Pan Dowdy

My pots and pans hang above the stove and this is so convenient I forget that they are on display although rather the worse for years of wear. Stymied for something to do because my satellite Internet is so bad, my biker bro-in-law on a visit about a year ago asked me if I had any of those copper-colored curly-scrubby-scouring pads. I said no, why. He said he wanted to clean my pans for me.

 

I had long before ceased to be conscious of the state of dishware and cookware 10 to 20 years old. That it functioned was all I cared about. But after the visit I reproached myself and bought copper-colored scourers. It took half an hour to shine up just the interior of one small "stainless" skillet, using first soaking and dish liquid, then baking soda, then vinegar fizzing the baking soda, meanwhile scrubbing until the copper scrubby was in shreds. Then several rounds in the dishwasher. All this did not vanquish the brownish varnish, but it did make the pizza pan peel.

I settled for 50 percent improvement. Then on another day I began lapidary work on the pan's exterior, but soon lost heart.

One day this summer I bought new dishes and bowls and felt like a bride. But I forgot about the dowdy pans until today. Not an hour later I ordered a new nonstick pizza pan, small skillet, and omelet pan. Please see the photo, which I display as art, hoping you might validate my inkling that buying new was a good and reasonable thing to do.

Women's Kitchen Wisdom

I taught my mother exactly two things. One was to line her baking pans with parchment paper. Mom baked a universe of goodies in her time and on a visit to AZ while she was baking I said, "I line my pans with parchment paper." "Foof," said Mom, "I don't need parchment paper," implying I was foolish and extravagant. I said, "You must like scraping and scrubbing pans, then."

Came back to visit two years later and she was using parchment paper. I said nothing. The other thing I taught her was to use an apron. She was 80. She never liked using the dishwasher, did her dishes by hand, and never let them air dry because she could not bear to see even a water glass on the counter or in the sink because it was not put away. Before I started drying dishes I said, "Do you have any aprons?" She said, Why? I said, "To keep my front dry. Otherwise my clothes get all damp with dirty dishwater." She had aprons never used -- people give women gifts of aprons just as they used to give lace-trimmed handkerchiefs -- and I put one on as I would at my Divine home, and the next time I visited her she wore an apron to do dishes, and that was all the effect I ever had on her.

Buy these trash cans or you do not have the right to call yourself female.

My sister and I trade practical kitchen gifts. Seeing that she had in the kitchen a horrid and fraying little cheapo aluminum sink-strainer I got her a stainless-steel sink strainer from chefs.com that would last forever. She said thank you and I said, "When you are doing dishes and you see this, if you remember, say a prayer for me." She mailed me awesome dishtowels printed with bunnies and later sent my treasured Reddy Kilowatt magnetic potholders and a faux LeCreuset enameled cast iron dutch oven that is exactly like the real thing. This past Christmas, horrified by her discolored and fragrant Rubbermaid kitchen and bathroom trash cans I pulled out my phone and ordered for her Automatic Touchless Infrared steel trash cans like mine, that open and close automatically with an electric eye and stay tight and smell-free, from Amazon Prime. 

One time my sister visited and I explained my rice cooker (a gift from another woman I thought I'd never use. I use it all the time). Now that my sister has one she serves rice much more often, and also at my recommendation buys and cooks the jasmine rice that actually has flavor.

My sister has an InstaPot now, can't praise it enough, and wanted to send me one for my birthday. I said I would rather have a microwave egg poacher. A friend I breakfast with orders poached eggs and I began making them about a year ago, but even piercing the yolk and taking all other precautions, three times out of four my egg exploded inside the microwave. The egg poacher came today. I had already eaten my egg for the day, and can hardly wait for tomorrow to try it out.

What It's Like to Have a Pumphouse

Nobody told me anything about this small odd-shaped wooden structure with a midget door except that in deep lengthy cold I'd better put a heater in it. Nobody said what was inside, or what kind of heater. Soon I learned this structure just outside my kitchen door was a pumphouse. I never opened the small door to see the actual pump because bees by the dozens crawled in and out of cracks in the wood as if the pumphouse were a beehive. Eventually ivy grew and twined it shut.

Bit by bit it taught me. It's an electric pump, so outages mean no water. Therefore I keep a few gallons of bottled water, and when storms threaten, I fill pans. Calcium-rich well water will encrust every faucet and etch every glass, and the dishwasher erodes dishes until one day they crack, just like your skin, and it gives all your clothes, not just jeans, a lovely stonewash; and the fix is to add vinegar or clean with vinegar, and buy new glassware when too embarrassed to explain to guests that the glasses are not dirty, just cloudy; and that if you keep drinking from cloudy glassware it'll abrade and split the corners of your lips; and soon I learned I had to filter the drinking water or else be just as stonewashed on my inside. (To install a water softener is too expensive, and the salt would affect the creek.) Wash the car with this water and it'll dull the surface and leave dry white calcium hickeys.

The water tastes fine and fresh to me, but people do remark that it's different from city tap water. Only once did the pump freeze up, the first winter here, '98-'99, for a short time only; good thing because I had no heater for the pumphouse and no place to plug one in. And while hosing down the garden during long droughts it'd pump for ten minutes, dribble, and then quit, such was the local demand on the water table. It taught me (and sometimes I still remember) that I live on a planet. Water direct from the outdoor spigot is so cold it's painful. When people worry about the world's water supply I don't worry.

That said, the pump has never failed, but the pumphouse roof was rotted, so the handyman came and opened its door and tore off the roof to replace it, and for the first time I saw that the pump is a simple gray cylinder about the size of a propane barbecue cylinder. Why such a sizeable pumphouse then? For insulation. Behold a real "pump house" that is not a bar or restaurant.

What's the Most Bourgeois Thing You Own?

This question came up in conversation: "What's the most bourgeois thing you own?"

I said, "Let me go on vacation for five days and think about it," and flew off and upon my return nominated among all my bourgeois items, which include a fanny pack, a terracotta garlic keeper, and one Coach handbag, my portable Maytag dishwasher I was not quite bourgeois enough to have disassembled and cleaned at a cost of $85 for a housecall plus $85 per hour, when I thought I could and oughta do it myself.

 I laid all the pieces out exploded-like.

Unskilled and unsmart, I took a plumbing wrench to the plastic screw that holds down the entire wash assembly, and immediately stripped it -- it was soft, like clay! Unable to proceed, with shame I called the Maytag repair place and said, "My Maytag portable dishwasher leaves particles on the dishes and I have very hard water. I think it needs to be cleaned out."

The holy of holies, clean.

"Aww," said the woman who answered the phone, "just buy a bottle of C.L.R. and pour in a cup and run through the cycle three or four times." Without telling her I had stripped the screw, I said I thought I needed more help than that and asked to talk to the repair person, who jeered and tried to put me off by saying it cost $85 just for him to come to the house and C.L.R. was all I needed. That's country service for you.

Caustic C.L.R. (Calcium Lime Rust) did not fix the worsening problem. Every two months or so I watched You Tubes about dishwasher repair. I showed a friend the stripped screw and he managed to undo it, and today I took the whole assembly apart, unscrewing layer by plastic layer, scrubbing their calcium deposits into the slop sink with a toothbrush. The nitty gritty was guck caught in the fine filter at the very bottom. By sheer luck I wiggled its retainer loose and cleaned and reassembled the whole thing, and now it purrs like a kitten.

What will I do with my saved $85? Get a gel manicure and an Internet signal booster.