works of wanderlust

Category: cast iron guy

  • How long does it take to season a cast iron pan?

    Probably one of the most well-known bits of cast iron lore is that the more that you use your pan the better it will get.

    This rule of thumb is referring to the seasoning, the thin, black layers of polymerized oil that have been converted to this state by heat and have adhered to the surface of the pan creating that famous non-stick state of cooking bliss.

    Pre-seasoned pans from the factory are sold with a few layers of seasoning applied shortly after manufacture, and for many this is “good enough” to start cooking with your new pan even as you peel the labels off. But for others, a fully seasoned pan takes work, and adequate seasoning is a matter of opinion and personal evaluation. To them, no pan ever comes from the store with enough seasoning to be considered fully ready to cook on.

    The most unhelpful advice I’ve ever read on seasoning basically says that a pan is fully seasoned when you know that it is fully seasoned.

    What those folks are getting at is simply that it will feel like it cooks better. Or it will pass some kind of non-stick test. You’ll just know… y’know?

    A test, you say? For example, some swear that a pan is only seasoned when it passes the egg test: crack an egg into the center of a hot pan, cook it to doneness, then slide it onto a plate… all of this without using a spatula or any other cooking tool. If it slides into the plate and leaves a clean pan behind: voila! Your pan is perfectly seasoned. If it sticks then get back to work: you’re not there yet.

    But no, you insist, really… how long does it take to season a cast iron pan?

    In my experience, it takes however long it takes to build up five … ten … twenty solid layers of seasoning. You’ll just know… y’know?

    That might take just one quiet afternoon with a hot oven, some oil and a bit of elbow grease.

    Perhaps a full weekend out camping and cooking all your meals over a fire where the hot flames meld oil to iron will find your pan seasoned perfectly.

    Sometimes a couple months of casual cooking at home is required as you notice week by week that your pan gets a little smoother and easier to use each time you fry.

    Or occasionally it will take years of waking up early to prepare delicious Saturday breakfasts for your still-sleeping kids until you realize that your seasoning should be considered a family heirloom.

    So maybe those folks with the unhelpful advice are right. A pan is fully seasoned when you know that it is fully seasoned. You’ll just know… y’know?

  • Embarrassing & Stupid

    (serialized fiction)

    The video faded to credits and I pulled the lid of the computer closed with that familiar magnetic click. My arm hurt. I let the aluminum rectangle slide to my left side where it caught between a fold in the blanket and my hip. I leaned back into the pillow and I’m sure an involuntary groan escaped through my lips.

    “That looked interesting.” A nurse stepped into the room leading a wheeled cart of vials and medical implements in front of her. Her nametag read Gail. I could only see her now-familiar eyes which scream pity and the pink medical mask covering her mouth and nose buckled ever so slightly in sync with her lips as she spoke. “Was it you?”

    “In the video?”

    “Yeah?”

    “Nah. It’s just some guy —” I shrugged weakly. The medication had dialed the sharp pain back to merely a dull ache. That ache was the various muscles in my back and neck waving a white flag. “— a channel I’ve been watching lately.”

    “I need to take some more blood, okay?” Gail moved my laptop to the bedside table, careful to untangle the power cord from the safety rail. She prodded the space on the hospital bed beside me smoothing the blankets into a makeshift workspace for her collection of vials and labels she would need in a moment. Then, she took my arm with her hand and lightly touched around the intravenous tube with practiced fingers. She asked. “So — you’re an athlete right?”

    “I guess. I run.” I replied but I couldn’t help but roll my eyes and think of my accident then correct myself. “I mean — I used to run.”

    “I run, too.” The fabric of her mask implied she smiled, and with a nod she added. “Don’t worry. We’ll get you back out there.”

    Neither of us said anything as she peeled printed sticker labels from a tear-off sheet and applied them to a small collection of glass tubes, the soft clicking noises filling the silence in the air.

