Mark Morford is one of us (cookware fetishist).

[Shakespeare]

For those of you unfamiliar with Morford, he's a VERY liberal SF Chronicle columnist (and a wonderful, wild writer).

http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/morford/

I have a thing for Calphalon One. The dark aluminum, the deadly serious matte finish, the simple, cream-colored, Zen-like cardboard packaging, the heft and the handle and the sex and the heat and the mystery. This, I think, is what God cooks with. Or rather, Shiva. I want them. I want them all.

Ah, but then my eye strays. I am weak. I cannot help but look. After all, All-Clad's MC2 line is positively orgasmic, too, all silky and urbane and it offers up its gorgeous brushed-aluminum siding and gleaming aluminum interior surfaces and world-class workmanship to your ravenous senses the way a Porsche offers up its liquid second gear, all honey smooth and passionate and as confident in its task as a high-priced hooker at a GOP convention.

And holy Jesus, All-Clad's LTD series, well, this line is simply God's gift to cookware, all sexy charcoal-colored anodized aluminum exterior wrapping like a perfect blanket around shining polished steel interiors and all honed to a lustrous pretentious dream by the fact that a goddamn 10-inch fry pan costs more than your mortgage payment.

See, this is my conundrum. I am finally at the stage in my life and ego and culinary adventures where I am ready to invest in a serious set of premium cookware, stuff that will last a lifetime and stuff that will make dinner guests coo and stuff that I will look at every single day and go, oh holy crap, just look at this pile of gorgeous kitchen junk I spent six hundred bucks on and which I coveted like a Bush daughter covets Coors Light. I really should be cooking more than pasta and salmon burgers and eggs.

[Stinky The Clown]

1. I, too, am a cookware fetishist ..... herewith, in the words of Mr Moford:

But matched sets, they are a false god. They tease and wink and glitter but offer only bland dogma, sameness, sacred homogeneity. What was I thinking? Plentiful are the cooking gurus who say that you should, instead, mix and match pans of various materials and brands, make it all one big messy beautiful cooking family because, just as you wouldn't give yourself over to one dogmatic inflexible God at the expense of all the radiant others, so should you enjoy the pagan cookware route, which is to say, organic, messy, creative, mismatched but poetic, the right tool for the job. Praise Shiva, it is so true.

I have found my path. Get a little bit of each. Luxuriate in variety. Celebrate diversity. Let All-Clad and C-One intermingle and inbreed with Le Creuset, Anolon, a Circulon wok, iron. After all, as it is with your cookware, so it is with your worldview. Let there be light. Or rather, let there be simmer. You know?

Matched sets, indeed. False god, agreed.

Sing we now the praise of Copper, that noble metal, fused with tin. Let the control of fire begin.

Le Cruset, glossy and bright. Made of cast iron, it's hardly light.

Plain blue steel, the workhorse that looks like a workhorse should. Responsive as a stallion in The Derby. Omlettes and crepes issue forth with ease. And so, too, the wok, exotic shape but common metal. Steel. It glints in the light. Test your hand, that new recipe we might.

Pyrex and Fire King, glass and more.

Stainless steel, so au courant.

Cast aluminum. Spun aluminum. Annodized aluminum. Thin and thick. Common and rare. Pots of water to boil your macaroni. Cans of Campbell's do equally well.

Yes, I'm a fetishist.

I've even been known to polish copper, just to relax. But it isn't really about that. It is a more sensual thing. Dare I say it? Culinary masturbation.

Yes, I'm a fetishist.

Thanks, Mr. Morford. And thanks to you, too, Shakespeare, for posting this great little column! :hi:

[NMDemDist2]

2. you wax poetic my friend, and I'm certainly not surprised to hear such

an ode to cookware from you fingers

:hug: