Papa's Cast Iron

In 1968, my mother married my dad.  He went off to the Army and she stayed behind to "set up housekeeping.

One of the items that was gifted to her was a piece of cast iron cookware.  It had belonged to my "Papa" (Paul James Forbes) and he gave it to her.  

Cast iron was THE cookware to have as it could be seasoned and would then be non-stick and was versatile, going from the campfire, grill, oven, stovetop, and onto the table... with a potholder under it, of course.

The pan prepared many items for my Papa and was then used for many meals and many cakes of cornbread when I was growing up in my own home.

Sometime, around 2000, mom passed the pan down to me.  I used it over and over.  Burned a few things in it.  Had to re-season it.  Learned how to make cornbread in it (after trial and error).  Tossed more grilled cheese sandwiches in it than I can count.

It met near catastrophe in 2013.  My son was cleaning the kitchen and he scrubbed THE pan with a Brillo pad!  These pans are not meant to be scrubbed and especially with a Brillo pad!  I was furious but decided to use it as a teaching moment for the dear boy.  We homeschool our kiddos and a tutorial in cast iron seemed like a good lesson!

My oven needed to be cleaned and I took advantage of a break in Carolina heat and humidity of August to use the 67 degree days to open my windows and get to work.  I put THE pan and all of my other cast iron pieces in the oven upside down.  I figured if I were going to strip and season one piece, I might as well do them all.  The oven went to the "self-clean" setting and I went on about my chores.  The house was smelly and filled with smoke, at times.  Five hours later, I returned.  All the crud from the oven and pans was now on the bottom of the oven, ready to be wiped out and my pans emerged... silvery gray with a few rust spots showing through.  Brillo pad, vinegar and salt did the rest of the scrubbing until I was down to just pure silver cast iron.  Then back into the oven for 15 minutes to dry out.  Water = rust       Rust = sad cast iron

A very small amount of Crisco shortening was put on a lint free rag and the whole pan... inside, outside, handle... everything was coated in a very thin layer of shortening.  

Back into the oven for one hour.  

        Out of the oven, another thin layer.  

                 Back in the oven for 15 more minutes.

                               Out of the oven, another thin layer of shortening.

                                             Back in the oven for 15 more minutes.

Finally, one more thin coat of shortening.  The pan was rinsed and then wiped out with a paper towel and put back in the oven for a few minutes to dry out thoroughly.

Alas...  THE pan,,,  

She was a beauty and cleaned up so well.  It looks brand new and the cleaning of years of seasoning revealed some cast iron history.  There was a ring around the bottom of the pan with notches in it and a number.  I set out to explore to figure out what this unmarked pan was.

Lodge Manufacturing made (and still makes) cast iron cookware in St Pittsburg, Tennessee.  They started in 1910 and are still going in 2013.  They are actually the only company still making cast iron cookware in the United States.  Between 1940-1960, they made pans like this one.  The heat ring was inset on the bottom rather than being right at the rim.  There were three notches in the heat ring located at 9 o'clock, 12 o'clock and 3 o'clock.  These are referred to, by collectors, as "3-notch-Lodge" pieces.  In the 1940's, the pan would have had a raised molder's mark at the 6 o'clock area.  Mine did not.  Later versions of the pan would have had an "SK" for "skillet" below the number 5.  Mine did not.  This puts my pan in the 1950's time period.

Now for the number 5 on the bottom.  When cast iron began, people cooked over wood or on a wood stove.  If a foundry made cast iron wood stoves, then many times, they also made cast iron cookware.  Other foundries would have also made the cookware.  Wood stoves had "eye" numbers and the pan sizes coordinated with the eye number.  The number 5 skillet is actually about eight inches in diameter.

In 1960, Lodge began marking their pans "USA" or "Made in USA" and in 1990, they began adding a logo with their name.

Today, my pan made lunch.  The black patina of the pan is perfect and because I took the time to season it, it is non-stick does a beautiful job.  Not bad for a pan that has been through three generations and is cooking meals for the fourth!  Not bad for an item that is 63 years old and still going strong.

THE pan joins the others in the collection and someday, my son can make a sandwich, panini, or egg for his child and tell them bout his mama and her love for cast iron, her Papa, and the beauty in things of the past.

Just for those future generations...

How to clean cast iron.

1.  Remove food 

2.  Add warm water to the still hot pan and let it bubble and bowl for a minute

3.  Add a good handful of course salt to the pan

4.  Use a nylon scrubby or rag to wash the pan

5.  Rinse thoroughly

6.  Dry thoroughly

7.  Put back on stove for 30 seconds or so, just to dry out pan

8.  Put a small amount of cooking oil in the bottom of the pan (dime's worth at most)

9.  Use a wadded up paper towel to spread the oil thinly all over the inside of the pan

Do not use soap.  Do not let soak in water.  Do not put in the dishwasher.  Do not EVER use a Brillo pad.

More importantly, do not EVER EVER EVER sell at a yard sale!!!

Winter Gardening & Junk Collecting

These last few days have been unseasonably warm for February and I have taken advantage of the warmth by doing some things outside. The horse manure that I picked up last fall has now cooled enough to put on garden beds and the 20 asparagus crowns I bought at the local farm service have been placed in trenches. I bought two year old crowns in the hope of getting a light harvest next year. I also bought some seeds to start this year so that I can add to that. Why seeds and crowns, you ask? Seeds are cheap but asparagus crowns? Not so much! I also took advantage of the warmth to plant Waldo Peas, and onion sets. My indoor makeshift greenhouse has tomatoes, squash, eggplant, zucchini, herbs, cukes, and okra in it. I have high hopes for my garden this year and am hoping that the manure and leaves I piled in last fall has ammended my North Carolina clay.