    “I do envy some of the people in those videos though.” She said finally as I watched her start to fill the vials one at a time with dark, red liquid draining from the tube in my arm. “You know — they’re out there doing it — right? Really living.”

    “I tried that — “ I shrugged even while realizing I was only stoking the fires of her pity for me. Not a good look. “See where really living got me?”

    Her eyes finally met mine. “You going to let a little tree branch swatting you in the arm stop you, then?” And when I looked away sheepishly and didn’t reply she continued. “I haven’t told anyone this — so if you tell Sasha out there I won’t be so gentle with your blood draw tomorrow —“ she winked. “— but last week I was out for my run and a wasp flew into the front of my shirt. She managed to wriggle under my bra and stung me good and hard — right here.” She tapped her chest over her heart at the top of her right breast.

    I smiled, weakly.

    “Not funny.” Her eyes flashed a fake scolding glare. “It hurt like hell — and I had an itchy welt there for three days.”

    “And you got right back out there?” I teased. “Is that my lesson for today?”

    Gale dropped the vials of blood gently into a pink plastic basket on her cart. “No lesson.” She shrugged. “I’m just saying that nature has it out for all of us — and there are plenty more boring ways to earn a scar than having a tree fall on your head.”

    “Boring, no. Try embarrassing.” I corrected. “Or maybe just stupid.”

    (cracking woods - part 02)

    Gaige Gildon is a fictional trail runner who lives and trains in Edmonton. After a trail accident, he quit his tech job in 2019 to focus on his recovery and his passion for outdoor adventure. In 2021 he partnered with The Cast Iron Guy blog to write and post about his upcoming pan-Canadian multi-sport trip.

  • Sculpting Sand & Polar Vortexes

    The cold is breaking.

    Where I live in Edmonton, Canada, a small city of about a million people in the middle of the Canadian prairies, it gets cold. Yet, even a stretch of brutal chill is mostly unusual. A polar vortex as they called it, where we’ve not had a day this month where the temperatures have been warmer than minus twenty degrees, has given us a February locked in our houses avoiding the bone-chilling cold even while we’re locked in our houses avoiding the pandemic.

    But it is supposed to warm up today. A little. Minus twelve, the forecast promises.

    Still, I’ve been dreaming of warmer places.

    A sandcastle on the beach in Maui

    A few years ago, we spent ten days in Maui.

    Exploring.

    Eating good food.

    Playing on the beach.

    Maybe it was because sitting on a beautiful beach in Hawaii is such the opposite of where I am now, land-locked in a frozen city, I saw this picture and I was pleasantly reminiscent of tropical vacations on this particular Travel Tuesday.

    The quality of this photo was not brilliant, but was one of dozens I took with my sun soaked sports camera after spending a hours snorkelling in the reefs, playing in the waves, and building elaborate sand castles.

    The sand castles were my particular favourite. Between my then-nine-year-old daughter and I we would construct elaborate buildings, tiny temples, and sprawling relic-inspired courtyards with the collection of plastic sand tools we’d bought at the local ABC Store. And as we dove back into the salt water we would watch from afar to see how many people would stop to look or even take photos of our creations.

    We can’t travel now.

    And it’s far too cold to turn the crispy snow in our front yard into similarly elaborate snow sculptures, if only because the snow doesn’t stick in those conditions.

    Yet, it doesn’t hurt to look through old photos and remember long ago vacations and wonder how and when we might spend our next day at the beach…

    How would you spend a day on the beach?

    [totalpoll id=”1017″]

  • Family Day

    Where I live we have a province-wide statutory holiday called Family Day. Today. It always falls on the third Monday of February, and for as long as I’ve been working it has been a random day off in the middle of winter with a clear theme, but no clear method of celebration.

    You don’t exchange cards or gifts.

    It’s not something that we decorate for.

    There are no fireworks, and you generally go to bed at a reasonable time because you’ve got to get up and go to work the next day.

