolier

The song of the day is Lvndscape’s remix of 2015's Every Single Piece by Dutch tech-house DJ duo Redondo (Freek Geuze and Johan Jacobse) and Dutch DJ and producer Leon Bolier (Leendert Wouter Bolier) featuring Brooklyn rock band She Keeps Bees (vocalist/guitarist Jessica Larrabee and drummer Andy LaPlant). The original mix is here.

Black Friday

The day after Thanksgiving is called Black Friday in the US. I thought everyone knew why Black Friday is called that, but I’ve recently realized that many people don’t. So allow me to enlighten those of you who don’t know, and probably don’t care, how Black Friday got its name.

Many retailers operate at a loss, or in the red, for most of the year and they depend on Christmas shoppers for much of their yearly profit. The Christmas shopping season begins on the Friday after Thanksgiving. That is the day that many retailers begin operating in the black.

The phrases in the red and in the black stem from the terms red ink to indicate a loss and black ink to indicate a profit. But where did those terms come from? Why is a loss called red ink, and why is a profit called black ink?

Before there were electronic calculators, there were mechanical adding machines. These adding machines were big and heavy and were filled with gears and cams and levers (I’m imagining here, as I’ve never actually taken one apart). The only operations they could do were addition and subtraction, but that was enough for most business owners, who needed to know how much money they had made or lost. The business owner would enter the amounts of money taken in that day, adding each amount to arrive at a sub-total, and then subtract the day’s expenses, to arrive at the total profit or loss.

Mechanical adding machines had an ink ribbon that enabled printing the numbers onto a spool of paper. The ribbon had black ink on the top half and red ink on the bottom half. Normally, numbers were printed in black ink. However, if the result of a calculation was a negative number, that number was printed in red ink so that it would stand out and not be mistaken for a positive number. So, a loss was printed in red ink, while a profit was printed in black ink. Though mechanical adding machines have been obsolete for half a century, the phrases red ink, black ink, in the red, and in the black, live on.

Sam Feldt & Kimberly Anne

The song of the day is Show Me Love from the 2015 album Show Me Love by Netherlands artist Sam Feldt featuring English singer-songwriter Kimberly Anne.

MS MR

The song of the day is Criminals from the 2015 album How Does It Feel by indie pop duo MS MR (vocalist Lizzy Plapinger and producer Max Hershenow).

Panthers Edge Past Redskins In 44-16 Squeaker

"No fair!" Redskins say. "The other teams keep taking advantage of our interceptions, fumbles, and miscues."

Redskins owner Daniel Snyder was rumored to have summed up the 'Skins frustration this way: "How in the world are we expected to win games if we have to play teams that are better than us?!"

Well said, Danny-boy. For the 'Skins, there's always next week, when the 4-6 Redskins meet fellow division powerhouse, the 5-5 Giants, to determine which team will be runner-up to the second-best team in the NFC East.

Meanwhile, for the Panthers, the game was another dismal showing in which the team's offense again failed to put 50 points on the scoreboard. If this humdrum string of Panthers' wins continues all the way to a ho hum Superbowl victory, the only course of action may be to disband the team. That would be a shame. Let's hope they learn to play better.