Last of the cast iron

I am always out and about searching for a deal.  Recently I have posted about getting a second set of cast iron for our house.  We keep our good chineese cast iron set at our weekend ranch and my wife needs a set at the house.  Currently we have two skillets at the house we picked up at Canton Trade days last month.  Now I am wanting to get some really rough and rusty stuff to play around with till I can find a good dutch oven, flat iron, and maybe a cornbread flat.  Well I came upon a gentleman that had a nice pile of rusty skillets that looked to be a solid 30 to 40 years old.  He told me ten bucks a skillet and I knew that was over the top priced for these suckers.  I threw him back five bucks and he said he would do five bucks if I bought them all.

Now the magic of shopping at flea markets, trade days, or garage sales is that you need to be there on the last day or when they are packing up to move to the next gypsy fair.  I learned this from an old friend that told me people don't want to pack all these goods up and move them to the next location.  So if you catch them while they are packing up, they are more willing to sell at a discount than when they are unloading the goods.  He said cash is alot easier to carry than merchandise.  This guy tells me he buys whole estates and sells them at events like this.  You could tell these were estates because he had anything and everything.  Well I wanted the skillets really bad and he had already come down 50% if I took them all but, I did not need six skillets for 30 bucks so I shot him the offer at 20 bucks takes them all.  He said that sounded fair and I had a backpack full of fresh rust to clean.

That price works out to 3.33 dollars a skillet.  Now I am challenged on how to get these irons in good working order.  I was really wanting to get a dutch oven, skillet, and flat iron to clean but beggers can't be choosers and this was an oportunity knocking.

I am signed up to teach a dutch oven cooking class coming up in December and I have been to this class three years in a row now and it is pretty much a session on basic things you can cook in a dutch oven and basic care of cast iron.  I want to spice this class up with showing the attendants about how to restore rusty cast iron and how to find cast iron.  Back to cleaning cast iron, it is daunting of a task to get a brillow pad, veg oil, and elbow grease and get six rusty skillets back into good shape.  I decided to do a little research on the web for easier alternative ways to clean cast iron and came across people who clean using electrolysis.

http://www.gcica.org/ElectrolysisMethodbyJohnBelden.htm

This electrolysis method is very mad scientist stuff but looks really fun to do and easy as well.  Plus using the electrolysis method is fairly cheap as well.  I can't wait for this weekend to try this out.  What is the worst that can happen?  I ruin a 3.33 dollar piece of cast iron?  I don't think so, you can always take cast iron back to square one and start all over.

OneTouch Delica

I had received this "One Touch Delica" lancet device from Debby Kilby with Life Scan.  I was reluctant to accept it from her because I really like my "Accu-Chek Multiclix" lancing device and have found no other that compares.  Well after my two week test of using the Delica I must say, this thing sucks!  The box tells me that it has less vibration, smaller needle, and more depth options.  First the vibration feels more to me. I think the issue is that they used the cheapest spring they could find.  I had to start right away with the depth as deep as it could get just so the spring would be as powerful as possible.  Second, they need that small needle because the spring is so weak that the lancet has to be as sharp as possible just to break the skin.  Last bit of propaganda is like the movie "This is Spinal Tap" where they say their amps are louder because they go to eleven and all other amps go to ten.  Who cares if your depth is an eleven or twenty?  I compare all lancing devices to Bows and arrows.  Everyone likes a certain feel and function of their lancing device.

To set off my bad reviewing to an new low.  I was given this Nova Max BG monitor and if I thought the Delica was bad this Nova Max is straight out of the 80's.  Now I was not reviewing the Max since it is dead in the water and they are moving their products to another line.  This monitor was more of a gift, and a bad gift at that.  The screen was hard to read, it felt cheap, and was just wrong all the way around.

