My Costly Mistake.

[Sparkly]

Well, tonight I did a "Lucy." A bad one.

I had a dozen eggs that 'expired' today, which are perfect for hard boiling. So I got down the copper pan with a bottom large enough for a dozen eggs, and sides high enough to cover them with water. I add in my little red "Eggsact Eggtimer," which is a nifty little device that makes timers unnecessary. Shaped like an egg, it turns dark when the eggs are done.

I do this all the time. I start the water, come downstairs for a few minutes, go back up and adjust the water, check back and watch the Eggsact thing.

Tonight, however -- not even intoxicated or anything -- I came downstairs and started writing emails, posting here, watching TV, etc... An hour or two later, I smell something... What's that smell?

ACK!! I started screaming and RAN up the stairs as fast as I could go (H2S following to see what I was screaming about). You know what that does to a copper pan?

(Also, did you know eggs can toast?) (Plus the Eggsact is half melted.)

:cry:

H2S, um, lost his manners for a few minutes, let's just say. Also, he stopped using his "indoors voice." But he accepted my offer to send it off to be retinned. Fine, I'll do it. Anything you say.

"And also, send off this other one I once overheated to be retinned, too." Fine. "But send it to a different place from the other one." Okay. :shrug:

"And if you want to make it up to me, I want this $200 copper stock pot." (He shows me a picture online.)

"Wait, so you get the one I overheated retinned, plus the one you overheated retinned, PLUS an expensive stockpot?! All because I ruined *one* pan?"

He glared at me.

Okay, fine. :(

[Stinky The Clown]

1. And you get to do the weekly polishing for the next 6 months, too

And I get this guy ... with a lid .... k?


Just think how much better your macaroni will cook in this (not so) little jewel! :)

[cleofus1]

2. if it makes you feel any better...

i set my kitchen on fire once...i had to buy and install a new oven fan flue thing...and paint and sand and you know....re-do that whole part of the kitchen...

of course it did cost less than 200 dollars...

[Longhorn]

3. I wasn't even cooking food when I did it.

I was boiling a pot full of combs and brushes. I think my mother used to do this. Anyway, I forgot all about it. In the end, the combs and brushes were just a bunch of ash at the bottom of the pan. No one could comb or brush their hair until I went to the store and bought all new ones. Sad thing is, I did it TWICE in a few years.

Now I throw the combs and brushes in the washing machine. ;)

[merci_me]

4. At least you didn't get hurt

Soon after we were married, I started a little kitchen fire. I don't remember how, but I went into the kitchen to see flames shooting up from a pot. Well, I turned off the burner, but golly gee, it didn't make a bit of difference to the flame in the pot. So I grabbed a lid and slapped it on the pot and did manage to put out the flame. Then like a dummy, I took the lid off, without a pot holder. I screamed and dropped the lid on our new little wedding gift/hand held mixer and melted the on/off switch. Hey, it doesn't sound like a tragedy, but that was 45 years ago and they were "state-of-the-art".

The worst was yet to come. For the next few years, two babies, Jim still going to college, we couldn't replace the mixer, so it was permanently on. Better than permanently off. So one day, I'm in the kitchen with my big boobs bra-less and I lean over the mixer to reach the electric outlet to plug it in. Well, it took off and I got caught in the beaters. THAT hurt more than the burned hand did.

Mary

[Lars39]

5. I put my finger in the beaters *once*.

I can't imagine the agony you felt. :wow:

[Stinky The Clown]

10. Mary, that story made **me** feel pain

and I'm not even built the same!

[Warpy]

6. Well, now you know why, in my motley collection of pots and pans

NONE of them is copper. I watched too many people struggle with them, discoloring the tin permanently the first time they cooked a tomato sauce, destroying the tin when they forgot what they were doing and the water boiled away, taking them down and polishing them once a month.

They look great on a pot rack, though. I'll give them that much. If I won the lottery, perhaps I'd redeisgn my kitchen with a pot rack for the copper stuff and hidden storage for the Calphalon, Le Creuset, and unnamed other cookware I actually use.

I'm far too big a kitchen slob to cope with copper.

(sorry about the expense and the crow dinner, though)

[Lars39]

7. I have a West Bend automatic egg cooker.

$35 bucks, but worth every penny 'cause I've boiled eggs once or twice the um, wrong way, too. :blush:

"Also, he stopped using his indoor voice."
*snicker*
Here's to hoping lots of copper will smooth things out at the Sparkly household. :toast:

[AwakeAtLast]

8. I did the very same thing about a week ago.

Only I remembered after about 45 minutes. The water had boiled halfway down, LOL!

