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Kitchen veterans.

Slate has a story today on why vin­tage stoves are bet­ter than mod­ern ones, and while the writer, Regina Schram­bling, comes at the sub­ject from a some­what more oblique angle than I would have — she bought her ’50′s-era Wedge­wood as “vin­tage” in the early ’90s — we arrive at the same place. Not long ago the New York Times ran a story on Jim Har­ri­son, the poet/novelist, at his win­ter home in Ari­zona. Har­ri­son is a famous gour­mand, and one of the great plea­sures of his writ­ing are his descrip­tions of food and meals. But I was delighted to see, in a video accom­pa­ny­ing the story, that he cooks on a plain old standard-size elec­tric range that looks as though it came from Sears.

“Why spend $6,000 on a stove when you can spend $6,000 on food?” he said. Dean & Deluca thanks you too, Mr. Har­ri­son.

I’m a ded­i­cated home cook, and while I far pre­fer gas cook­tops (I have elec­tric), I have to admit my basic sub­ur­ban kitchen setup is good enough for 95 per­cent of any­thing I want to do there. If I had my druthers, equipment-wise, it would be nice to have a sec­ond oven, but I admit it would only get used at Thanks­giv­ing and a hand­ful of other occa­sions. The one thing my mod­ern stove has that Schrambling’s likely doesn’t — a self-cleaning cycle — is a pretty big plus. (I remem­ber Easy-Off, which was nei­ther.)

But we agree in prin­ci­pal prin­ci­ple. Here’s my pop­corn pop­per:

popcornpopper

It’s a Ken­more, and it’s older than me. My mother recalled it was a gift from our Aunt Char­lene to my brother and sis­ter when they were tod­dlers. Both qual­ify for AARP mem­ber­ship now. (So do I, but only on the early-admission pro­gram.) I have no great sen­ti­men­tal attach­ment to it, and will give it up with­out tears if it ever breaks, but it refuses to do so. Schram­bling writes of her Wedge­wood:

So many other essen­tials in life are clearly improved in their lat­est incar­na­tion: Phones are smaller and portable; stereos are down­sized to ear buds; cars are safer and run on less fuel. But stoves are a basic that should stick to the basics: The fewer bells and whis­tles, the less need for bell-and-whistle repair­men. Moth­er­board is not a word that should ever be asso­ci­ated with the kitchen—put com­puter tech­nol­ogy in a stove, and you’re ask­ing for a crash. Google “I hate my Viking” these days, and you get a sense of how many things can go wrong with techno-overload. Some of these ranges com­bine elec­tric and gas ele­ments, which is a recipe for trou­ble, as is microwave or con­vec­tion capa­bil­ity. This kind of overde­sign is what killed com­bi­na­tion tuner/turntables—one goes, and the other dies from neglect.

My pop­corn pop­per doesn’t have an on-off switch. You plug it in, and coils in the bot­tom unit — the stained, non-washable part in the photo — come on. Put one table­spoon of oil and one-third cup of pop­corn on the bowl and replace the lid. In a cou­ple of min­utes, the pop­ping will start. Keep your ear cocked to when it stops, unplug, empty and serve. If you like, you can melt a table­spoon of but­ter in the bowl after you dump out the pop­corn — it takes about another minute. That’s it.

Pop­ping corn is so sim­ple, you wouldn’t think planned obso­les­cence would come into the mix, but it did — pop­pers where the lid dou­bles as the serv­ing bowl, where the but­ter can be melted simul­ta­ne­ously, where you can dis­pense with oil alto­gether — all these have come and gone since Sears sold this antique to Aunt Char­lene. And yet the Ken­more sol­diers on, homely and dented, but still show­ing up for work. What more can you ask?

Some blog­gage before gym time:

Detroit culled its 167 or so city coun­cil can­di­dates to nine final­ists Tues­day. The top vote-getter was Charles Pugh, whom I remem­ber dur­ing his time in Fort Wayne, as a reporter for WKJG. He hadn’t started shav­ing his head, wasn’t openly gay and was, as I recall, sort of dim. Well, you could have made the same claim about me. Peo­ple change, and let’s bloody well hope it’s true in this case, because Detroit has had all the dim-witted city coun­cil mem­bers it can han­dle. (I’m not com­pletely con­fi­dent in this case. Pugh was the sub­ject of a fash­ion fea­ture in a local mag­a­zine a while back, and con­fessed that his trade­mark glasses — he has 30 pair or so — are com­pletely for show. Clear-glass Non-corrective lenses. What sort of seri­ous per­son indulges a wit­less van­ity like that?)