Back to this Delica lancing device, I think the most dissapointing part was just how cheap the thing felt.  That is the first thing I love about the Accu-Check Multiclix, it is as sturdy as an ox and it shoots very accurate.  The Delica does not fit in anybodies hand, it has wierd buttons, and feels like the quality of a Mcdonalds toy.  The front of the box says "More comfortable testing,"  who, what, where and how is this piece of Walmart rejected product more comfortable?  Don't get me started on the wheel of death on the end that adjusts the depth.  I have to check the depth level everytime because it rolls to another number constantly.  Then I don't even want to discuss the double button slide things.  How big do you need to make the cocker?  Then changing the needle I stab myself everytime because the cap has this crazy twist and pull system and it causes me to drag this thing up and down my arm everytime.  Just make the cap pull off!

The final result of this lacing device on my patented syringe scale of one to five syringes and five being the best, I give the Delica 1 syringe out of 5.  I hate being negative and wish there was something good to say about this device but there is nothing.  The engineers that designed this device need to find work in another field, maybe working on mideval torture devices.  They are not fit to design diabetic devices.  To make this even worse my mail order pharmacy called and said I could get 900 lancets and 2 more free Delica's for 20 bucks.  I took them on that supposed "Deal."  I might just use a rusty nail for the next three months.

Costume Party

This weekend I had a conflict of events.  My friend Paul was attending a tower climbing and rappelling certification camping trip.  I really wanted to get certified in climbing and rappelling and of course camping is always tops on my list.  The only thing is Saturday night my wife and I were invited to a murder mystery costume party.  Since the party was Saturday night I had to make a choice, either camp with my son and Paul and get tower certified or attend the party with my wife.   The choice was easy, of course I was going to go to the party with my wife and support her and have a fun night out.  I can get tower certified another weekend and really how often do I go rappelling?  Not too often. 

Now the theme of the party was based on "Deadwood" and I was to be Con Stapleton.  My wife let me know that first I had to get a big colorful hat, deck of cards, western outfit, and be dumb.  The dumb part is real easy for me and I have a western belt with some leather shoes that pass for western.  I just needed was this colorful hat and accessories to set it off as old west, not new west.

Now I think you can see from the pictures that finding a colorful cowboy hat is harder than I thought.  Plus I am cheap and not sure if I was ever going to need this hat again.  Then I had to look the part and make my wife happy with my appearance.  Yea, the hat above did not make the cut.  My son and I had a good day at Party City.

The final hat that closest fit the bill.  My red, kind of girlish hat above.  This hat was found after hours of searching through slutty nurse outfits, slutty teacher outfits, and slutty vampire outfits.  My son and I finally came to the conclusion that on Halloween women want to be slutty one day out of the year.  The store is broken down into three parts.  The first part is children's costumes which is about 60% of the store.  The next part is slutty women's outfits and this is about 30% of the store.  The the final part is everything else and that makes up the final 10% of the store.  Now I am not saying anything is bad about this, it is just a little awkward around my 15 year old son looking at fish net stockings and skin tight miniskirts.

Car fishing on the way home.  I spotted this Maserati and had to move in for the catch.

Here is a better picture of the Maserati.  Looks to be a Gransport.

Do I look like Con Stapleton or what?  I think all of you just said or what.  Anyways I feel the part and kind of look good at it as well.  I picked the vest up at party city as well.  Now the vest said fits most sizes and I would fall under that line but it was real tight.  Or maybe I am just that buff, maybe not.

Here is my wife dressing up like one of those geisha girls.  She was Mrs Wu and from what little I know about Deadwood I think the role was transformed from the Mr. Wu because she had the similar interests of the Chinese in Deadwood.  The host of the party wrote the murder script and did a very good job.  We had a ton of laughs and ate fried chicken and got to know one another.  I found out later that the host of the party was a diabetic as well and he and I had a good discussion on diabetes.  In the end my wife won best female costume and also best female character.  If you always say no to things in life just because you are diabetic or are shy and embarrassed, in the end life just might be passing you along.  Get out and do something different and have fun for gods sake.