I certainly appreciate good food and drink and worked in restaurants for a fair amount of time. While I've thrown together decent meals over the years I've also recently started to pay closer attention to cooking.

Part of this effort also involves selecting and caring for decent equipment. I've been gradually upgrading my gear while making sure I can actually appreciate the difference. I recently acquired a cast-iron skillet from my father, and after using it the difference compared to the relatively cheap skillets I otherwise had was dramatic. The seasoning kept food sliding right off and the more even cooking from the higher heat capacity iron was a glaring difference.

Unfortunately while leaving it to dry on the stove I got distracted by noticing some water under the kitchen sink...long enough for the seasoning to largely burn off. I'm now looking to reseason it...which can also hopefully lead me to getting around to seasoning my wok which I haven't done as I primarily use it for steaming vegetables. The first instructions for reseasoning I found are here. I'm not sure what oils have a sufficiently high oleic index, but for the first attempt I don't have Canola oil in a usable form but have some vegetable oil so I'll start with that (and capture the index for it later). I also used a microfiober cloth to cover the skillet which may have been a bit too absorbent so I'd probably use something else the next time around.

The first attempt didn't quite work - my guess is that the isse was the cloth so I'm trying again and this time using a (bamboo) paper towel and some high smoke point oil that's a mix of safflower, avocado, and coconut. This time I foolishly hijacked the oven at an inopportune time and therefore may need to cut the time short, but hopefully it's close enough.

I also checked on the directions for seasoning in The Food Lab since that's the book I'm primarily using to drive my cooking efforts (but was originally looking for a shorter reference to cite), there are some differences in terms of using a higher temperature (450) for less time (30 minutes) and also repeating the process. It also mentions initially scouring the skillet a bit, and I'm hoping I won't have to restart, but it also discusses how durable a seasoned pan is (and mentions oiling after each use). Giten that there still seems to be a fair amount of seasoning I'm hoping I can continue with it as it is and hope that a combination of what was just done and regular oiling will get it back to how well it was working before it was overheated.

The second attempt seems to have done the trick, so I'll just settle into a routine of periodically re-oiling it and hoping that allows it to keep its seasoning.

I'm trying to cook with an eye towards sustainability which when including goals such as plastic neutrality is unfortunately difficult, at least while living in suburbia. I'll therefore look to capture some supporting information in terms of vendors, recipes, and anything else of interest.

Peacock Farm is my go-to source of eggs. It's a local option (from my town) that I can pick up at a store (I don't yet have enough of a routine down to consistently pick things up directly from farms), and the cartons include feathers which my daughter enjoys.