The primary’s big loser: Martha Reeves, who sounds as though she’s los­ing her mar­bles. Or just crim­i­nally dumb. Sad.

Coo­zledad brought this to our atten­tion yes­ter­day: Your health-care vote or your life? This shit is get­ting out of hand.

Off to press and squat. Happy Thurs­day.

Posted on Thursday, August 6th, 2009 at 9:57 am in Current events, Same ol' same ol'. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.


50 responses to
“Kitchen veterans.”

  1. Dorothy said on August 6th, 2009 at 10:18 am

    In 2002 when we moved to Cincin­nati I had to give up my gas range and learn to cook on elec­tric. Now seven years later I’m hap­pily back to a gas range. But we do have a Marantz ampli­fier that Mike bought before he met me (1973) that still works fine. Every once in awhile he’ll say maybe we should look at new stereo sys­tems (do they still call them that?) but why should we replace some­thing that’s still work­ing? We have a 5-disc CD player, I load it up with favorites, and it helps me to clean around the house on Sat­ur­day morn­ings, and it also helps me to cook break­fast on Sun­day morn­ing after church. At nearly 52 years of age, I still like to blast the music so loud you can’t have a decent con­ver­sa­tion in the room. But only when Mr. Cranky McCranky­pants is out in the garage. He doesn’t like the music loud.

  2. Julie Robinson said on August 6th, 2009 at 10:44 am

    Home the­atre sys­tems is what they’re called now. They are a lot smaller than the old days of 50 lb speak­ers, but they are way too com­pli­cated to use. Our son doesn’t even have a stereo, just speak­ers hooked up to his lap­top. He can take them any­where and spin tunes for friends since his entire music library is on there also.

    But I also have the same Revere­ware saucepans as when we got mar­ried 30 years ago. And they work great, so why would I want to replace them? I haven’t replaced the guy either.

  3. Sue said on August 6th, 2009 at 11:05 am

    Hey all you Indi­ana fans out there, we swear by our “Whirly­pop” pop­corn pop­per, crappy thin alu­minum and man­u­fac­tured in Indi­ana. We’ve given these to more peo­ple than we can count, and I highly rec­om­mend it to Nancy when the Ken­more goes (hope­fully not in an elec­tri­cal fire).
    The Town Hall meet­ings bother me too, but I’m not so sure about the ‘man­u­fac­tured’ part I keep hear­ing about. If peo­ple are being encour­aged to be dis­rup­tive, they still have to actu­ally decide to act like ass­holes. This is an instance where the Repub­li­can slo­gan of per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity applies – if you decide to behave like that, it’s not because you were whipped into a frenzy by a talk­ing head. It’s because you are a loser who can’t do your own basic research, and you do not under­stand that the Medicare you (or your par­ents, or many other peo­ple you know) are on is sub­stan­tially the same as the social­ized med­i­cine you object to so strongly. And really, if they’re ship­ping peo­ple in to some of these meet­ings to dis­rupt them as has been charged, then they’re get­ting them from Cen­tral Cast­ing – the uni­formly over­weight and boor­ish par­tic­i­pants at a recent Town Hall in North­ern Wis­con­sin cer­tainly rep­re­sent one of the basic stereo­types of the state.

  4. Dorothy said on August 6th, 2009 at 11:12 am

    Julie I smiled at your phrase “spin tunes for friends” because I’m not sure dig­i­tal music spins exactly. It just made me think of “spin­ning tunes” on a turntable. The new cell phone I got on Tues­day might be able to hook into my com­puter and play my iTunes – I’ve not quite fig­ured it out yet. I need to take a vaca­tion day to sit down and study the stu­pid phone man­ual to learn about all the cool fea­tures that I’ll prob­a­bly never use.

