Sunday, February 27, 2005

Marital bliss and a cast iron skillet

Boys, this is more a post for the girls, so go read something else for a while, 'k? Here, I'll give you a topic.

Right, now for the girl talk.

I was talking to my mom yesterday on her traditional Saturday phone call (she always calls at 4pm our time) and as happens, we got around to talking about the annoyingness of men, or specifically husbands. For someone as youthful and vibrant (ahem) as me, I have been married an awful long time. I met Rich in 1989. I was 20. So yeah, it's been a long time and sometimes, as happens in a long term relationship, I get annoyed with him. (He never gets annoyed with me, of course. Mom and I have determined that we are perfect in every way.)

So Mom was talking about being annoyed with Dad, and I was talking about being annoyed with Rich, and we started riffing on the benefits of the cast iron skillet applied swiftly to the husband's head. You know how in cartoons and movies, the angry housewife klongs the husband on the head with the skillet, he drops like a rock and everyone laughs? Of course, the man is not seriously hurt, being the hard headed man that he is, and the woman gets the satisfying bell-like clangor of the skillet upside the head. I mean really, we don't want to hit them HARD, we just want a bit of a thunk and a nice deep ringing metallic echo.

So we started considering which skillet would be best for the task at hand. Do I use the Le Creuset enamel on iron? Or the Tefal heavy duty teflon coated aluminum? Or, the piece de resistance, Big Bertha, the 40 year old, cast iron, perfectly seasoned 8 pound skillet my mom gave me when I moved into my first flat? So heavy I almost need two hands to lift it?

I decided, after a brief consultation last night with Rich as he annoyed the shit out of me when I was trying to fall asleep, that the Le Creuset would be the best choice. (Rich tried to convince me of the efficacy of the small, light weight aluminum saute pan, but I quickly saw through his self preservatory tactics.) The Le Creuset would make a nice satisfactory "klonggggg" sound, it has an ergonomic handle angled perfectly for right handed or above the head swinging, it's heavy enough to be effective but not too heavy for me to lift, and the enamel coating makes for an easy clean up.

This is all theoretical, of course, mostly mulled upon when my loving spouse is bugging the hell out of me. The actual physical research will be left to the cartoon characters and the TV housewives. I am available, however, for consultations and think tanks discussing the merits of the different brands of skillet on the hardness of the particular head to be klonged.

1 comment:

  1. I own the mother of all iron skillets, handed down through three generations of my family. It's flat, weighty and yet easy in the hand. Only drawback is the fact that it's flat, so might not "clong" satisfactorily.

    PS. You got drunk with the Butthole Surfers? Crikey...

    ReplyDelete

All comments are moderated. No spam gets through. Don't try it. I Love comments from real people though! Thanks!