I tried one, just to see what it would taste like. Believe it or not, it did not taste that bad. Not burned or anything. I still pitched them. :)

:hi:

[Stinky The Clown]

9. Copper Fact & Fiction (All's well that ends well)

Okay, damage assessment phase is behind us. Sparkly didn't ruin them .... but she **sure** came thiiiiiiiis close!

This is a picture of the inside of the pot she used.

If you look close you can see ovals in the silvery color of the tin lining. That is scarring from the eggs being at the hottest spot. Now, this pot was black as coal when this happened. I cleaned it out with some Bar Keeper's Friend. I've used this in the past to clean the insides. I use it regularly on the outsides.



After I got down past the black, I called a copper retinner (actually, Fantes in Philadelphia) and spoke to the head retinnerguy. He said the lumps won't matter at all. It is only when copper is visible that they need to be redone. A worse overheating could well have caused the tin to melt further and run, but that clearly wasn't the case here.

As to copper needing a lot of care (as noted upthread) ..... there's some truth to that, to be sure. But it isn't mystical and it really isn't difficult. The biggest issue, really, is to not overheat them. So long as there's some moist food or liquid in them, they take as much heat as any other pot. Overheating happens when they're preheated (be very attentive when doing this) or when they boil dry, as happened last night to Sparkly. Normal care is easy. Usually, I just wash them, dry them, and put them away (some hang and some live on a shelf). Yes, they have all sorts of shades of color on them. That's from direct exposure of the copper to the fire of the stove and its normal. Every once in a while, I'll yank out the Barkeeper's Friend and clean the outsides. It takes all of 30 seconds to a minute to do it and consumes one paper towel and a few sprinkles of the Barkeeper's. Here's a picture I just now took of the copper we have. As you can see, the bottoms of every one of them have a dark/light pattern. They appear ... well ..... used. Cuz they are.


The tin linings normally turn dark from age and from use. That's absolutely normal and part and parcel of using tin lined copper. It can be lightened, as I described above, but that also reduces (by a very minuscule amount each time) the life on the lining. Kinda like polishing the detail off silver from polishing too often, you simply reduce the thickness each time you do it. Dark tin (from use, not from overheating) hurts nothing. As I said, its normal. If you want to have shiny interiors, they now make copper with a stainless interior instead of tin. The downside is, it loses some of the best properties of copper and tin .... excellent heat transfer and control.

Copper, no matter the lining, is pretty much forever and will easily last three lifetimes. While polishing will have the same effect, the copper is much harder and waaaaaaay thicker than the tin, so the effect of polishing is virtually insignificant. The only time copper **needs** to be polished is when it gets too darkened. That impairs the thermal properties. If one didn't care about the aesthetics, one could leave copper alone for several years before it really needed a polishing.

We kinda like the look of it with some sign of use, so we don't obsess over the polishing ..... just every once in a while.

Now ..... I **am** gunna get that 10 quart jobbie, though. The privilege of being the aggrieved party, yanno! :)

[eleny]

20. What's the big one with the two handles?

That one looks so interesting. What do you fix in it?

[wildeyed]

11. I *never* cook anything without a timer, anymore.

My brain is so fried from keeping track of two little ones, if I don't put a timer on I will absolutely forget that I was cooking and do a 'Lucy'.

Yanno, you can put someone in 'timeout' when he doesn't use his 'indoors voice' ;) Just sayin'

[NMDemDist2]

12. well Sparkly, glad I came in late and it wasn't such a disaster after

all.

that being said, if that stinky brat was my husband I'd have my own pots hidden away and wouldn't use his stupid ol' fancy schmancy copper thingies anyway! So THERE!

:loveya: to both of you (stinky brat included)

:rofl:

[murphymom]

13. Reminds me of something that happened

when my husband and I first got married. He normally got home before I did from work and decided to be helpful one night and start browning some ground meat that I was going to make into spaghetti sauce. He put a cover on it and then got distracted with something and left to go out for a run before I got home.

I walked into the house, discovered the meat burning, turned off the stove, and was driving to the store for replacements when I see Mr. murphymom running full tilt down the street with a look of pure panic on his face. I stopped the car and he was gasping for air, waving frantically in the direction of the house when I told him I'd been home already and turned off the stove.

Luckily my pan wasn't ruined and we had a good laugh about it later.

[SW FL Dem]

15. LOL - after Mr SW FL Dem put Joy in the dishwasher

one week after we installed new maple hardwood floors, we agreed that we would limit his responsibilities in the kitchen. I still think it is learned helplessness; but after 20 plus years together, I have given up. My only hope is the kid, who is turning out to be a great cook; he also knows how to run the appliances, as well as how to vacuum and dust.