  5. coozledad said on August 6th, 2009 at 11:29 am

    Yeah. It looks like a lot of the anti-healthcare reform spaz­znas­tics are being run from the Raleigh offices of Art Pope, a neo-Confederate dick swinger who owns all the cre­ation­ist politi­cians down here. Now he’s going to own the remain­ing gib­ber­ing trash that makes up the core of the national party.
    In one way, I want to see the Repub­li­cans keep trot­ting out their base – the bloated refugees who could have been mod­els for Ivan Albright paint­ings or Duane Hansen sculp­tures with accents that scream “I just fin­ished porkin’ my mama, buddy, and I’m damn near whupped.” It’s good press for the Democ­rats.
    But I’m also sorry that we’re see­ing the worst ele­ment of the South in resur­gence. It’s a recap of the seces­sion­ist con­ven­tion, with the mod­ern planter class ril­ing up their thugs with one lit­tle odi­ous word.

  6. brian stouder said on August 6th, 2009 at 11:31 am

    Dorothy, just for the record – although I don’t actu­ally HATE my phone, I do not like it, much.

    And in my whole life, I’ve sent two 2-word texts, and I CAN say that I DO hate the tedium of THAT process.

    (so, I’m an old man who ain’t ‘with it’; I can hang with that! Here’s look­ing for­ward to the movie about Wood­stock, the pre­views of which look like Amer­i­can Graf­fiti for the 2009 crowd)

  7. Julie Robinson said on August 6th, 2009 at 11:37 am

    I think he calls it spin­ning 0′s and 1′s. Our daugh­ter loads tunes onto her Black­berry and also uses the Pan­dora app, then she plugs the whole thing into her car stereo. Son also plugs his MP3 player into his car sys­tem. And here’s one thing that hasn’t changed: he may drive a 14 year old van that looks like crap but it has a kick-ass sound sys­tem.

  8. Connie said on August 6th, 2009 at 11:41 am

    Dorothy, watch out if you replace that amp. My friends brought a high­end HD TV and HD DVD with the intent of using their excel­lent Bose stereo sys­tem, only to dis­cover there was no way to wire the old style speak­ers to the new sys­tem. I would have thought some pro could have con­verted those old style wires to RCA jacks.

    I like the elec­tric stove that came with my house, that flat sur­face is great. When house hunt­ing we looked at a high end ranch,built in the 50s and never changed, still had orig­i­nal kitchen appli­ances, amaz­ing mid cen­tury mod light fix­tures, and not a 3 prong out­let in the place. We did a lit­tle research just for fun and found out that we could prac­ti­cally raise the down pay­ment by sell­ing the stove and refrig­er­a­tor, and afford to com­pletely rewire by sell­ing two light fix­tures.

    We knew we weren’t inter­ested, but that kitchen just called out to my Eames fiber­glas chairs.

  9. LAMary said on August 6th, 2009 at 12:01 pm

    1990ish gas stove from Mon­key Ward here, and I love it. I have two burn­ers that get extra hot which is great for heat­ing the cast iron fry­ing pan or the grill pan. The oven is self clean­ing. I think we’ve pre­vi­ously dis­cussed the inverse rela­tion­ship between jazzy kitchen equip­ment and actual cook­ing activ­ity. Only in the last two years have I owned a refrig­er­a­tor that makes ice and I have to admit it’s very handy.
    What kind of jerk wears clear glasses? I’ve had to wear glasses since 1968, and while I don’t really mind, I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t need to. Does he think they make him look smarter?

  10. Jenflex said on August 6th, 2009 at 12:07 pm

    Nancy, I’ll go you one bet­ter on the pop­corn popper…we use a big pot on our range. It’s the one time an elec­tric is bet­ter. Put oil/popcorn in the pan and cover with a heavy lid. Crank the burner on High. When you start to hear siz­zling, start to shake the pan back and forth on the burner. When the pop­ping gets fast and furi­ous, turn OFF the heat (unless it’s a gas range). The resid­ual heat will fin­ish the pop­ping, and then after you dump out the corn, the resid­ual heat still left will melt the but­ter. Takes about 2 min­utes, start to fin­ish. Microwave pop­corn isn’t so fast or fool­proof.

