Posted by Rick Mansfield

If I had to pick my favorite Louisiana dish, it might just be étouffée. Like gumbo, étouffée can be made with crawfish, shrimp, crab or chicken. My favorite is crawfish which I believe have much more flavor than shrimp, but I once even tried a ground meat étoufée, which I found to be a bit unusual. Like many Louisiana dishes, étouffée is served over rice. I usually don’t put andouille or smoked sausage in mine, but I’ve seen others include it. I don’t know if I’ve ever actually tried an étouffée I didn’t like, although some are definitely better than others.

This past week I discovered a new kind of étouffé when I visited a local Cajun restaurant, J. Gumbo’s and tried their vegetarian chili cheese étouffée. I always taste before I add Tabasco, but in my sample taste of this new kind, I didn’t get one of the jalapeño peppers the dish, so after I doctored it up with the hot sauce, it was EXTRA hot!

Yesterday, I reviewed MacGourmet Deluxe (see post here). However, I’ve been using the software, a recipe database program (and so much more), since early July learning the ends and outs of it. For the week of July 4, we visited friends and family in Louisiana and had a shrimp boil on the holiday. Afterwards we had a good bit of shrimp leftover, and I suggested we use some of it for an étouffée.

Wanting to try out my newly acquired copy of MacGourmet Deluxe, I looked for an étouffée recipe. When I had installed the software, it asked if I wanted to include some sample recipes, some of which were from the website, Real Cajun Recipes, including the étouffée recipe seen below.

Now, there are two distinctions in the étouffée recipe below. First, to make it lite/diet, it forms its base from canned soup instead of a traditional roux. This is not wholly unusual, and I’ve found a couple of really good étouffée recipes that use cream of mushroom soup before, but if you’ve never had the dish, realize that what is below is not necessarily standard fare. I also feel the need to point that this is a Creole dish, not a Cajun one. At the most elementary level, what makes this Creole is the inclusion of tomatoes. My favorite étouffée dishes are the ones without tomatoes, but this one is good nonetheless (for a dozen different recipes for étouffée from Real Cajun Recipes, go here). This recipe also calls for 4 tablespoons of ketchup, which although I found to be unusual, included for the sake of trying the recipe as close as possible to its original directions.

Below is my mildly adapted version of the original. The accompanying pictures in this post show shrimp, rather than crawfish.

CAST IRON REQUIRED

• Dutch oven (4 or 5 quart recommended)

(above: sautéing the onions, bell pepper, and celery)

INGREDIENTS

• 1 pound crawfish tails or shrimp
• 1 onion chopped
• 1 bell pepper chopped
• 2 stalks celery (chopped fine)
• 2 tbsp butter or canola oil
• 1 can cream of mushroom soup (reduced calorie)
• 1 can cream of celery soup (reduced calorie)
• 1 can Rotel tomatoes original or spicy
• 2 cans water
• ½ cup parsley
• ½ cup green onions (onion tops)
• 4 tbsp catsup (large dollop)
• 1 pod of garlic (optional)
• black pepper - to taste

DIRECTIONS
In smaller Dutch oven over medium heat, sauté onion, bell pepper, celery and garlic (optional) until onions have wilted. Add the Rotel tomatoes and stir until tomatoes are heated.

Add the cans of cream of mushroom and cream of celery. Stir and then add enough water to dilute the mixture to form a thick gravy. Remember, your crawfish or shrimp will give off water in the final steps of the cooking. Lower the heat and cook until mixture is heated, stirring as needed to prevent scorching. Add black pepper if desired. Note that the soup provides enough salt for this dish. Easy on the salt if you do decide to use it.

Rinse the crawfish in a colander to remove the crawfish fat that they were packed in. Drain well. Add crawfish to the mixture along with the parsley and green onions. Cook no more than 10 minutes. In the last couple of minutes of cooking, add a large dollop of catsup mainly for coloring but does give a nice taste to your dish. Serve over rice.

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^{MacGourmet users, click image to download recipe (or simply drag image to your MacGourmet recipe box).}


Feel free to leave your thoughts or ask questions in the comments below, or you can contact Rick directly at rick@cookingincastiron.com.

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Posted by Rick Mansfield

Click on image above for larger view.

Recipe database programs have been around in one form or another as long as personal computers have been in homes. Some of these are standalone programs dedicated to recipes, but even standard database programs such as FileMaker Pro come with recipe templates. I’ve been using personal computers since 1982, and I’ve kept recipes saved electronically (in word processing documents or PDF files) since the first computer we had with a hard drive, way back in 1988. But I’ve never been impressed with recipe database software...until now.

Now, let me say up front: yes, you can see a MacGourmet Deluxe (MGD from this point forward) advertisement in the sidebar. But what you must realize is that I first contacted Mariner Software in regard to their advertising with us because I was incredibly impressed with this software. In fact, as I already mentioned, recipe database software is nothing new, but in reality, MGD seems to me to be the mature end result of nearly three decades of this kind of software that has gone before it. I strongly encourage you to download the MGD user manual as I will not be able to nearly touch upon all of MGD’s features in this review. I’ve jokingly said to a friend that MGD seems to do everything except cook the meal for you, but maybe that’s projected for version 2.0.

Of course, MGD does what you would expect--it allows you to keep a database of your recipes. The interface is iTunes-esque, allowing you to create your own categories in the left sidebar. And like an iTunes smart playlist that automatically expands as new songs meet pre-set criteria, MGD allows the user to create “smart recipe lists” that look for certain criteria as the user adds new recipes.

One of the most impressive features of MGD is the multiple ways that recipes can be added to the database. Certainly, the user can enter ingredients and directions manually, but there are also a number of ways to add them automatically from other sources. There are “supported” websites such as allrecipes.com, epicurious.com, foodnetwork.com, williams-sonoma.com, cookinglight.com and food.yahoo.com in which all a user has to do is select the URL on a recipe’s webpage, go to the services menu: MaGourmet, and choose “Import Recipe from Web Page.”



MGD automatically parses the information, separating the ingredients from the directions, the description of the recipe and even includes the picture:



But what if a website is not supported? Well, to test this out, I went to one of my favorite cast iron related websites, “Black Iron Dude.” About a month ago, there was a recipe at this website for Arbol Chile Salsa. To import the recipe from Greg’s website, I first highlighted all the text in his post and then I dragged it to the “Clippings” window in MGD. This is a great little window in MGD that allows the user to drag over recipe after recipe and then go back and format them later. After I had dragged over the text for the salsa, I double-clicked on it to import it in my recipe database.


All of my captured text is gathered at the top of the import window. From the drop down menu, I can select “Ingredients” and MGD knows that this information is separate from the preparation directions. And of course, I can do the same with the directions, information about the recipe, etc.

What impressed me further is that in parsing the list of ingredients, MGD could distinguish between number, actual item and special instructions. Notice for example in the list below, taken from this recipe, that “25” is separated from “dried Arbol chiles” which is separated from “remove stems and shake out some seeds”:



For those watching what they eat (and who isn’t these days?) MGD comes with the abbreviated USDA National Nutrient Database. Ingredients are automatically evaluated by this database and if MGD is unsure about a particular ingredient, the user can open up the USDA database and manually map ingredients. Once all ingredients are mapped and servings are figured, MGD calculates an extremely accurate breakdown of nutritional data.


This information is calculated for 45 separate items:



And when printing out recipes for personal use or to share an abbreviated box with nutritional information is included such as this breakdown for JT’s Family Pancake Recipe:


This kind of information would be extremely helpful not only for the person watching what he or she eats, but also for the personal chef or any person in charge of providing meals for groups of people. MGD includes a weekly meal planner that can be exported to iCal, and shopping lists can be created from planned recipes.

Kathy and I have an older iMac we keep in the kitchen for easy access to recipes we’ve collected electronically over the years. Whether you have a dedicated kitchen computer or simply a laptop on the counter, MGD offers a “Chef’s View” that enlarges ingredients and directions for easy access:



Almost every church group or civic organization has produced a cookbook at one time or another. There are publishers who specialize in this. These publishers should be a bit concerned for their future because MGD includes tools for creating one’s own cookbook with pictures, section dividers, chapters, and more. Once a cookbook has been created it can be exported to PDF ready for publication from a company such as Lulu.com.

And of course, when someone asks you for your Garlic Beef Enchiladas recipe after the church potluck, you can print out your recipe according to a variety of attractive built in templates.

