Dick's Hideaway:

Hand me down magic

Dick MacKenzie - www.dickshideaway.com

 

I remember frying bacon in this pan when I was a boy in Vermont in the 1950s. I know Ma must have had other frying pans, but this is the only one I remember in all my growing-up years.

It's a very thick cast aluminum pan my mother received as a wedding gift around 1944. It was used, second hand, at the time. A paired kettle was gifted to another lady.

Three years ago, the last time we visited my mother, she prepared a full pan of butter fried shrimp on her stove top in a tiny Florida apartment. It was the best I've ever had!

I am now the keeper of the pan. We use it sparingly for special meals and special times.

Tonight I prepared chicken breast fillets, dusted with flour, covered with paprika, salt, and pepper, slowly sauteed in butter. It was exquisite. Ma would have been proud and happy, I'm sure, to see such wonders still rising from her 75-year-old, very wonderful frying pan.