  11. apocalipstick said on August 6th, 2009 at 12:08 pm

    I’ll get old and grumpy on the stereo issue.

    Tiny speak­ers repro­duc­ing com­pressed, tinny MP3s ain’t the way to go. Even the dynamic range of CDs, which is the­o­ret­i­cally greater than the LP, is unused due to the mania for com­pres­sion. Give me a nice amp with 30 watts or so per chan­nel and some decent size speak­ers (sur­face area mat­ters) and I’m happy. The iPod through three-inch speak­ers? Why bother?

  12. Scout said on August 6th, 2009 at 12:24 pm

    coo­zledad, I have decided to mem­o­rize your post ver­ba­tim and recite it to any­one and every­one who thinks that the town hall wier­dos are some kind of spon­ta­neous grass-roots activist move­ment. I hope you don’t mind.

  13. Rana said on August 6th, 2009 at 12:43 pm

    Jen­flex, that’s just about exactly the same method we use for our pop­corn. I’ve a big solid alu­minum pot with a Teflon lin­ing and a dent at the top that lets steam escape. Pop­corn and rice are about the only things I cook in it, but when I do cook them, it is per­fect.

    The fragility of so many appli­ances these days is some­thing that will pro­voke “back-in-my-day” rants that make me sound about twice my age. I’m about the only per­son I know who has ever taken a mod­ern tv in for repair (which was done by a retired tele­vi­sion repair­man in his back­yard shop) and don’t get me started on the annoy­ances involved in deal­ing with a car that has elec­tronic com­po­nents. I love my Honda, but some days I miss the ol’ Bug, with its engine the size of a bas­ket­ball and all the parts easy to yank and replace, even if you were fairly clue­less.

  14. LAMary said on August 6th, 2009 at 12:47 pm

    I bought one of those com­pi­la­tion CDs from Star­bucks a few weeks ago and it’s per­fect cooking/housecleaning music. The first song is Pata Pata by Miriam Makeba. I know those CDs are the aural equiv­a­lent of con­ve­nience food and I apol­o­gize for my lazi­ness. How­ever, a CD with Miriam Makeba, Smokey Robin­son, Hugo Mon­tene­gro and Herb Alpert on it seemed like a deal too good to pass up. I crank it up so I can hear it over the vac­uum.

  15. coozledad said on August 6th, 2009 at 12:53 pm

    Scout: I had no idea Pope was play­ing these Amway vic­tims until Rachel Mad­dow brought it up. And speak­ing of Bush/ Helms cronies get­ting away with mur­der:
    http://​abc​news​.go​.com/​B​l​o​t​t​e​r​/​s​t​o​r​y​?​i​d​=​8​2​5​8​9​1​5​&​a​m​p​;​page=1

  16. Mindy said on August 6th, 2009 at 12:57 pm

    I grew up in an old house that had seen its last ren­o­va­tion in the mid 1950′s. The bath­room had a pale pink tub, sink and toi­let and a black and pink Formica van­ity. The kitchen was equipped with the finest appli­ances avail­able at the time, a stain­less steel Kitchenaid dish­washer and a mar­velous stain­less steel Cham­bers gas cook­top and oven perched on cab­i­nets. The cook­top had a broiler with two burn­ers on either side. The broiler pan was adjusted under the flames in the lid with a large han­dle. My mom kept it cov­ered in alu­minum foil and often toasted sand­wich buns on it. The oven would stay so hot that I once baked a batch of cook­ies about an hour after a roast had come out of it with­out hav­ing to turn it back on. It had a cast iron inte­rior that was removed once a year to be sand blasted.

    I haven’t seen that pair in thirty years, but they’re still my def­i­n­i­tion of nor­mal cook­ing arrange­ments. The Ken­mores, Magic Chefs, etc. that have been part of my life since then are merely glo­ri­fied Easy Bake ovens. I’ll have an old Cham­bers again some­day if I live long enough.