As the name implies, MacGourmet Deluxe only runs on Macintosh computers, but the program is so sophisticated, it might be reason enough to switch from Windows if you aren’t already a Mac user. Regardless, MGD can import files in a number of formats: MasterCook, MasterCook Mac, Meal-Master, CookWare Deluxe, Cook’n text, RecipeML, and Yum XML. It can export to iPod notes, MasterCook, MealMaster, RTF and text files.

Our Cooking in Cast Iron website is still fairly new, but as we add recipes in the future, we will also make them available in MGD format which means that if you want to add one of them to your own collection, it will be as easy as dragging an icon from our website directly into your MGD database.

MacGourmet Deluxe is available from Mariner Software for $44.95.

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Feel free to leave your thoughts or ask questions in the comments below, or you can contact Rick directly at rick@cookingincastiron.com.

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Posted by Rick Mansfield

Not too long ago, a friend of mine handed me a couple of cast iron skillets which were rusted and had odd stains and asked me what I could do to get them back in shape. If you’ve seen our first video podcast, you saw me use one of them as a demonstration for restoring a rusted pan. After I cleaned and re-seasoned the pans, I gave them two initial run-throughs--one in the oven with corn bread and one on the stove top with bacon.

After I gave the pans back, I offered a few tips for keeping them in good shape. Below is an adaptation of what I suggested. You should know that not everyone is in 100% agreement with all of these suggestions and that’s okay. These suggestions are what I do to keep my cast iron pans “healthy” and looking good.

1. Use your pans and use them a lot.  If your pan has just been seasoned fresh (as opposed to factory pre-seasoned) or re-seasoned it will probably be a shade of brown, BUT it should be completely black within a year if it is used frequently. There's very little that cannot be cooked in cast iron. Rethink the kinds of pans you use. If you normally cook something in the oven on a cookie sheet, it might cook just as well in the skillet. On the stovetop, skillets can be used for much more than frying, but obviously, they're good for that, too. Breads and desserts cook well in cast iron skillets, too.
2. I would recommend that you keep them handy, either on the stove top or in the oven when not in use. Don't stack them or place them under other pans in the bottom of a cabinet. Cast iron pans stacked in closed up cabinets for long periods of time often develop rust rings where one pan is sitting on another. If you don need to stack your pans, put a cloth between them or a pan protector.
3. Since cast iron distributes heat so well, under normal situations, you don't need to turn a stove burner above a "medium" heat. Always let the pan heat as the burner heats or let the pan heat in the oven as the oven heats. Don't put a cold pan on a hot surface or a hot pan in cold water. Either has the potential to crack or warp the pan. 
4. The seasoning/carbonizing process needs to continue, so, I would recommend that initially (perhaps a year or so), avoid highly acidic foods in the pans such as tomatoes, wine, and citrus fruits. 
5. Avoid metal utensils that can scrape and damage a pan’s seasoning. I use a lot of wooden spoons and silicone spatulas that can withstand high heats. See Delia’s post, “Spats & Spoons: What’s Best for Cast Iron?”
6. When you clean them NEVER* use soap as it both breaks down the seasoning and can change the taste of the pan. Clean them with hot water and a good stiff brush. If food is stuck on them, use the kind of scraper that you can get from Pampered Chef for baking stones. Don't worry about sanitary issues in regard to not using soap. Heating a pan on a medium heat will raise the temperature to nearly 350 degrees which is more than twice the temperatures needed to kill any microbes. *Some on our panel of writers will disagree to the NEVER in my first sentence. Once a pan has reached a “mature” seasoning after much use, a mild dishwashing soap will usually not harm it. However, I just prefer cleaning my pans the old fashioned way with a good brush and hot water.
7. After cleaning a skillet, you need to prepare it for it's next use. Make sure it is dried thoroughly. Sometimes placing it on a still warm burner or in a still warm oven will help with this. After the pan is dry, wipe a thin layer of cooking oil over the entire cooking surface to prepare it for the next use. I use olive oil because I cook primarily with olive oil and it will not turn rancid if left out in the air for long periods of time (of course, if you use your cast iron regularly, there’s no such thing as a “long period of time” ). 
8. If your pan starts to show signs of rust, significant loss of seasoning, or gives off a metallic taste in your food, it needs to be re-seasoned.

