Mrs Stevie went out on Saturday looking thin-lipped, and returned several hours later with about a ton and a half of new metal cookware. She unpacked the various tureens, cauldrons, double-steamers and what-have-you, purring over the balance and heft of one or two select items, then made an announcement.
Standing in the middle of a devastation of packing materials with her hands on her hips to indicate she meant business, she announced that the brand-new cookware was under no circumstances to be placed in the dishwasher, since it's space-age, non-stick coating derived from NASA heat shield technology was apparently not up to the job of withstanding hot water with a bit of detergent and some phosporus in it1. She went on to list a number of things that these works of art should not be exposed to, on pain of voiding the warranty.
Well, I had to laugh. The old pots had to be slung out because there were so many dents and dings in them they were unfit to be used for cullinary applications of any kind. The frying pan had such a large dent in the base2 that eggs come out an inch wide and five inches long when fried in it 'cos they snuggle up round the rim so tightly.
"I take it this signals a new era of tolerance and strategic limitations in the percussive use of said cookware with especial reference to La Téte De Stevie then?" I wheezed between guffaws.
A sad mistake
I came to some hours later sporting a large goose-egg on my right temple and a pounding headache. I couldn't clearly remember the events that led up to my receiving this wound, other than a memory of the signature battle-shriek of Mrs Stevie followed by a bright burst of light, but a search through the garbage the next day allowed me to reconstruct matters in the fashion of those chaps on "CSI". I had evidently been the victim of yet another cowardly assault, launched by that vile harridan while I was disadvantaged by laughter. The weapon, a rather worn saucepan, was easily identifiable from the dent3.
My false sense of security had arisen because I had forgotten that she still had the old pans to hand at the time.
- Bet you didn't know they put phosphorus into dishwasher detergent to shift the remains of your Chicken Marsala, did you? ↑
- This dent matches quite closely the contours of the crown of my head, and dates from the time I ran my small steam engine on her antique dining table. Mrs Stevie, it turns out, disapproves of steam engines, but I feel she over-reacted since I had the fire under control and had explained that the scorch-marks could easily be covered with Formica. Sometimes I think the woman is quite mad. I blame it on her consumption of coffee ↑
- Slightly damaged last week when I used it to catch the water pouring out of the busted u-bend and I forgot to move it when I was fitting the new one. Pipe-dope had dripped on it and hardened on the bottom, rendering it useless from a culinary standpoint. I didn't bother Mrs Stevie with this trifle at the time. She had a lot on her mind ↑
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