Crestone #10: My iron skillet

As we gathered our gear to head west, I cleared an old plastic storage box to serve as our portable library. I brought along some Emily Dickinson; Billy Collins; the brand new Mary Oliver; this year’s Pulitzer for fiction, Olive Kitteridge; the jewel box insert for Paul Winter’s Consort’s Crestone; and my zen favorite, Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Wherever You Go, There You Are; among a few odds and ends. Cindy contributed some fiction: Charles Frazier’s Thirteen Moons, Jody Piccoult’s The Pact, and Kate Jacobs’s The Friday Night Knitting Club. Cindy has done a number on her collection, while I’ve had a pretty good time with mine, too.

Along with the library, a case of bottled water, and other stuff in the trunk, I stowed one other important thing very carefully: my iron skillet.

As it’s turned out, since my retirement, and probably for some time before that, I’ve taken on the responsibility of grocery shopping and meal planning at our house. I suppose I like to cook because my dad was such a role model. When I was a kid, he reprised his kitchen skills learned with the Army Air Corps during the war by fixing huge spaghetti dinners for the men’s group at church. After he retired he even took on some catering gigs. And, of course, there was his famous Christmas morning breakfast at the family homestead that he cooked every year until he couldn’t any more.

In any case, I like to cook. And I especially like to cook for Cindy. We say to each other now and then that if one or the other isn’t home, it’s a frozen something in the microwave. But when we’re both home, it’s a bona fide meal either off the stove or off the grill, usually fixed by me. I look at it as a real way to nourish my family and our love.

So when gear was stowed for our two week adventure in solitude, I had to bring my iron skillet. At home I use it for almost everything, from making Noah’s pancakes to grilled cheese sandwiches to my own version of spaghetti sauce. I have used non-stick fry pans in the past, but no more. There’s something about cooking on some version of Teflon that doesn’t feel healthy, especially since so many old pans have flaked off their coatings. Cindy’s favorite skillet is a lovely heavy duty stainless steel number. But for me, it’s the old iron skillet.

I’ve had this skillet through two marriages, and I suppose I’ve handled it better than some relationship issues. I oil it carefully after every use, disdaining soap unless it really is a mess. It always comes back beautiful, and frankly, with all the oilings, has become pretty non-stick all by itself.

We didn’t know exactly what to expect here at Nada. We knew we would have lots of quiet time here in our hermitage, and that we have. The books, journals, and blogs have been entertaining and enriching. And so has the cooking. Not that every meal has come out of my iron skillet, but the onions, ground turkey, and rice dish the other night was pretty fine. Something there is about sauteing onions and garlic in an iron skillet that sets the mood for any evening meal.

Taking care of ourselves, mind and body, was important during our quiet time at the mountains. My iron skillet was another anchor brought from home that has made our time together here more meaningful. Oh. And I baked cookies, too, in the toaster oven. For a pot luck.

Today’s elder idea: The habit of ignoring our present moments in favor of others yet to come leads directly to a pervasive lack of awareness of the web of life in which we are embedded.

Jon Kabat-Zinn