  17. adrianne said on August 6th, 2009 at 12:58 pm

    I remem­ber my first encounter with a gas stove (grew up on elec­tric) came with my first apart­ment in Syra­cuse, where every­thing was vin­tage 1949. I lit the pilot, closed the oven door, and then was alarmed to see the door fly open and flames come roar­ing out. Oh my God, I thought, Satan is in my stove!

  18. MarkH said on August 6th, 2009 at 1:00 pm

    “What kind of jerk wears clear glasses?”

    Nancy and LAMary, I sus­pect you mean eye­wear with non-corrective lenses. You could ask Whoopi Gold­berg or Penny Mar­shall, per­haps? And, I am begin­ning to sus­pect Carl Levin of the same thing, although as an old guy, like me, I sus­pect he actu­ally needs them. He’s just never seen with­out them seem­ing to almost fall off the end of his nose.

  19. Colleen said on August 6th, 2009 at 1:01 pm

    I was flab­ber­gasted when I heard that the aver­age lifes­pan of a water heater is 10 years? Whaaa? There are some things one should only buy once or twice in a life­time, and a water heater is one.

    But what do I know…I’m on my 3rd dish­washer in 11 years…..

  20. Scout said on August 6th, 2009 at 1:07 pm

    We had an elec­tric stove when I was kid, so imag­ine my hor­ror the time I turned on the oven at a friend’s house to make Shrinky Dinks (a show of hands from all who remem­ber those) and his mom took a fire­ball to the face when she lit the pilot light not real­iz­ing I had turned on the gas 10 min­utes prior. Poor lady was with­out eye­brows for months.

  21. Sue said on August 6th, 2009 at 1:13 pm

    Our back­yard peach har­vest is in. The total num­ber of peaches we got this year is – eight. If those squir­rels weren’t so damn cute I’d be inclined to speak sternly to them about being lit­tle pig­gies.

  22. kerry said on August 6th, 2009 at 1:40 pm

    That pop­corn pop­per brings back memories!We had one just like it in the 1960s. My dad and our tabby cat (both deceased)were pop­corn fiends and they ate it topped with melted but­ter and Lip­ton Onion Soup. Wish I still had that contraption…Microwave pop­corn can’t com­pare!

  23. Danny said on August 6th, 2009 at 1:41 pm

    Tiny speak­ers repro­duc­ing com­pressed, tinny MP3s ain’t the way to go. Even the dynamic range of CDs, which is the­o­ret­i­cally greater than the LP, is unused due to the mania for com­pres­sion. Give me a nice amp with 30 watts or so per chan­nel and some decent size speak­ers (sur­face area mat­ters) and I’m happy. The iPod through three-inch speak­ers? Why bother?

    Preach it.

    I just fin­ished rip­ping my entire CD col­lec­tion to loss­less wav files and lossy, max bitrate mp3 (320 kbps) files. I can tell the dif­fer­ence between the lossy and the loss­less over our house and car speak­ers even with the 320 kbps and I think the major­ity of what kids are down­load­ing these days (from iTunes and the like) are only 128 to 190 kbps.

    The mp3′s are okay for an mp3 player with ear­buds, but I don’t con­sider them suit­able for any­thing else.

    Next step is to con­vert the wav files to flac and alac files, both loss­less (i.e. full-fidelity) for­mats, but com­pressed about 50% in size.

  24. Danny said on August 6th, 2009 at 2:06 pm

    Brian, we just watched Amer­i­can Graf­fiti last week­end. I also took some time with the extras that explain the mak­ing of the movie. Quite inter­est­ing. They paid about $90k for the rights to all of the songs and had no money left over for addi­tional musi­cal score. Elvis was con­spic­u­ously absent because his man­age­ment wouldn’t reach a deal.

    One other thing I found very cool: They played the songs through dif­fer­ent speak­ers and in dif­fer­ent loca­tions (e.g. in a car or through speak­ers set up at the end of an alley). This way, when Richard Dryfeus was in a car, it sounded like it and when he was run­ning through the streets, it sounds like the sound was com­ing from some­where out­side.

    Another thing, the words of the songs often went with the action of the scenes. Kinda like a Greek Cho­rus effect.

    Those movie guys. They can be pretty smart.

    For the record, I think AG is Lucas’ best film to date. And this com­ing from a Sci-Fi geek.

    EDIT: Nancy, I just noticed that you or JC have a type­set­ting fea­ture enabled in Word­Press that judi­ciously inserts hyphens when needed. Nice aes­thet­ics. Wor­thy of a WordSmith’s blog.

  25. Julie Robinson said on August 6th, 2009 at 2:23 pm

    Colleen has gone through 3 dish­wash­ers in 11 years, and so have I. My last so-called high qual­ity appli­ance was a pricey May­tag dish­washer which needed repair after repair, noth­ing ever seemed to be a part actu­ally cov­ered under their war­ranty. We finally ripped it out and bought a cheapie no name. Recently we thought it was break­ing down too and the DH had a bril­liant thought–change the deter­gent brand. It doesn’t like store brand Kroger but does fine with store brand Mei­jer.

  26. LAMary said on August 6th, 2009 at 2:32 pm

    I’ve gone through four dish­wash­ers in twenty three years. Three of those in the last fif­teen years. Why do dish­wash­ers die so quickly? I’ve had cheapie ones and pretty expen­sive ones and it made no dif­fer­ence.

  27. alice said on August 6th, 2009 at 2:58 pm

    A few years ago my mom’s (elec­tric) stove died. We set forth to find her a new one. It was very dif­fi­cult to find some­thing sim­ple, with­out a Star Trek wor­thy con­trol panel.

  28. brian stouder said on August 6th, 2009 at 3:24 pm

    Ladies and Gen­tle­men – we now have the 111th Jus­tice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

    Huz­zah! Huz­zah!

  29. jcburns

    jcburns said on August 6th, 2009 at 3:48 pm

    Yeah, Danny, the hyphenation/typography doohickie is just the lat­est in my ongo­ing bat­tle to NOT have URLs that run off the right side of the screen and into the next county.

    And huz­zah for Jus­tice Sotomayor, indeed.

    And let me toss in: I don’t get these “mod­ern” appli­ances that take 19th-century mech­a­nisms and tack an LCD dis­play that takes a rocket sci­en­tist to use on them….when in most cases we need “off” and “on.” Cos­metic tech­nol­ogy is no tech­nol­ogy at all.

  30. Danny said on August 6th, 2009 at 3:48 pm

    I wish it were Miguel Estrada, but the Democ­rats fil­i­bus­tered because they wanted the first His­panic to be theirs.

  31. Danny said on August 6th, 2009 at 3:54 pm

    Speak­ing of mod­ern tech­nol­ogy, did any­one see this arti­cle regard­ing adjustable focus eye­glasses?

    From the arti­cle: ” Each ‘lens’ is actu­ally a set of two lenses, one flex­i­ble and one firm. The flex­i­ble lens (near the eye) has a trans­par­ent, dis­ten­si­ble mem­brane attached to a clear rigid sur­face. The pocket between them holds a small quan­tity of crystal-clear fluid. As you move the slider on the bridge, it pushes the fluid and alters the shape of the flex­i­ble lens.”

    I loved the one slash­dot com­menter who said this: Good thing the over-40 crowd is well-known for their dex­ter­ity and abil­ity to accu­rately manip­u­late tiny adjustable slid­ers.

  32. Connie said on August 6th, 2009 at 4:37 pm

    In the last two years we have had to pur­chase a new well (3,000) and a new pool liner (4,000). With a kid in col­lege that has pretty much cleaned us out. Yes, I know the pool liner can be lived with­out, but when you own a pool…..and it is nice to finally have a no duct tape pool.

    Next on my list is mat­tress (20 yrs old), washer/dryer (23 yrs old) and freezer (29 yrs old.) I am quite sure that just replac­ing the old dryer and freezer would greatly reduce my elec­tric bill. Soon, I swear.

    Mean­while the bill for Fall semes­ter tuition at But­ler Uni­ver­sity is at the top of my to be paid pile. I will be broke again for a while. Last year, though.

  33. 4dbirds said on August 6th, 2009 at 5:02 pm

    Con­nie, I vote you get the mat­tress first. My mom sprung for new beds for our whole fam­ily when we moved from Mary­land to Vir­ginia two years ago. Our old mat­tress was about 15 years old. The dif­fer­ence is won­der­ful.

