New doesn’t always mean better
If I were the type to bake a blackberry pie I would have blamed it on the bubbling berries sliding out of the pie pan and onto the cookie sheet, but they didn’t and I’m not.
So what was this crusty, dark goo that had attached itself to my sheet pan, the one I’ve had for years? As I stood at the sink scraping it, I decided this was some sticky food that had burned and turned volcanic. It did not surrender.
Nor would the goo respond to cleanser or steel wool and definitely not to my elbow grease. Deciding I could not stand to look at that igneous lump every day, I tossed the cookie sheet into the trash and went shopping for a replacement.
I dislike cliches, but there’s one that fits: They don’t make things like they used to. As I perused the aisle of the home store I considered the options – the half sheets and the quarter sheets, the stainless steel and the ceramic. Holding one especially lightweight metal one I could almost hear the distressing “boing” of it warping in the hot oven.
In all these decades of baking and cooking, I’ve purchased and then tossed plenty of warped cookie sheets before finding this one perfect pan, the one that’s extra large and has extended edges that make it easy to pull out of the oven; it’s the perfect size for a batch of crispy chick peas, or chopped Brussels sprouts or a bunch of chicken thighs and potatoes. Sure it had grown dark and mottled, but I could get it clean enough. And it never warped.
Trips to two stores and a search online for the same one came up empty. I guess they don’t make that cookie sheet anymore.
We all have that well-used thing we cling to because it works. No shiny new version could compare. Sometime in the 1960s my grandmother took home the bath mat from a hotel room (and paid the front desk $10 for it, she was quick to add).
“It’s just the best thing,” she said, “so much better than from a store.” That bath mat was on the floor for all the many years I visited her. She kept it long after it had gone ragged at the edges, because even then, it was better than anything else.
A certain woman’s store sold the perfect black yoga pants that didn’t stretch out. I bought a few pairs every year, keeping them in a stash to be used only when a pair already in circulation had worn out. Eventually the store stopped making them. I still have one unworn pair that I hoard like I hoarded that one last pain pill after my knee surgery. Oh, and my beloved bike, my steel-frame Marin hybrid – it’s almost 20 years old. I guard it always because they don’t make that model any longer.
Is there a new cookie sheet that would serve me well? Probably, but I can’t find it. I retrieved my pan from the trash and started scraping. I attacked it with a wire brush, a knife, and finally with the pumice stone I use on my heels. Someone told me to put the pan back into a very hot oven to try to melt off the goop, but isn’t that what caused all this in the first place? I’ll keep scrubbing away. I’m not parting with it.
Some might say that shiny and new is always better than old and unsightly, but they’d be wrong. And that cliche? It’s right.