My Farberware has naked aluminum on the bottoms, and the
Revereware is only plated with copper. The Farberware is
light to pick up, but nice and heavy on the bottom where it
counts.
Several years ago, I bought two Farberware saucepans and put
my very expensive complete set of solid-aluminum cookware
out by the road with a sign that said "free".
One of the saucepans came with a double boiler, the other
with a steamer: exactly the same as the double boiler, but
perforated. I don't use either much, but the stainless-
steel steamer is indispensable when I make yogurt dip for my
Fourth of July party. (Dump whole-milk yogurt in the top,
set in fridge, come back the next day to find dip in the
steamer and whey in the saucepan. Whey can be substituted
for buttermilk in most recipes, and it's a tasty drink if
you can't see it.)
I also have a five-quart Farberware pot and a six-quart
Revereware pot. I used to carry the Revereware pot
half-full of fruit salad to pitch-in dinners; since it was
tall and narrow, the salad didn't spill. But I don't live
close to a fruit stand now, and take deviled eggs to
pitch-ins. I also use the Revereware pot for bean soup, set
over a very low fire because it hot-spots. Oddly, the
lowest possible setting gets it to boiling too much after a
couple of hours; then I set it in a cast-iron skillet to
moderate the heat. (Oddly, because smaller pots don't boil
at all at that setting.)
I use the Farberware pot for everything else; mostly for
steaming corn (I have one of those folds-up-like-a-flower
steamer racks to set in it), since there are only two of us
and I seldom need a big pot. I used to use the five-quart
pot for the annual pot of cocoa, but we moved and the bike
club won't drive a thousand miles for the New Year's Day
ride. It won't hold a whole gallon of milk, what with
stirring and the other ingredients, so I used to fill my
Blue Denmark "milk jug" [quart pitcher] before pouring the
rest of the gallon into the pot, intending for the guests to
dilute the cocoa, but they liked it strong.
I also have a large collection of ironware: the older the
better for ironware. As the years passed, the walls of cast
iron got thicker and heavier, the grinding-smooth of the
inside was done less carefully and then stopped altogether,
and the curve between the side of a skillet and the bottom
got sharper and harder to clean.
But even the new stuff is usable --- if you totally ignore
the utterly-ridiculous "seasoning" instructions that come
with it. Aside from filling the house with toxic fumes, it
puts on a thick coat of soft soot where what you need is a
thin coat of hard varnish. Just keep the pot oiled, wipe it
with a paper towel before and after every use, and the
"season" will come of itself. And before using a new pot,
or an old one that you don't know where it's been, scour
*thoroughly* with harsh abrasives, boil water in it, and
then scour some more.
When we cleaned out the garage after moving in, we found a
round iron griddle. It seems to have been intended for a
bed of coals and is utterly useless on top of a stove, but
it's the best baking dish I ever had! It's just the right
size to bake a pizza on, and is just the ticket for frozen
"fried" chicken and other convenience foods. (Sob. The
doctor banned junk food. But I still make a stoneground-
wheat pizza now and again. Hey, everything in there is on
my diet; I'm just not supposed to eat so much bread and
cheese and so little vegetable.)
I have a set of skillets: two each of tiny, small, and full
size, and one medium. I left the *big* one hanging on a
nail in the old house; while useful for boiling down tomato
sauce, it was a very poor design intended to look like a
standard skillet, and you couldn't lift it by its single
handle. It should have had two ear-type handles.
Only the full-size skillet has a lid; I use the paired
skillets as lids for each other. I do wish I'd gotten
around to looking for lids at Wallace-Armor before they went
broke!
The skillet lid came with my widest and shallowest iron pot,
which I sometimes use as a deep skillet. My other pots were
found in the garage, and most don't have lids, and the one
that does is quite small.
I recently acquired a dutch oven, with the intention of
making bean soup on the outdoor fireplace. Making soup
takes a very large pot because you have to leave room for it
to boil violently if you don't want to stand there watching
it all day. Never got around to making soup, but I've been
baking most of my bread in the kettle all summer. Avoids
heating up the kitchen, and uses up the driftwood and fallen
limbs.
--
Joy Beeson
http://joybeeson.home.comcast.net/
http://roughsewing.home.comcast.net/
http://n3f.home.comcast.net/ -- Writers' Exchange
http://www.timeswrsw.com/craig/cam/ (local weather)
west of Fort Wayne, Indiana, U.S.A.
where I *told* the weatherman to save some of that rain for
now, but would he listen?
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