This may sound like your pans will require a lot of high maintenance, but not really. All of this becomes simply routine. Most modern pans wear out, but cast iron is designed to last beyond an entire lifetime. There's no reason that with the proper care, you wouldn't be able to pass these pans on to your children or grandchildren years from now

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Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments below, or you can contact Rick directly at rick@cookingincastiron.com.

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Posted by Rick Mansfield

Around here, we often refer to our cookware of choice as “black iron.” But in many ways, cast iron is green if you think about it, too. No, I’m not referring to enameled cast iron such as the skillet pictured to the right (but it makes a great image for this post!). Rather, I’m referring ot the environmental benefits of cast iron.

Perhaps you’ve never thought about it. I mean, most folks who have been cast iron aficianados for a while are familiar with the other benefits. Of course there are healthy benefits to cast iron. Cooking in cast iron is a great way to introduce trace amounts of iron into one’s diet. Plus, there’s no flaking Teflon to worry about getting into one’s food. Then, on another front, there are economical benefits to cast iron because these pans--except for the enameled variety--cost MUCH less than other kinds of cookware.

Bur you may or may not have ever thought about the environmental benefits of cast iron. These benefits can be divided into at least three main areas: (1) Toxicity (or lack thereof), (2) production, and (3) longevity and recyclability.

First, as mentioned above in regard to health, cast iron cookware is a smart alternative to Teflon-coated aluminum pans. According to the Environmental Working Group website,

Statistics reported by the Cookware Manufacturers Association indicate that 90 percent of all the aluminum cookware sold in the United States in 2001 was coated with non-stick chemicals like Teflon (Cooks Illustrated, September 2002). Chemicals and tiny, toxic Teflon particles released from heated Teflon kill household pet birds. At least four of these chemicals never break down in the environment, and some are widely found in human blood.

This is obviously not a concern with cast iron cookware which builds its non-stick surface naturally through the carbonization process of heating oils and fats on the cooking surface. What about the cast iron that comes pre-seasoned--is that coating harmful? Not at all. Pre-seasoning is nothing more than vegetable oil (and it’s Kosher vegetable oil if you get a Lodge pan!) heated at high temperatures. Yes, it can flake off, but it won’t hurt human beings or animals and this vegetable oil coating is fully biodegradable.

Second, many cast iron foundries incorporate steps in the production of cast iron that greatly reduces waste and impact on the environment. My wife, Kathy, and I were able to tour the Lodge Manufacturing Plant in South Pittsburg, Tennessee, in April. We found that the production of the cast iron cookware Lodge produces was eco-frindly in all stages. The picture on the left shows the scrap iron used in the process before it has been melted to be poured in the sand casts. Part of the production of cast iron also involved pounding the pans with rocks to create a smoother surface on the molded cast iron. Lodge uses rocks taken directly from the Tennessee River bed for this process. Production of cast iron dates back to 600 AD in China, and even though the process is more mechanized today, it is still essentially the same process that has been around for over a millennia. Lodge also has a special page devoted to Eco-Responsibility, incorporating measures even down to the cardboard packaging they use.

Finally, cast iron pans can last for generations. Pictured on the right is my grandmother’s cast iron skillet. It is at least seventy years old, and it may very well be older. Now tell me--if you had one of the original Teflon pans from the 1940’s, would you dare eat from it? Are there any of those pans even still around? Well, my grandmother’s skillet is still in use and has a prominent and permanent place on my stovetop where it is used regularly in our cooking.

Since cast iron, if treated well, gets better with age, my grandmother’s skillet actually has a greater non-stick surface than the skillet I got brand new in the nineties. Certainly, the cast iron in the pan itself can be recycled, but the best way to recycle a pan is to pass it on down to a family member. I fully intend that my grandmother’s pan will outlast me, and I’ll be able to pass it down to my children or grandchildren.

Consider this as well: because cast iron is a lifetime investment (and a low-cost one at that!), you won’t have to completely replace your pans every decade or so as some people have to do with cookware made of other materials.

So, if you’ve been sitting on the fence in regard to whether or not you should make the jump to cast iron, now you have even more reasons to do so. And if you already use cast iron, you can feel good about the fact that cast iron is a smart, economical purchase, is healthy for you and your family, and is friendly to the environment as well. That cannot be said of any other kind of cookware.

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Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments below, or you can contact Rick directly at rick@cookingincastiron.com.

