Pans and Eternity

I love things that are very well made and last forever, or threaten to. It was a blow last week when one of my much-loved Le Vrai Gourmet stainless steel pans, bought more than 20 years ago, parted from its handle. It was worse when in late spring our ancient food processor packed in. As that was an engagement/shacking up present we'd had it 29 years.

As regards the food processor design, or quality, has gone backwards, its replacement is far less solid, harder to clean, more awkward to assemble, and generally a bit annoying. Same maker though. Looks like planned obsolescence has hit the kitchen appliance market since the 1980s.

It's a lesson. Buy expensive and well made and it is cheaper than buying cheap and crappy. My late father-in-law's toolbox was full of chisels and wrenches and saws that he'd probably had since the late 1940s when he came to England. He too bought the best, but he also maintained them, oiled steel surfaces, sharpened blades, polished wood. I try to follow suit with kitchen gear like my paella pan, lovingly re-seasoned after each use.

I'm due to go to the tip today or tomorrow to get rid of rubbish that has accumulated here, including a Kodak printer that died young and unloved. I really need to transfer my thinking about kitchen stuff to my other purchases.

Circular Chickens

It is not the chickens which are circular - though I'd pay good money to see that - but what they are involved with, namely being living bins for our waste vegetable matter. I made some vegetable stock yesterday, the onion, carrots, celery etc simmered to soggy mush by the end. Not appetizing for us, but with a bit of grain mixed in it made a treat for the hens.

I thought of this listening to Drive on 5-Live today, where people are complaining about recycling - not about doing it, but the stupidity of separating everything out then the council putting it all in one munching truck. Recycling and reuse are economic and sensible, but we don't get it right often enough. A lot of the glass from recycling is, so I have been told, used as cullet, one of the layers in building up a road. that is use of course, but it isn't the best use surely, as recycled it could go round and round. Circular glass in fact.

We like the idea of a pig to take this one stage further, but as a) our neighbours might not be so keen; and b) our Victorian house's deeds state in terms we have to have a 12 foot wall if we want to keep pigs, it isn't practical. Which is a pity, as with a lifelong love of Wodehouse and Blandings (I recently declared myself Life President of the Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe Defence League) I'd love to raise a fat pig like the Empress. Who (not which for such a character) was indeed circular.