Don't mess with my Aunt Trixie

Calm down and have a lemonade

          by Robert LaFrance

          The word ‘seasoning’ seems to appear a lot in our everyday speech, but probably the last thing we would think about in connection with that word is the ‘seasoning’ of a black cast iron frying pan; this pretty much has to be done once every year or so, otherwise our delicious ham-cheese-olive omelet will stick to the pan instead of heading for our hips.

          “Never wash a cast iron frying pan in soap and water!” admonished Aunt Trixie (former exotic dancer in Red Deer, Alberta, hence the exotic name) when I visited her last Thursday afternoon. “Just as sure as Pierre Trudeau was one of my boyfriends, the next time you scramble eggs, they will stick to the pan and you will need a small charge of gelignite. About 75 grams per pan I would think.” She was a commando during the big war.

          “You have to season your frying pan and then swear on the Bible, Koran, etc. that you will never again wash it in soap and water,” she went on, and so I did, although I had to go to Edmundston for a Koran.

          Here’s how she told me to do it: “Remove any excess crud and scales (what does she think I cook in there?) from the pan. Heat up the oven to your ‘self-cleaning’ temperature and put the frying pan in for two and a half hours. The heat makes the bumps and stuff flake off. After that there should be a fine layer of rust on the pan. Remove this with fine steel wool and hot water and you can even use mild hand soap for this – but NOT strong dishwashing soap. Rinse it well.

          “Coat the inside of the pan with vegetable oil or shortening and put it in a 250-degree oven for thirty minutes. Remove the pan from the oven, wipe off the excess oil, and return it to the oven for another 30 minutes. Then turn the oven off--”

          “Don’t you mean ‘turn off the oven’, auntie? That’s a misplaced modifier the way you said it.”

          “All that seasoning draws the oil into the pan,” she continued when I had regained consciousness, “and when you cook using oil, it will be drawn in too, so your eggs won’t stick to the pan any more.” She glared at me. “UNLESS you wash the cast iron frying pan in water and dish soap. That will take the oil out of the metal. I have a whole set of Griswold frying pans and I have never washed them in soap and water. Remember that or I will break your fingers, one at a time.”

          NOTE: During WWII she was in the SOE, or Special Operations Executive. Those were those guys and gals who parachuted into occupied territory—mostly France. I feel sorry for those poor Nazis who had to deal with Auntie. On the other hand, she probably didn’t make them suffer as much as she does me. Where there’s a will…

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          My friend Flug (who avoids Auntie like the bubonic plague) was sitting on his deck and sipping on a Picaroons Dooryard lemonade when I dropped by after seasoning my largest frying pan. When I told him about visiting Auntie, he shuddered and took a big drink. “She scares me,” he admitted. “I never saw anyone who was so sure that violence solves everything. Except maybe Chuck Norris.”

          “Well, she was a professional wrestler,” I said, “and a commando, and a bodyguard to John Diefenbaker.”

          “One more mark against her,” he said. “Anyway, what do you think of my lawn? I just finished mowing. I find to get up in the morning and go out to mow the lawn is great exercise. Keeps the old blood coursing through the veins—and I suppose arteries too. I don’t know a lot about botany, or is it ichtheology? Anyway I feel invigorated after all that exercise.”

          “Flug,” I said, “you have a riding mower with a 32-inch cut. Your lawn is the size of my pool table.”

          “Still, it’s the idea of going out in the bright and shining morning—yeah, I’ve been reading Robert Browning—and getting things done,” he protested. “Just walking out in the garage and starting the mower (I know it’s an electric start) and getting out in the sun—that’s something.”

          I had to agree it was something. I looked over at my acre of lawn and thought about my sputtering Craftsman push mower that I had bought in 1991 from an Armenian rug salesman in Minto. “Got any more of those lemonade, Flug?”

          It doesn’t do to rush into things. Look at Highway 105, between Kilburn and Perth, Tilley and Perth. A new road has been needed since 1999. Ho-hum. A quick thought: I may ask Auntie to pay the government a visit.
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