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Posted by Rick Mansfield

Friday afternoon, some friends called to see what Kathy and I were doing for dinner. We said we had planned to grill a couple of steaks, but they were welcome to come join us. I said that if they wanted to bring something to throw on the grill, they could or we would have enough for them.

Well, they brought brats and we found a few burgers and added them to the steaks. We all shared a little bit of it all.

The picture here on the left features my Lodge Sportsman's Grill. This is a great grill that is completely cast iron from top to bottom. I’ll have a full-featured review of the grill in the coming weeks.

One of my initial concerns when getting this grill was whether or not it would be big enough for entertaining. However, in spite of its small size, I’ve found it to be quite adequate. I can grill up to eight hamburgers at a time and four to six steaks, depending on their size.

However, in this picture, you see my new record! Here we have four hamburgers, two steaks, and five brats, all at once. In fact, the crowded grill was quite helpful for grilling the brats on four sides. I was able to prop them up against other food cooking on the grill.

Of course, I was trying to photograph the food, not my basset hound Bessie Mae. But notice her head in the bottom left corner of the picture below. There was quite a bit of canine coveting taking place on the back patio yesterday afternoon.

Notice also the Lodge Sauce Kit to the right of the grill. This Sauce Kit is basically just a cast iron melting pot and a nylon brush (the bristles are actually nylon themselves and can withstand up to 400° heat). I’d been wanting one of these for a while, and Kathy and I stopped at an outlet mall earlier in the day where they had them for $14.99 ($5 off the Lodge list price).

There was nothing fancy in the pot--just some olive oil that I had brushed onto the steaks to seal in their flavor before sprinkling them with a bit of my homemade cajun seasoning. When I’ve done this in the past, I always hated the fact that there’s been a little bit of olive oil left that I had to throw out because it had come into contact with raw meat. But tonight I had an idea. I took a chopped up vidalia onion and placed it on a cast iron fajita skillet. I poured the remaining olive oil onto the onions and cooked them alongside our grilled brats and steaks.



Everyone marveled as I brought the skillet in last, sizzling restaurant style. And the grilled onions were wonderful on the brats, steaks, and hamburgers. Kathy told me she will be expecting this every time from now on when we grill.

Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments below, or you can contact Rick directly at rick@cookingincastiron.com.

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Posted by Rick Mansfield


Cast Iron Is Hot (Pun Intended)
We’ve now come full circle. Everywhere I go--whether a neighbor’s kitchen, the gourmet kitchen store, or a campfire in the woods--I’m seeing more and more cast iron. Now, even celebrity chefs have their names on their own lines of cast iron. But it wasn’t always that way. In spite of the fact that cooking in cast iron was the only way for most people to prepare meals for centuries, cast iron began to fall on hard times in the 1940’s with the development of modern artificial nonstick surfaces. And so in recent years, cast iron went into a kind of teflon-inspired exile. If you wanted to find a good cast iron pan, often you had to visit the hardware or sporting goods store (in the camping section, no less) or simply resort to mail order.

But of course, great cooks such as your grandmother who would have never dreamed of giving up her cast iron skillet or Uncle Ted who can’t imagine camping without his dutch ovens have remained true to the black iron. So, they aren’t surprised when recent studies tell us that those artificial non-stick coatings may not be so safe and healthy afterall. And suddenly lots of folks are starting to come back to cast iron.

A Cast Iron Renaissance
I believe we’re in a bit of a “cast iron renaissance.” I began to see signs of this two and a half years ago when Mark Bittman published an interesting article in the New York Times, titled “Ever So Humble, Cast Iron Outshines the Fancy Pans.” In the article, Bittman traces his own journey through twenty years in which after using more modern cooking surfaces, he had returned to an old standby: cast iron--in both his own cooking and in regard to what he recommends. And he’s not alone; suddenly there is lots of talk in the food industry about cooking in cast iron.

So what brought about this return? Well, perhaps a number of things, not the least of which is the sudden concern over chemically-based nonstick pans already mentioned above. But years ago, those modern pans also brought a seemingly bad rap for cast iron. The new pans were marketed as being much easier to use and care for than cast iron. And there was probably some truth to that. In the past, when buying a cast iron pan, the pan had to be “seasoned”; that is, you had to add a cooked on layer of oil or fat to the pan before it could be used. Plus, you had to be very careful how cast iron pans are cleaned. You can’t just throw them in the dishwasher like the “fancy pans.” And as people began to eat out more often, the lessons from the previous generations about how to care for cast iron were less frequently passed down to the next.