Oh yeah, when my FIL lived with us, he managed to kill two of my Calphalon saucepans (which were wedding gifts). I have always wondered how the he** anyone could burn through the bottom of a Calphalon professional pan, but he did it twice!!

[wildeyed]

21. I caught my husband doing that once.

He was squeezing Joy into the dishwasher unit. I ask "what are you doing!?!?!?" He says, we are out of automatic dishwasher soap, so I was using the hand soap. "STOP!!!!!" I caught it just in time. He is not usually so clueless.

[fortyfeetunder]

14. I can feel your pain

Mr. 40ftunder is notorious for smoking my appliances...his nickname is "Smokey"

[politicat]

16. Really glad everything turned out okay and everyone's safe.....

House fires are massive scary for both of us.

Worst i've done? Shorted out a mixer.... Base housing rarely has gas stoves, so growing up, I had to deal with electric stoves more often than not. (I still hate them.) Mom had the hand mixer sitting on the stove (she uses it for whipped potatoes) and I turned on a burner for tea, I think.

POW.

It blew the breaker.... and the transformer for the block.

Needless to say, we did not mention that to the power company.

*walks away, whistling innocently.....*

Amazingly, however, a little electrical tape fixed that mixer up just fine.

[mtnester]

18. Any fire in the house is scary as HELL...I have had 3 kitchen fires

in my life...two were my fault, one was not

First one was when I was with my ex hubby stationed at Eglin...I put a pan of popped corn in the oven when we did not eat it all (you know, that one day stale popcorn that is still good to eat). Forgot about it and turned on the oven the next day to preheat and it caught the pan with corn on fire...I got it out but how embarrassing to call the Fire Dept., since ex hubby was a firefighter, and he was on duty that day...I heard about that one for months...it was just smoke all over, and the oven was not even ruined.

Second was me boiling a little butter/water preparing for packaged food (back in my I use prepackaged food youth) and forgot about it. Well, the water boiled off, but the butter caught fire, and burned up and into my cabinets. I had a small kitchen and could not even get near the lid, salt or ANYTHING I could put it out with. My son called 911 and I ran outside and got the extra long grill tongs, grabbed the pot and ran with it outside. I managed to burn my hand, the carpet as I ran it outside, and the cabinets were scorched and bubbling. If I had not gotten it outside, the fire dept. told me it would have turned into a serious kitchen fire. I did get taken to task for trying to fight it myself, but it ended OK.

The last one I had was about 7 years ago. My hubby had gotten my a coveted automatic coffee maker with a carafe for Christmas. Well, I plugged it in the day after to make some coffee. After a while I went in to the kitchen to see if it was done, and was APPALLED to see flames shooting out of the back of it, and the cabinets sizzling. My hubby grabbed and yanked (again with the long tongs while I was simultaneously screaming "You will get electrocuted don't touch it!" and dailing 911) and threw it in in the stainless sink then turned the extinguisher on it. We had bubbled cabinets, counter top melting, and a coffe pot that was unreconizable since the entire unit literally metled to a blob. We reported that one to the Consumer Products safety people, even sent them the pot per their request, then never heard another thing if there was a recall.

I think that is enough fire in the house for me. I remember distinctly also on each one repeating something like "please no oh God no please no no no" over and over, then crying when all was said and done.

[babylonsister]

17. Hey, does anyone own a plastic colander?

When in my teens, I decided to bake something, don't remember what. So, like a good little cook, I preheated the oven and went about my biz. Well, you can imagine what happened. My mom, who never stored anything in that oven, had stored the colander in there. When I went to start baking, there was melted green plastic all over the bottom of said oven. Took me quite a while to chip the plastic off once the oven cooled. But that was a lesson well learned.
Another HUGE childhood memory was the old lady a few doors down who lived alone. She was using a potholder or kitchen towel to remove food from her oven and it caught on fire. The fire dept. where I lived was about 20 minutes away on the other side of the bridge; we lived on the beach with strong winds. That little mishap caused about 7 homes to burn completely down. There's another lesson that's always in the back of my brain.

[Shakespeare]

19. aawww...at least you were contrite!

And we're all glad you didn't get hurt.

My 16-year-old stepdaughter ran my good knives through the dishwasher last week. After I recovered from my conniption fit (not in her presence; when I talked to her, I was actually calm), and explained to her why we can never, EVER put the good knives in the dishwasher, I got the eye-rolling, "whatever" response.

:banghead: