BerthaBlog

Every couple of years, it seems, I have to replace my pans. I get the sturdy teflon-coated ones for their nonstick properties, but after a while the teflon gets scratched up in spite of my efforts to never touch it with a scouring pad or metal spatula. Eventually I have to throw it away and get a new one, and the cycle begins anew.

I have friends who actually do cook, and they’ve told me that a properly-seasoned cast iron pan is every bit as “nonstick” as the best Teflon that ever was, plus it’s virtually indestructible. The “indestructible” part is what really got my attention, because I am a spaz. There’s a good reason my family flees the house when they see me head for the kitchen. My husband has remarked that whenever I bake, the kitchen looks as if someone set off a flour bomb. Thus the idea of something that is really, really hard to damage appeals to me.

When I mentioned to my mom that I was on the lookout for a nice cast-iron pan, she immediately knew where one could be found. A few days later she turned up with this pan from a thrift shop. She said, “I wasn’t sure about it, because it looks like someone has scoured it with steel wool, which you should never do with cast iron.”

But I don’t think that’ll be a problem. I’ve been reading about the care and feeding of cast-iron pans, and it appears that this pan should be easily redeemed and put back into use. From what I understand, the reason you never use steel wool on cast iron is that it destroys the carefully-applied patina of seasoning, so all this one should need is a nice cleaning and re-seasoning and it’ll be good as new.

And man, this little sucker is heavy. It can double as a home defense tool. Two for the price of one!

A few weeks ago I took my car to be inspected, because I am a responsible citizen and driver and also I don’t like getting pulled over by the police.

The car failed the inspection. Turns out the last time I had the wheels aligned, they did such a bad job of it that now my tires were almost completely worn away on the inner edge. It made me think perhaps I hadn’t got quite the deal I had believed when I purchased the “lifetime free alignments” program at Firestone.

So I took it up to buy new tires. While they were replacing the tires, they told me that the brake pads were very worn and needed replacing as well. I thanked them and said I’d have that done after payday. Actually, I wanted to take it to my regular repair shop so they could verify that I did, in fact, need new brake pads. It’s good having a repair shop you can trust. I also declined to have them align the new tires, because of the afore-mentioned “lifetime free alignments” deal I had with Firestone.

Now here you’re probably thinking the same thing I was thinking. “Wasn’t Firestone the place that mucked up the last alignment so badly that you had to replace the tires?” Well, yes, but I reasoned that every shop is going to have a problem once in a while—it doesn’t mean it’s always going to do a bad job. So I took it back to Firestone and had them align the wheels. Then I took it to be re-inspected (it passed).

Yesterday I left the van at my good, trustworthy repair shop to have the brakes checked. Turns out I did need new brakes, and new rotors.

I also needed the wheels aligned. One of them was visibly leaning in—one of the bolts had come loose—but both the front ones were badly misaligned and needed to be straightened out.

Once might be a mistake, but twice is starting to look like a habit. No more Firestone for my alignments. I asked my shop to go ahead and re-align them; I’d rather pay them to do it right than have to replace the tires again in two years.