Every year, a group of friends and I head out to Nordhouse Dunes, this wonderful and rustic camping site near Ludington, Michigan. You have to backpack your stuff in for at least two miles, you camp right by the beach - or anywhere you want, because there aren't designated campsites - and you have a lovely time hiking, swimming, and stargazing. And pooping in the woods, because there are no bathrooms.
It's great. But the challenge, every year, is food.
Since we are all poor twenty somethings, we have historically been lacking in decent camping equipment. People are finally starting to get some stuff, and I recently bought a tent and a little campstove (and let me tell you, after years of camping with borrowed tents and only sharpened sticks for cooking gear, I am very proud of the these items).
This year, we had a stove, we had two coolers, and we were gonna make real food. So I brought my 8-inch nonstick fry pan, so we could make bacon and eggs. Now, this was my ONLY nonstick fry pan, because I'm poor, so I was avoiding buying a full size nonstick pan. Besides, I had a cast iron pan if I REALLY had something I couldn't use the 8-inch pan for. Besides, it was a high quality 8-inch pan, and had been a hand-me-down from my mother.
Long story, involving a moment of disaster when we realized nobody had propane, and sending two people to hike the miles to the car to drive the miles to the store....and the result was that we didn't eat until lunch time. Since I was not one of the people to go to the store, I went on hike, leaving my pan behind.
Thus, when my friends got back with the propane, they began to use the pan to cook bacon and eggs.
Lesson #1: Don't let people use your good cookware unsupervised, unless you know that they know a lot about cooking.
My wonderful friend started stirring the eggs with a metal fork, which was the first thing he grabbed to cook with. I wasn't there to tell him not to, and he doesn't cook much besides, like, Little Caesars pizza, so he didn't know that this is a bad idea.
Lesson #2: Don't use metal utensils on nonstick pans.
The metal scratched the nonstick coating so bad, that when we cleaned the pan, it was about half scratches. Not only do scratches prevent the pan from functioning as non-stick, but it also releases toxic chemicals that can get in your food and is suspected to cause all kinds of fun health problems. As the linked article notes, minor scratches aren't a big deal, but deep scratches (particularly on old pans - newer ones have been improved to be less dangerous) are bad.
So...my friend apologized and agreed to replace the pan. We looked up my, admittedly awesome, but really expensive pan
on the Internet, and it was going to cost about $30-40 - which is dumb. So instead, we bought these beautiful pans
. My friend paid $20 - less than it would cost to replace the pan he broke - and I paid the difference....costing me far less than it would normally cost to buy a large stand-alone fry pan (~$30-40 for a good one). They came highly recommended from my boyfriend's dad, who is a cooking genius, and now I have a full set of fry pans, for very little money. And let me tell you, using them is a wonderful, wonderful experience. They're so pretty!Lesson #3: Research products - sometimes you can save lots and lots of money if you buy cookware in sets instead of buying all individual pieces.
So the story has a happy ending, but being without a pan for a few days while my pans were delivered was painful. So in conclusion...
Lesson #4: If you're just starting out, it's okay to have one pan. But if you can afford it...have multiple pans, preferably of different sizes. Because if something happens...well, without a pan, you are slightly screwed.
...But Lesson #5: It is possible to cook eggs in a pot. You just need oil/grease to prevent sticking.
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