Friday, October 1, 2010

Glass Confession #3 ~ Sometimes It Isn't Even Vintage

I came to collecting Pyrex (and later other brands of vintage glass) because of its safety and performance in the kitchen.  That's right, I bought fridgies because I wanted something to store leftovers in and I was tired of the way the plastic lids on my newer Pyrex storage containers would break.  I gave up storing food in plastic containers years ago, long before BPA was a dirty acronym.

I love glass and have always used it in my kitchen.  Indeed, I am a glass and cast iron kind of cook, with the occasional stainless steel piece here and there.  Glass performs beautifully whether you are baking brownies or chicken (not together please).  I have long used a covered glass casserole to cook frozen vegetables in the microwave (I tried giving up the microwave for almost a year; it just wasn't worth it).

These Anchor Hocking 12 oz. covered casseroles showed up at my Goodwill last weekend.  I knew they weren't vintage, but I also knew that I could find a way to use them.  I had just purchased the little Pyrex 080 dishes and had started thinking of the benefits of cooking in individual casseroles, especially as we are a household of food allergies and intolerances.  When I make a casserole I have to leave out pepper for one child, cheese for the other, etc.  Now not only can I customize for food allergies but I can take into account food preferences as well.

After washing them I did notice something:  they don't stack together neatly the way the vintage Pyrex does.  I can't figure out why it would have been hard to engineer that, especially since Pyrex already did, more than half a century ago.

Overall I'm not looking for newer glass pieces, but I wasn't going to turn these away just because they sold them very recently.

2 comments:

  1. Hi S.A.M.
    Wow, you are a dedicated mom. Good thing I don't have kids - they'd have to eat what i managed to sling at them ;) You know, I got to thinking about the name "Pyrex" and broke it down to 'pyr' or 'py' and 'rex'. One relating to fire the other Latin for king....fire king. Hmmm, where have I heard that before?
    ~~~
    Yes, those are our palm trees. How about that thunder? Loved a whole day of it.

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  2. One of my dogs hates thunder, so it is always stressful. But wow, the lightening storm late Thursday evenings was gorgeous and far enough away to be quiet.

    I won't make separate meals, but I will accommodate their food preferences if it doesn't mean much extra work for me. So if I am putting veggies into a pot pie it isn't much work to leave out the carrots for the carrot-allergic child or peas for the pea-hater (oops ~ that's my DH). But individual pot pies are perfect for us, as two of us are gluten free and two aren't. Before I had to make everything GF.

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