Quesadilla in Cast Iron Skillet

This technically wouldn't be a quesadilla because I don't fold over the tortilla - I use two tortillas. This is a little spicy version, just like I like it.

Spicy Quesadilla

Heat your #9 cast iron skillet slightly above medium on about a 5 1/2 or 6.

Butter one side of 2 soft taco size tortillas - I generally don't use real butter I use Olivio Light.

Grate about half a cup of cheddar cheese.

When skillet is properly heated place first tortilla in skillet butter side down, sprinkle cheese evenly around the tortilla.

Sprinkle a half a teaspoon each around on top of the cheese of refrigerated crushed red peppers and crushed garlic.

Place the second tortilla on top the cheese, red peppers and garlic with the buttered side up.

When the bottom tortilla is sufficiently browned turn the whole thing over with a spatula so that the top tortilla is now on the bottom.

When the new bottom tortilla is browned to the desired color, place it on a plate and cut into serving size pieces.

Eat and Enjoy!

Updates About a Variety of Stuff

I promised pictures of the Griswold pan I found in the charity shop once cleaned as I subjected you to the dirty pictures in "The Competition Can be Fierce" post. Well the pan turned out to not be worth the time. It is pitted on the bottom and then it turned out to be cracked. I didn't think it was cracked to begin with so maybe I cracked it somehow but I don't think so. I haven't had very good luck with the fully marked Victor pans. This one ended up pitted on the bottom and then cracked while an earlier one which can be seen in post "Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh! It's Broken!" came in the mail with the handle broken and it was cracked.

In the post "Seasoning Cast Iron - My Way UPDATE" you can read that I've been doing a bit of experimenting with my seasoning techniques to see if there is a better method. I just want to update about the temperature that I use for seasoning 500 degrees. I have now gotten to as low as 425 degrees but don't care for the results. Even at 475 degrees the cast iron looks wet and greasy, not what I'm looking for so I am working back toward 500 degrees. The lower the temperature the wetter and greasier the cast iron looks. The last batch I did was at 480 degrees and it seemed to be what I'm looking for, so I guess that is the lowest I should go with the temperature.

In my post "Molasses as a Rust Remover" I said molasses works as a rust remover and it does. It does a fantastic job if you have a lot of time. You don't necessarily have to dilute the molasses with water as the post states and I found somewhere online. I took molasses straight out of the bottle and coated my very heavily rusted Favorite Piqua griddle and hung it up down in the basement (cellar) for a couple of months, the molasses was starting to get moldy. I then put the pan into my lye bath because I didn't want to scrub all that molasses off, I took the pan out after a couple of days and washed it good and all of the heavy rust was gone.

Update on the Favorite Piqua griddle that I used for the post "Molasses as a Rust Remover". Where the pan had the heaviest rust it was pitted beyond use. Sad to say but I should have put it back on the shelf where I found it but it has been fun using this pan for experiments and worth the conversation. The surface of the griddle is so ugly that I don't see wasting the time on posting pictures of it.

In my very first post "Wow these were snatched up fast!" I had a couple of Griswold pans that were purchased from my store in what I thought was a very fast amount of time. Well those were kind of slow moving as I posted a Griswold slant logo griddle that I thought was kind of ugly because the nickel coating had worn mostly off. I had this griddle sitting out in the garage for over a year until I decided to clean and season it because I was running out of things to clean and season and I didn't have a griddle in my store because I had sold the one I had. The handle design is rare for Griswold. This griddle didn't last an entire day before it was sold! In my stores I've started using a sold lightning bolt for any sale that is less than a week after posting all others I'm using a sold blue ribbon.

Somewhere I mentioned electrolysis as a rust remover. My first attempt at setting up a tank was a miserable failure. I went with all the advice online for setting up the perfect tank and read and researched and whatnot. Well I fiddled and messed with my setup and couldn't get it to work. The problem turned out to be that there was a short in the battery charger and it didn't work. I returned the charger and there weren't any more on the shelf so I got my money back. In the mean time I've spent the money I had for a charger so I have to save up all over again to attempt getting a tank running.

I think that is all the updates. Hope you enjoy them.

Adventures in Cast Iron

Went to an auction (review later) today that was advertising Griswold and Wagner skillets. They had one of each and four other junk skillets! The Griswold was a small logo #8 late handle and the Wagner was a #10 from the 1960's to 1980's with the size in inches and made in USA on it, nothing special. I was very disappointed having driven for an hour to get there. Deceptive advertising? The one positive for the day was I got to spend time with my youngest daughter (she's 5), we get to go out without mom and big sis and we can act as goofy as we want too.

We left the auction because we didn't like the cast iron and headed back to what we thought was a big yard sale or flea market. All these cars turned down this street and looking down the street we noticed that there were cars parked everywhere along the street. I asked my daughter if she wanted to go to the sale if we had time after the auction and she said she did.

We got to the street and the traffic was horrific. We also noticed it was a church, in fact it was a United Methodist Church. So we were like hey it must be a big church sale going on. We found a parking spot and we headed for the door. We could hear organ music and we thought that was kind of strange for a sale even for a church.

We got to the door and a couple of women came out giving us a strange look. We looked in seeing the minister wearing his long white robe standing by the interior door shaking hands. I said to my daughter this isn't a sale it's a church service, odd for Methodists to have a church service on Saturday. Turning around to leave I saw the hearse and flower vehicle.

We had basically walked right by the hearse to go up to the church door, not noticing it on the way there. I said to my daughter, oh my god lets get out of here this is a funeral. We were both saying hurry up lets get out of here.

When we got back to the parking lot we noticed the two women that had come out of the church giving us the stink eye, they were walking their dog. I'm sure they were giving us the evil eye because of the way I was dressed with my baseball cap, jeans and with my shirt untucked. Who are they to give us a look when they brought their dog to a funeral? I ask you who brings a dog to a funeral? We got out of there as fast as we could blaming each other for ending up at a funeral looking for cast iron.

We ended up at Dunkin' Donuts. On the way home we saw a bald eagle fishing! Bad day for cast iron but fun just the same.

Review of "300 YEARS OF Kitchen Collectibles"

300 Years of Kitchen Collectibles by Linda Campbell Franklin is an extremely handy book to have if you are into collecting cast iron kitchenware or any other item for the kitchen. I refer to this book as the encyclopedia. At 896 pages long, 300 Years would seem to cover everything!

There are not enough pictures in 300 Years, very few in fact. Mostly what you get is a brief description for most items and maybe a drawing here and there with a few photographs thrown in. While this doesn't seem like much it in fact is quite comprehensive and requires a lot of reading to match things. A tremendous amount of research went into the compilation of this material I'm sure!

This book contains a very nice section on cast iron muffin pans with pictures of most of them. The muffin pan section goes way beyond just Griswold and Wagner pans, which I find extremely helpful! You may run across an odd piece of unmarked cast iron, as I have, when I bought a muffin pan for my wife and then found it was actually worth about $45 and is collectible. The photographs that are included are excellent.

300 Years also includes lots of fraud or reproduction alerts to help the novice collector keep from being taken advantage of. There are also old recipes included along with old advertising stuff, measuring conversions, history, definitions, and a whole host of other things. The bibliography is extremely impressive and can lead you to a lot of other collecting books that might be more in line with your specialty of collecting.

If you are interested in collecting items for the kitchen, then this book is indispensable! If you are a cast iron collector, then you probably will be disappointed in this book, although I use it all the time because it goes beyond the basic Griswold and Wagner collecting. I like this book and recommend it highly.