As warm weather has arrived, I have realized how much I miss my chickens and I have been scouring building plans to find a coop I like. On a trip to town, I noticed that some buildings thathad been burned to make way for commercial property had a storage shed behind it so I found the owner and asked if I could take down the building. To my delight, she said I could and could have anything I wanted. I have stumbled onto a goldmine. Items for the chicken coop, a couple of old chairs that will be great decorative items, canning jars, and an old horse-drawn garden plow. I was an absolute beauty in my pink mucking boots going through the "junk" as I found "treasures" to take home. What have you done to recycle or reuse this week?

The End of the Snow Days

I LOVE SNOW! I love the cold weather, staying in a warm and cozy house, the smell of soup simmering on the stove, and the flicker of candles and oil lamps. Christmas is the season I love the most so to include snow and Christmas this year was perfect! We were expecting another Southern storm this weekend and I was hoping for another Christmas day snow that looked like this...



Wishes didn't come true though. My friends in South Carolina and Georgia got slammed with 9 inches of snow and there was snow on the beaches of North Carolina. 49 of 50 states had measurable snow (excluding Florida) but alas, even though it snowed all day Monday, we got very little and ended with an ice storm.

I love the way my house looks when it snows but the view I love most is one from my back porch...



I call these the "ladies choir" because they sing in the Spring with all the birds that come to nest. They sing in the howling winter winds as they sway to and fro and I LOVE the song they sing when there is snow and I get up early in the morning, put a coat on over my pajamas, and go out when the rest of the neighborhood is asleep and there are no cars on the road. If you are really quiet, you can hear them sing a slow whirring song as the quiet cold filters through their branches. It is a beautiful song that seems to whisper, "God was just here... He is alive... He can make all things pure... just look at His majesty" and the sound of it sends a shiver up my spine. The most beautiful song is the one you have to be completely quiet to hear. This one was one of those snows when "He says to the snow, 'Fall on the earth', and to the rain shower, be a mighty downpour. So that all men He has made may know His work, He stops every man from his labor." (Job 37:6-7).

Things did stop... people stayed home, businesses closed, children were home from school... and I loved every minute of it. For a few brief days, we had no schedule to keep, no ballgames to go to, no agenda to take our time. I cherished every minute of it because, as I watch my children grow, I know the days of having them home is growing more narrow and I want to freeze time for a few moments longer. I want them to know that their mother loves them and I want them to grow up knowing I was not anxious for them to be out but that I wanted them here... near me... safe... innocent... child-like... for as long as they could be. I want them to learn, through me, how to love their children. I want them to someday wake up early and walk by bedrooms with children sleeping peacefully and while in their pajamas, I want them to walk outside and hear the still small voice saying, "God was just here."

Winter storm was brewing yesterday and kids home from school = hungry kids all day! I prepped veggies and put on two big pots of soup during the early afternoon and let them simmer and bubble away all afternoon. Put a delicious bread recipe in the breadmaker and left the kitchen to do other things. Result for minimal work was a wonderful ham and potato soup as well as a vegetable beef soup. Leftovers were reheated today and as most of the potatoes were gone out of the vegetable beef soup, I added more boiling water and different pasta's I had and made a delicious "new" soup today that was great with grilled cheese sandwiches... cooked on a cast iron skillet of course!



There is lots of soup left that will be lunch tomorrow and I will freeze the rest for later.

Dessert was wonderful... one can of blackberry pie filling poured into the bottom of a 9x9 casseerole dish. Dump one box dry yellow cake mix on top. Top with pats of butter all over the top. Bake at 350 until top is brown and fruit bubbles to the top. I served this right out of the oven with Breyers vanilla ice cream on top. Too good!

Mary and Martha Biddix

Two of the babies born to Melissa Ardella and Robert Marion Biddix were twins.

Ma and Papa would have two sets of twins, Mary and Martha as well as Carter and Sam.

The following came from an interview with my grandmother, Marion Ardella Biddix Hall and was from stories she had been told by her Mama:

"Martha lived for about an hour and Mary lived about four days. I don't know what was wrong with them - whether they were premature or what. Mama had a little gray gown my Grandmaw Biddix had made for one of the twins. It was straight and had red binding around the neck. I don't know what they were buried in but Mama kept that gown in the trunk."

Both are buried in the same grave and with the same stone at McKinney Gap Cemetary on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Spring is Garden Time

Well.... Last year I decided to do my own garden.... had a man come out and plow up the dirt and then rented a tiller and tried to till the garden myself. The NC red clay was impossible but even with the difficulty, we had several good meals of salad, squash, zuchinni, and other garden spot offerings.


This year, my sister-in-laws' dad came out and tilled the garden for me. I then spent the afternoon hoeing, getting out more rocks, and making hills and rows where plants would go. We have a wonderful farm service store here in town and a trip there yielded all of the plants I would need. The kids and I planted and planted and planted some more and here is what we ended up with....


8 Thornless Blackberry Bushes which I will trellis as they get bigger (given to me by SIL's dad)

Two blueberry bushes (also courtesy of SIL's dad)

The garden spot ready for planting. Since this pic, it now has 21 tomato plants, 12 pickling cukes, 4 eggplant, 4 eating cukes, 4 squash, 4 zuchinni, 6 okra, 6 bell pepper, 3 sweet banana pepper and 3 jalepeno

And one last picture.... my pear tree has a good offering of pears this year... not bad for it's 2nd Spring in the ground!

First Day of School

Summer is over and the kids are back in school. No more lazy days of staying up too late watching movies and sleeping in late. This year is a lot of firsts... Katelin's first day as a 16 year old... Jonathan's first day as a middle school student... and Carrie's first day as a 2nd grader! We told Katelin it was her birthday and every parent in our county got a present... they got to send their kids to school!!!