Then, just in the last four or five years, cast iron companies did something truly new for the first time in perhaps hundreds of years: they introduced pans that were pre-seasoned. While still in the factory, a coating of vegetable oil is sprayed onto cast iron pots and pans and then baked in furnaces creating that sought after black coating so eagerly sought after in cast iron pans before they even hit the stores. Now, I’ll admit, that initially I was not crazy about pre-seasoning. I thought that I could do it better on my own (and I still do). However, there’s one thing I can’t argue with. Companies like Lodge Manufacturing in South Pittsburg, Tennessee, state that during the period in which they had both pre-seasoned and non-seasoned pans on the market, the pre-seasoned pans far outsold the non-seasoned variety by a significant and wide margin. Resellers started ordering the pre-seasoned pans to the exclusion of the original non-seasoned pans. The differrence in sales was so significant that Lodge now no longer even sells anything but pre-seasoned and enameled cast iron.

I still think I can do the seasoning process better myself, but I’ve come to peace with pre-seasoning which I’ll write about at a later date. What’s important for right now, however, is that pre-seasoned pans have allowed cooks who were previously intimidated by cast iron to come back to the basics. That, and inflating fuel prices, which give way to higher food costs are allowing smart consumers to cook for themselves more often than perhaps in previous years. The family meal is making a comeback, and we’re discoving that the pilgrims, pioneers, and grandma had it right: cast iron is best for preparing almost any meal.

A Black Iron Romance
If you cook with cast iron long enough, it slowly wins you over. There’s something attractive about cast iron; it has its own culinary kind of seduction. I reach for a cast iron pan first now. If I don’t have something I need for cooking, I look to see if there’s a cast iron variety of whatever it is. I now even grill on the back patio completely on cast iron.

Since I got my first computer in 1982, I’ve always considered myself technologically savvy. But there’s something decidedly (and wonderfully) low-tech about cast iron. It’s solid in the oh-so-most-literal sense. I don’t have to worry about replacing it because a newer, more powerful, and more efficient model might come along. It is what it is, practically immutable with the exception that one way cast iron does change is that it gets better with age. The more you cook with it, the more non-stick it becomes.

I can pick up a cast iron skillet or a dutch oven, and I know that I hold in my hands a quality instrument that, baring great clumsiness on my part, will certainly outlast me. If the house burns, I can grab my family members, the pets, and the picture albums if time allows. The cast iron can be retrieved after the fire because it’s that tough. In the event of apocalypse, we can still cook in cast iron! Cast iron is solid, and its weight when I hold it in my hand says to me that it will still be with me when I come to the end of my days, waiting to be passed on to the next generation.

Striking While the Iron Is Hot
So why this website? Well, I and my other contributors consider ourselves “cast iron advocates.” As stated in our purpose statement, our goal is “to promote the use of cast iron cookware across all spectrums of culinary pursuits--from the gourmet kitchen to the old fashioned campfire and everything in between. Our goal is to both educate and advocate cooking in cast iron.” There are a lot of great cooking/culinary-related websites out there, and there are also quite a few sites that talk about the use and care of cast iron. We hope to provide something a bit unique by offering new articles every few days about the use and care of cast iron. Our goal is not meant to simply be informative in our primary posts, but to be personal as well.

Some of our contributions will come in the form of news, interviews and reviews. We will also post informative/how-to articles. Our goal is to create a monthly video podcast devoted entirely to cooking in cast iron--something that I haven’t found anywhere else. We’re setting up the home page of this site in the form of a blog, but it’s so much more than a blog. Nevertheless, you will be able to interact with the writers and other cast iron users through the comment system.

And perhaps you even have an idea for which you might want to submit free-lance style yourself. We’re not set up to pay for submissions yet, but we hope to be there one day. Regardless, we welcome your ideas now.

We hope that you will bookmark cookingincastiron.com, subscribe to our RSS feed and/or check back here often. Whether you’ve been cooking in cast iron all your life or have a skillet rusting at the bottom of your pantry, we believe that we have something to offer you, and you have something to offer us.

Come back and check for new posts soon.

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Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments below, or you can contact Rick directly at rick@cookingincastiron.com.

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