  34. Jenflex said on August 6th, 2009 at 5:11 pm

    John Hughes is dead. Any­one else feel old all of a sud­den?

  35. brian stouder said on August 6th, 2009 at 5:12 pm

    Well, you know, I think cer­tain movies sim­ply ‘cap­ture’ some­thing – espe­cially when they maybe aren’t really try­ing to; they have a cul­tural vibe, or (more pre­cisely) they’re intune with a cul­tural vibe, which they encap­su­late and pre­serve for sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions.

    Break­fast Club is pre­cisely one of those movies; it turns my head and makes me stop and watch, when­ever I come across it.

    John Hughes, RIP

  36. Dexter said on August 6th, 2009 at 5:49 pm

    Sue…I used a Whirly­pop until a hole burned through the bot­tom; you’re cor­rect, very thin alu­minum. Mom used an old pres­sure cooker pot with a plain lid and that made the best pop­corn. Since my Whirly­pop is gone I now buy bags of microwave corn, but I my go to my fave sec­ond hand store and buy an old pres­sure cooker bot­tom and go way old school. It works cuz the very thick metal dis­trib­utes the heat best.
    A Jonathan (Jonathon some­times) apple.
    A big ol’ bowl o’ pop­corn.
    A Mummy movie on a rainy Octo­ber night.
    Pop­corn weather.

  37. MichaelG said on August 6th, 2009 at 6:41 pm

    I have an ancient three qt sauce pan. It hasn’t been used for any­thing but pop­corn for over 20 years. It and the lid are pretty pop­corn spe­cific. I couldn’t use it for any­thing else. I use the microwave as well some­times.

    Ever look at the prices demanded for those old Wedge­wood, Cham­bers, O’keefe & Mer­ritt, etc. stoves? You could buy a Viking or Wolf for that kind of money. They cer­tainly are beau­ti­ful, though.

  38. nancy said on August 6th, 2009 at 6:50 pm

    A friend had a vin­tage stove, with a detail I’d never seen before or since — one of the back burn­ers was recessed, and came with a lift-out stock­pot of four quarts or so. It was like a ded­i­cated soup depot/slow cooker.

  39. LAMary said on August 6th, 2009 at 7:23 pm

    The stove we had when I was grow­ing up had that fea­ture. It was great for stews etc. It was a GE, I’m pretty sure. I learned to cook on that stove.

  40. coozledad said on August 6th, 2009 at 7:35 pm

    We had one of those for awhile. It was a GE. Hot­point, to be spe­cific. From 1953. The stock­pot was alu­minum, if I remem­ber cor­rectly.

  41. Jim Wetzel said on August 6th, 2009 at 10:05 pm

    “In prin­ci­ple” is how you agree, not “in prin­ci­pal.”

  42. basset said on August 7th, 2009 at 12:28 am

    About a year into our mar­riage, Mrs. Bas­set and I rented a house in Mis­sis­sippi which had a gas stove with two burn­ers down each side and a grid­dle in the cen­ter. The bik­ers who’d lived there before us didn’t bother putting the catch cup for the grease back under the grid­dle, just fried what they wanted to fry and let the drip­pings flow. There was grease pud­dled up in the bot­tom, all through the frame, and between the two lay­ers of glass in the door – the range hood was com­pletely plugged, with cock­roaches baked into the hard­ened fry-vapor in the screens.

    I had to take all the sheet metal off the damn thing and haul it out­side, put the pieces in trash bags, dump some ammo­nia into each one, and a few hours later haul ‘em to the car wash in the back of the Pinto for some pressure-hosing. Repeat­ing that every night after work for a week got the stove into usable con­di­tion – and when we moved out a year later the bas­tards kept our deposit. Thought about van­dal­iz­ing the place before any­one else moved in, but, then and now, it’d take more than that to get me back there.

  43. Dexter said on August 7th, 2009 at 12:31 am

    “Fer­ris Bueller…” and “The Break­fast Club” were iconic films alright, but the late John Hughes had the most ridicu­lous mul­let I have yet seen.
    You can see it here in the 1986 inter­view footage:
    http://​www​.msnbc​.msn​.com/​i​d​/​3​0​3​2​6​1​9​/​#​3​2​322217

  44. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on August 7th, 2009 at 7:47 am

    Jim, wasn’t it Grou­cho who said “Out­side of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.”

