Cast Iron

Six skillets were out, just because there was a flat surface. I clean them with kosher salt, rub and heat them with walnut oil, hang them on their nails. Then I clean out the throat of the stove, where the hot gases condense. Though, through, thorough. Clean-up, shave, off to town, lunch with TR, and call the phone company. They promise repair within 24 hours, which I don't believe and explain to Maggie (in Austin, Texas) that I've been dealing with this problem since August 26. She gets her supervisor and he agrees to cancel my bill for last month and get me credit for another month. He swears that I'll have a phone by 5 PM on Friday. He's a nice guy, Paul, and I manage to not vent at him, though I had actually written down some phrases, and practiced the tirade several times on the way to town. An artist friend has opened a second-hand shop with his studio in the back and B says he must have a hundred pieces of cast iron cookware, reasonably priced. I need to go look, though it is certainly true that I don't need any more. I wouldn't mind owning one of those small gravy boats with the guaranteed-to-get-knocked-over handles. I had my own cast iron, then, when Mom got one of those glass topped electric ranges, I got all of the family pieces too. So I have maybe 20 pieces that I use, and another two that need reconditioning. One of the skillets, that I use often, is ten inches, used for decades frying fish on campfires, and it is a pitted beauty. The Romans had cast iron plows by 1100 BC, but the Brits were still using wooden ones until around 700 BC. In the Dark Ages people were always hungry, they no longer knew, to read, Latin, the great books about agriculture and growing grain, so they quietly starved in their keep, with narrow slots, through which they shot arrows. Barley and rye bread with sawdust and weeds. They knew that they used to live on acorns, but the previous generations had cut down all the oak trees to plant fields, which were now outside the walls, and dangerous. The 900's were awful, ergot in the rye, whole urban areas died, only in isolated monasteries was there any sense of continuity, because they grew their grain and ground their meal, and copied old books, for which we are eternally grateful, and ate a decent bread. Bread and brewing are closely related via yeast. Christ and the sacrament. Blood and body. A very old argument. I prefer my wafers with pate and a smear of stinky cheese, if there was a god, he would understand that.The French are always one step ahead. Thunder, better go.