    And in the middle of February it is almost always too cold to do much outdoors beside bundle up and listen to everyone gripe about frozen toes and ears!

    I’ve been pretty clear on the theme of this blog: cast iron cooking and outdoor adventure.

    A snowy mountain canyon with two figures hiking deeper into the trail.

    What I haven’t written much about (though I’ve alluded to frequently) is my family.

    My wife of nearly eighteen years.

    My teenage daughter.

    My new puppy.

    Relatives all across the country, and around the world.

    And many good friends that have earned honourary aunt and uncle status with the kid.

    And I’ve written about all of it for a long time. In fact, over the years I’ve created a few different websites, and if you had asked me a dozen years ago I’d have said that the biggest theme of most of my writing was fatherhood and how it intersects with all the other things in my life.

    For example…

    The first of the two notable websites was a “dad rules” blog, where I would come up with tongue-in-cheek rules for being a dad based on things the kid was doing, write about the silly antics babies and toddlers got up to, and tie it altogether into a cohesive article.

    A three panel strip.

    The second fatherhood website that got a lot of traction was my “This is Pi Day!” web comic. The name came from the idea that pi day, March 14th, was essentially just a celebration of both math and dad jokes. The whole day was just one big dad joke. My comic was mostly the kid character reacting to the dad joke sense of humour of the dad character. The site is still live, but if it happens not to be working when you click on it, note that I host it on a homebrew server in my basement that crashes occasionally.

    While those two blogs were focused on family stories and how they interected with the things I was interested in, if you’ve read enough of this blog you’ll probablly note that it is spun around the other way: focused on the things I’m intersted and how it intersects with my family.

    I cook and bake and set an example of sustainable, healthy eating while teaching these things to my daughter.

    I run, camp, hike, and spend time outdoors, doing much of it with my family and to set an example to a kid who loves her screentime.

    And I try to instill a sense of legacy and purpose into my work, the hobbies I do and tools I use to build up something to someday pass down to my now and future family.

    These are the things I’m interested and how they intersect with family.

    So, on this family day, a diversion from that regular focus to spin it back around for a moment: that’s my family and how it drives almost everything I do. No cards or gifts or decorations, just a quiet celebration at home today.

  • Spreadsheets & Footfalls

    Sunday Runday, and I’ve been hiding in my basement from the brutal cold, focussing on cross-training which is never a replacement for actually getting out on the trails.

    Not in quality of workout nor in the enjoyment of the effort.

    Runners on a trail with thick green foliage.

    I’ve also been reflecting on the last year of pandemic lockdown and realizing that I’ve let a few things slip. I used to be particularly diligent in how I recorded and tracked my fitness. Used to be, being the operative words.

    Last year, for example, I completely neglected using the tracking tools I’d built for myself over the last decade. Before using Strava as a tracking crutch, I was meticulous in how I tracked and recorded my runs. I had built and refined a simple but useful goal-based spreadsheet for time and distance that calculated a few other factors in keeping myself on track. How much did I run. How did it compare. How much did I need to focus to catch up or get on track with an annual distance goal… that sort of thing.

    I also made it available to others for a few years in a row on my previous website:

    Make Your Own Copy of the 2021 Run Tracking Log

    So, since I’ve started using it again and I’ve put in the effort of updating it for 2021, please make a copy and use it. It’s mostly simple, but I’ve always preached that in running (or life in general) information and data are powerful allies.

    Spreadsheets can be for more than business and budgets.

    They help track goals and progress.

    They highlight gaps and changes in routine.

    They offer insight into trends in your training.

    And they provide an ongoing overview of what can be accomplished by day after day after day of hard work which is motivational and can often give that extra nudge towards improvement.

    I’m neither fast nor competitive, but that also means I don’t have the benefit of a coach or endless access to resources that could improve my training. I’m just a guy who likes to get out on the trails, but that doesn’t mean it’s none of it is worth tracking. It’s worth it to me, and a spreadsheet is a simple and low-cost way to track it all.