A recycled lifestyle…

Last Thursday the manager of the Recycling centre presented me proudly with a huge and very gunky cast iron pot. (A few weeks ago, I’d been hunting for Le Creusets or similar for a friend with a woodburner.) It was an unusual shape, with a flattened lid with a heavy rim, three little legs and a sturdy wire handle, but I thought I recognised it as a genuine Dutch Oven from my trip to Oklahoma a couple of years ago. It was pretty rusty and there was some kind of horrible, smelly, black oily deposit inside at the bottom. Yet that smell, too was familiar, from my sewing machine adventures – burnt shellac?
So I Googled dutch ovens, and realised that some poor soul had proudly imported this one, and tried to season it without washing the shellac coating off first… it came off quite quickly, using washing soda, and it has scrubbed up & seasoned nicely. I have been hunting up dutch oven recipes, too, both for the campfire and for the main oven, and I can see that it will be in use at least weekly. So I’m off to inspect the dough for my “Easy-No-Knead-Dutch-Oven-Crusty-Bread right now! It’s been rising overnight on my boiler. Hope the dutch oven cools in time to bake a cherry clafouti tonight, maybe even over the campfire if the weather holds…