When Keith asked me to marry him, my initial answer was “as long as I don’t have to cook for you!” Thirty-three years later I have become a pretty great cook – but I still have some challenges.
I love cooking recipes from the magazine Cooking Light. Well, at least reading them and imagining cooking them. One recipe that caught my eye recently was Greek-Style Chicken Breasts (with Herbed Gold Potatoes, that part I ignored because I already have my own self-created awesome new/red potato recipe for the microwave). The first time I made this chicken, I got the skillet way too hot – nearly set off the smoke alarm – burned my favorite skillet which took me days of soaking and scrubbing to undo.
The second time I cooked this, I pre-emptively turned on the fan vent above the stovetop so as NOT to set off the smoke alarm. Therefore when the pan started smoking badly at the end anyway, I set up a trivet upon which to place the “too hot” skillet once removed from the heat.
I layered the resting place with a (wicker?) trivet and then on top of that I put a potholder that looked as if it could withstand some heat.
I ended up burning a price-tag sticker onto the bottom of my lovely skillet. (It was on the tag of the pot holder which was flipped upwards when I set the burning skillet on it.) Soaking and scrubbing got the chicken off of the inside, but a square of ceramic-ed glue remained on the underside.
In the meantime of my soaking and scrubbing and trying to rescue this awesome skillet (one of our newer ones purchased recently as opposed to the ones we have destroyed over the 30 years since we received gifts from our wedding registry), I read the recipe again and saw that I was not supposed to be using a skillet, but a “grill pan.” I had never heard of that before, but I have now ordered one online. :)
I was sad.
Keith offered to try to pry it off with a knife. I had already tried that.
I had scrubbed it with a steel wool pad.
I had soaked it in multiple hot baths for more than 24 hours.
Then I remembered a product all parents need at some point: De-Solv-it. (Yes, that is how they capitalize it!) I put this on the bottom of the skillet. Waited 20 minutes and scrubbed. Nothing. This was even after the 24-hour water soaking so I went for it. HOWEVER, after 4 hours of soaking, some tiny amount of the sticker budged. No more, even though I tried. So I kept spraying and scrubbing with the same paper towel etc etc – leaving the product-soaked paper towel resting on the trouble spot but AT LAST!!! I have my awesome skillet back!
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