Cast iron pans.

You read that right. Cast iron pans.

Since my surgery of horribleness, I have had issues with eating. As part of the cure for my hiatal hernia, they gave me what is normally considered a weight-loss surgery called a gastric sleeve. I have the stomach the size and shape of a banana. Or perhaps a plantain. Some kinds of long thin fruit anyway.

As a result I have gotten more into cooking. If you can’t eat much, you want what you eat to not be tasteless pap. Thus, my shared recipe document on Google was born along with enlistment in a couple of sub-Reddits regarding cooking, grilling, and smoking.

During this culinary odyssey, I began to become aware of cast iron pan cooking. You know, blueberry crumbles, baked skillet potatoes...that kind of thing. At my heart, I’m a nerd for *stuff* and if I’m going to have *stuff* I want to know something about what I’m buying.

Well that’s turned into a full blown obsession and even some collecting. It even led to me creating a new Facebook account, after deactivating my personal one two years ago. Why? Because there are a huge number of Facebook groups and auction sites dedicated to cast iron collecting, identification, restoration and auctions. These folks eschew Ebay as “Feebay” and turn to FB for auction succor. Thus my re-emergence onto Facebook. It’s amazing, a TON (haha!) of cast iron is sold on Facebook. A recent charity auction in the Iron Man cast iron action group raised $13,000 USian dollars for a lady with Stage 4 brain cancer. I myself bought a Wager Ware Fat Free Fryer for the charity.

As of this writing I have 36 individual pieces of cast iron. Wagner Ware, Griswold, Victor/Griswold, Lodge, Birmingham Stove and Range, and Vollrath. Most of it pre-1960. The Victor number 8 pan dates from 1900. Smooth as glass on the bottom. I am now collecting a full set of smooth bottom high styled logo Wagner Ware pans. I am restoring the others for sale, probably on the Facebooks.

I find these pans at estate sales, rummage/garage sales, thrift stores, antique shops and even Craigslist.

I know as weird hobbies go this one is somewhere down near collecting molds, spores, and funguses. But it scratches an itch for me. See I love to restore things. I like repairing them and returning them to their original state, working, proper and cared for. For things like my 1971 Buick Centurion, this requires a lot of space, time, and money. Plus, I can’t do it in the winter.

But pans…..pans are relatively cheap. They don’t take up much space. They don’t require a ton of time to restore them. The process of restoring and re-seasoning them is relatively short and doesn’t require constant attention. You can stop and start as you need. I will detail cleaning, re-seasoning, and care of cast iron pans in another diary.

Things that mothers, grandmothers, great grandmothers used for decades that now sit crusty and unused are restored to use. They are sold or given to others that will cherish them, use them, and hopefully pass them down to their children. This idea, the return of these items to use, gives me immense satisfaction.

My wife is being incredibly patient and supportive, despite the fact that I have strewn the house with cast iron pans and dutch ovens. Still, compared to my old Buick or computers, this hobby is *cheap*. I imagine this latest obsession will burn itself out over time, but for now I’m having fun with it, learning who made what and when, the uncertainty of gate-marked pre-1900 pieces and just the quest to find cool iron to restore.