    It’s amaz­ing how those manip­u­la­tive astro­turf­ing scum­bags have planted peo­ple wor­ried about exces­sive spend­ing and the actual, intended arc of the fed­eral health care approach by the Demo­c­ra­tic Party into all the lines at Walt Dis­ney World. Plants, all of them. And the fel­low who bent my ear yes­ter­day wait­ing for the Ani­mal King­dom parade from Eng­land, who wanted me to know we should avoid any national cen­tral plan at all costs, because of the myr­iad small sub­tle intru­sions we’ll get into our lives out of the deal — purely a cast mem­ber of Karl Rove’s magic king­dom.

    Yep.

  45. beb said on August 7th, 2009 at 8:30 am

    The first stove I remem­ber my par­ent hav­ing, had that recessed stock­pot thingie. I think my par­ents kept the stock­pot even after they replaced the stove. Their cur­rent stove (elec­tric) isn’t a full bells-and-whistles type range but it does have more fea­tures than a per­son with lim­ited sight should have to deal with. For themm On, Off, High, Medium, Low is all the con­trols they can han­dle.

    I was shocked by the death of John Hughes because he was born in the same year was I was. I kind of felt the breath of Death breath­ing down the ack of my neck. It is odd that after a string of suc­cess­ful, even clas­sic, films Hughes should retire from direct­ing. Much has been said about Fer­ris Beullers’ Day Off and The Break­fast Club but Six­teen Can­dles has its unfor­get­table moments. too, like Mooly Ring­wald being groped by her grand­mother. Can there be a more humil­i­at­ing moment in a girl’s life?

  46. Jim said on August 7th, 2009 at 8:50 am

    Am I the only one who hates cook­ing with alu­minum pans? Give me cast iron every time!

  47. sisterlicious said on August 7th, 2009 at 9:18 am

    And the fel­low who bent my ear yes­ter­day wait­ing for the Ani­mal King­dom parade from Eng­land, who wanted me to know we should avoid any national cen­tral plan at all costs, because of the myr­iad small sub­tle intru­sions we’ll get into our lives out of the deal — purely a cast mem­ber of Karl Rove’s magic king­dom.

    No, just one of the legions of the mis­in­formed who choose to get their infor­ma­tion from angry white news sources.

  48. coozledad said on August 7th, 2009 at 9:56 am

    I was stand­ing in the line at the gro­cery store the other day, and three Finns and and a Saudi banker told me that the best thing for the Amer­i­can econ­omy is for suck­ers to pony up six hun­dred and fifty six bucks a month for a five thou­sand dol­lar deductible to a bunch of lowlifes who jump ship when you get sick. It’s the Amway way, and if you don’t like Amway, get the hell out of Am.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2Mo9d-dqB8&eurl=http://www.eschatonblog.com/&feature=player_embedded

    I’d say a cop in your kitchen shak­ing your ass down because you’re black qual­i­fies as quite a bit more than a small intru­sion, but that’s just me. Tap­ping my phone with­out a war­rant qual­i­fies as more than a small intru­sion, in my opinion,but it seems to make glib­er­tar­i­ans and Repub­li­cans spurt invol­un­tar­ily.

  49. LAMary said on August 7th, 2009 at 11:07 am

    The in house Brit who is no lefty can’t believe the resis­tance to health reform. He can’t believe how crappy the health care deliv­ery sys­tem is here in the US. I can’t believe that peo­ple don’t real­ize we already ration health care in a pretty bru­tal fash­ion.

  50. Rana said on August 7th, 2009 at 1:02 pm

    On, that point, LAMary, the com­ments on this post are both anger-inducing and deeply depress­ing. It’s also really hard to read the ones from peo­ple in other coun­tries and not become bit­terly envi­ous.

    http://​shake​spea​r​es​sis​ter​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​0​9​/​0​8​/​q​u​e​s​t​i​o​n​-​o​f​-​d​a​y​_​0​5.html

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