LMAO, he would get a kick out of that. I really don’t need that big of a Dutch oven though and I had talked myself out of it like 3 times already.

Plus, my wife is already joking about how “rather than inheriting it from your mother we’re going to inherit it from your father” and that seems like too good of a story to ruin.

Lol yeah, like Chris was saying, cleaning it up went fine. The backfire was dad wanting to keep it for himself.

Yeah, I had a Teflon wok for a while. Those are not great.

I have a 6.5" that I got for those skillet cookies you see at restaurants and while I don’t use it much for that, I use it all the time to make a single egg for a breakfast sandwich. My wife uses that one a lot in the summer for campfire snacks. She makes a bree and tomato dip with a balsamic glaze that is worth keeping the pan for that alone.

I don’t have a black iron fryer but I do have an enameled one that I absolutely love for sauces or a big batch of sausage gravy. The tall sides make it a lot easier to cook a big batch without splattering sauce all over the stove. I’ve actually never used that one for its intended purpose but if I lost all my pans and had to start over, I think I’d get the fryer before I bought the standard pan in that size.

I probably wouldn’t buy the wok again though. I think it’s fun but honestly, it’s probably not nearly as practical as a carbon steel one would be.

Oh, I have. More than once. The service at his house sucks so I don’t even have to fess up to it if I don’t want to, just seems like another dropped call.

Several years ago, I was in a waiting room while my father had heart surgery. Two things I remember were that for some reason they had us in an area that was primarily the waiting room for pediatric surgery and, a woman with one of the other families in the same lobby was getting a call every 5 minutes. I remember these things because the woman’s ringtone was “If I die young” by The Band Perry. Every 5 fucking minutes, this woman’s phone started screaming “If I die young, bury me in…” This was enough to make me want to fly off the handle waiting on my 60 year old father’s surgery. I can’t imagine if I’d been with a family who was waiting to hear about a child. To this day I can’t hear that song while seeing red for a minute.

OMG my dad does this while I’m on the phone with him. If I had a dollar for every time I had to tell him to turn off the video on his phone so I could hear him…

I am seriously coveting that loon pan.

Bonus picture of Minerva

Anyone have any recommendations on organizations to donate to that do similar work (ones that do it better obviously)? I’m all for boycotting bigots but just keeping money I would otherwise give to charity doesn’t exactly feel great.

I’ve been just shifting it to my local day center but, I’d be interested in a bigger organization that could hopefully take the place of the S.A. rather than just seeing what help they do offer just disappear.

Yeah, it was a little nerve racking setting it on there the first time.

Seemed to but, I let it preheat like 20 minutes total while I was trying to find the right temp on the burners.

No, just a regular old glass top electric.

That’s kind of the appeal. I got tired of buying electric griddles every few years.

Yeah, I used medium on both and let it preheat a good while. I wasn’t sure what temp I wanted so let it set at medium low for 10-15 minutes before deciding that wasn’t high enough and turning up the burners.

Didn’t seem to affect the rest of the range anymore than having three burners (I had a pan of eggs going too) with three individual pans would have. Took forever for the griddle to cool off enough to pull it off the stove though. I would guess that’d be the case with any heat source, that’s a lot of iron to cool.

Yeah, that’s the guy, dude was a C-list basketball player for a few years. Also an MMA fighter with an 0/1 record apparently.

Since it sounds like you’ve lived mostly in the south, I’m going to quote some advice my wife gave to a co-worker when she first moved up Georgia.

“You may think you have winter clothes but, you do not. Buy a coat, gloves and, a hat when you get here. They don’t carry them heavy enough down there.”

Also, if you’re going to try to be outside in the winter, consider bomber hats these if you’re not familiar. They look dopey but you wouldn’t believe how much warmer they keep you. I keep one in the car for emergencies and I’m convinced it’s saved my life during some breakdowns at -50.

Don’t fall into the St. Cloud mentality of the Twin Cities being 45-60 minutes away meaning you can’t take advantage if it.

Also, don’t fall for the “The cities are a war zone, you’ll get shot down there” crap that a lot of people outside the metro try to sell. Minneapolis really isn’t any worse than any other city that size and neither is St. Paul. A lot of the people who are deathly afraid of the cities are really just afraid of cities in general and don’t have any real concept of what is or isn’t a bad neighborhood.

Also, I’m seconding the food recommendations but I’d add that my wife and I were in St. Cloud this spring and we went to Arroy Thai & Filipino which was also great.

I like to say “don’t become an anecdote.”

Lol, this makes me think of a guy I went to highschool with. He was a farm kid who would get up early and work around the farm before school. One day he spills gas on his flannel shirt before school but doesn’t have time to change so he figures it’ll air out enough on his way to work (it didn’t). Second or third class of the day was shop. He starts working in the welding booth without stopping to put on the flame retardant overcoat. A hot spark hit that gas soaked flannel and dude light up like the human torch. He had some serious burns but makes a full recovery. For years after that though, the shop teacher used to say to anyone who complained about the overcoats, “go ask Phil if they’re worth it or not”.

I had a friend in highschool who’s dad had lost part of his pointer finger to an encounter with a saw blade. He had just a little bit of the bone beyond the second knuckle that was weirdly pointed and it hurt like hell when he jabbed you with it. I know this because I used to help them build shit around their farm and if he caught us being unsafe he’d poke us in the chest with that damn half-finger while he yelled at us about it.

Those lessons really stuck too.