works of wanderlust

Category: cast iron guy

  • Short: Friday Fires

    Long work days, short cool evenings.

    I had my phone in one hand and an axe in the other (metaphorically speaking, of course) as Friday’s quitting time slipped into view. The benefit of (still) working from home is that I can check the laptop for rogue, last-minute emails even while I heat up the backyard firepit for a cookout.

    At five pm I cracked a beer and stoked the coals just right to grill up some juicy steaks and a foil packet of freshly dug garden spuds.

    Not a terrible way to start the weekend. Not terrible at all.

  • Short: Pour Over Coffee

    Maybe it was obvious, but those little coffee pods had their moment… and that moment has passed.

    At least, it has for me…

    And maybe it’s also obvious, but picking up a cheap little pour over cone (for roughly half the cost of a box of pods) has me making my afternoon cup in a much different way lately.

    Sure, it takes a few more minutes and has a little bit more cleanup, but the results are fantastic.

    I’m gonna need to dig in and write an article on this topic… when I have a bit more to say on my experience ditching the single-serve machine and migrating to something a little more manual.

  • new old older


    young green leaves, rooted into
    rough hewn stump, anchored upon
    rich forest soil, draped across
    cragged heavy stone, wedged along
    ancient sweeping mountains, jutting from
    shifting geological faults, slipping around
    revolving green orb, floating in
    vast mysterious universe

    – bardo

    I have reserved some space on this blog each week to be creative, and to post some fiction, poetry, art or prose. Writing a daily blog could easily get repetitive and turn into driveling updates. Instead, Wordy Wednesdays give me a bit of a creative nudge when inspiration strikes.

  • Strip This Pan, Part One

    My big ol’ twenty inch reversible grill has developed some pitting over the summer and I’ve been contemplating the pros and cons of various methods to strip a pan down to bare metal and start the seasoning process from scratch.

    1. A self-cleaning oven on clean mode heats up the pan hot enough to incinerate the seasoning and burn off everything down to raw iron, but it heats up the house and has been linked to cracked pans.

    2. Roasting a pan in a fire or over the barbecue can get the iron hot enough to turn the seasoning to cinders, but the heat is uneven and, again, has been said to warp or crack cast iron if not carefully monitored.

    3. Elbow grease and a lot of sandpaper or other mechanically abrasive system will rip down the seasoning on all or part of a pan, and is a method I’ve used to spot repair seasoning, but the work involved is definitely… well, work.

    4. Posts online have claimed that soaking in white vinegar overnight can erode the seasoning on a pan down to the point where it can be wiped off easily. I’ve never tried this, but with a twenty inch pan I might need a bigger sink or a big tub of some kind.

    5. Back in the realm of over cleaning, chemical oven cleaner sprayed on the surface (then tuck the piece into a couple layers of garbage bags) is said to strip a pan to bare metal, though my suspicion is that the mess at the end might leave me wishing I’d tried something simpler.

    6. And finally in the realm of complicated (and perhaps expensive if you don’t own the set up) is using electrolysis which likely involves some clever chemistry knowledge and a bit of electricity to erode the carbon of the seasoning.

    I’m going to pick one of these before the week is out and give it a whirl.

    Stay tuned.

  • Daily Goals (and Such)

    Back in January of this year I decided to re-invigorate a habit that I’d been neglecting for a long time, and start writing more frequently. You’re reading the results of that effort right now: after more than eight months of daily (with a small break for summer fun) blogging resulting in over two hundred posts to this space.

    Daily habits seem trivial, but in my experience become a drumbeat of steady progress towards getting stronger, faster, better, or simply more attuned to the nuances of an effort.

    Over that aforementioned summer break I took up a couple more daily habits that have been fitting into my waking routine and are starting to show progress and results.

    The first of those habits has been a daily body strength workout, involving a minumum number of push-up and sit-ups and some other equipment free exercises. None of it is a proper workout, but the payoff after two months of, say, thirty push-ups every day has been a cumulative progress towards some creaks and groans that were developing after eighteen months of working from home during the pandemic.

    The second (and more interesting) of my new daily habits, and something I wrote about a couple weeks ago, is that I’ve dug into my old (and bought some new) art supplies, and dedicated myself to daily sketching.

    If the day has been busy and my time is short, might just draw a simple thing like my car keys, a pen sitting on the table or any other curious object laying around the house. Ten minutes with a pen and a paper.

    Or, if I have more time and inclination, then all that inspiration from reading, watching, and absorbing the work of other artists around the theme of rough watercolour sketching turns into a more elaborate project. I’ll snap a photo, dig through my travel pictures, or prop up my notepad out and about in the city and draw a small scene.

    The habit of exercising my artistic soul every day has paid off.

    The work that I was doing a month ago was not terrible, but it was markedly weaker than just a few weeks of practice has left in its wake. (I won’t even post those early sketches.) I won’t claim to have found some kind of greatness or unlocked a hidden talent, but I am starting to get a feel for my own style and building a great deal of confidence around things I can bring to life on the page. I can only imagine that this will steadily improve over the next months and beyond.

    All that (plus two hundred blog posts and some improved upper body strength) from a little daily dedication to a simple idea: habit building.