Big Mom’s Cast Iron Pan

Big Mom’s Cast Iron Pan

This is a post about the durability of cast iron, and it is also a post that is meant to serve as a love letter to Big Mom (AKA Helen Riley) who was a great cook and an even better mother. Big Mom’s Cast Iron Pan is a member of our family. You’ve seen it in so many of The Foodist recipes here on Mezzacello, well now we are here to talk about this pan.

Generational Utility

While Rick was growing up, his mother used this monster-sized 14″ pan almost daily. She used it and loved it and inherited it from her mother before her. Big Mom treated this pan with love and reverence and seasoned and cleaned it fastidiously all her life. She gifted the pan to Mezzacello about 8 years ago and we have carried on its’ great tradition.

We use this pan to cook almost everything (no tomatoes or acids) and and it is amazing. Then we lovingly clean it, boil water in it, rinse it, dry it over heat and then oil it just enough. Once every three months we season it in a hot oven.

It’s been well cared for and loved and continues in our house as a reminder that love is a quantity and a quality that deserves our attention.

Jim Bruner

Understand the Surface

This pan is amazing and so non stick! One day I am going to bring in one of 1000x microscope lenses from my lab and really look at this surface. It appears as glass as you can see in the photo above.

Like I mentioned above, nothing sticks to it and it cooks like a dream. On the stovetop, in the oven, over an open fire out in the farm yard, this pan delivers. It’s been well cared for and loved and continues in our house as a reminder that love is a quantity and a quality that deserves our attention.

Difficult to Recreate

I have tried to rehabilitate other cast iron pans I have found at thrift stores or even ordered from Amazon. I clean them, sand them, then wet sand them with 300, 800, 1000 grit paper, then season them. Sadly, none of them hold the magic of Big Mom’s pan.

I should come up with a name for her, but for now she is Big Mom’s pan. We love it, we loved her, and we love ourselves more knowing she gave us so much love and good food. Now it’s our turn to pay it forward. We miss you, Helen.


What To Grow

When planning the ornamental garden, besides playing off the house, I drew on four different categories of plants.

  1. The plants that were already on the grounds.
  2. The plants needed to create the look and feel of the plan.
  3. The plants that bring sentimental values and recreate garden memories.
  4. The unexpected source of plants from friends’ yards that they either wanted to remove, or needed to divide; Iris, hosta, liriope came from these sources.

Already on the property was a lilac that had overgrown the spot it was in. Peonies that had an old fashioned quality that were a keeper. Wood hyacinth, narcissus, daffodils, and surprise lillies were in clumps. All begging to be divided and reorganized. Instead of replacing them or cutting them out, I propagated and replanted them. My lilac “baby mama” bush was the start of hedgerow of lilacs. The garden was divided into rooms and beds. The narcissus was divided and spread in one room. The daffodils into another room. Color and waves of texture began to drive patterns and excitement.

­

To create a “historic” town garden, in an “Italianate” plan, meant hedgerows Would be needed to divide spaces and create “rooms”. I preferred boxwood, but could have used yew or holly. Privet would have been another alternate that would have been easy propagate. Horn beams were chosen for height and aesthetic. How patient and immediate I was willing to be dictated some of my choices. Some things were dictated, regardless of how much time it might take, because of their sentimentality. Leading me to the final

I drew on memories and sentimental values for what I was going to buy, or become more resourceful to collect. The places I’ve been, and felt a connection to were channeled into this last type of collection. Being from Virginia and Carolina, boxwood and monkey grass was a “need”. To create the rooms and the Italianate style of the garden, meant horn beams or something similar, to create walls of green. Filling out those bones were the anemones I kept noticing and loved. The magnolia and tree peonies were brought in for the love of places and people they reminded me of.

My friendship garden is the surprise of community. What my friends had that they thought I would enjoy. Their provenance sometimes trumped what varieties I would have preferred. There’s “Aunt May’s“ Crepe Myrtles, the “Pragati” and “Rosen” irises, “Bill’s” tobacciana and foxglove. Most of these have been consigned to the southern edge of the garden. They continue to grow, spread, and flourish.

Start with where you are, go where you need to, and finish with romance. These are the parts and bones of a garden that will keep you intrigued, engaged, and inspired.