Everyone has a favourite kitchen item, don’t they? For some people it’s a well-worn wooden spoon, others can’t live without a properly sharpened and balanced Santoku knife. I know my mother would not feel at home in her own kitchen if there was no rolling pin and my older sister probably couldn’t live without her dutch oven. Me…? Well, I love my Kitchen Aid mixer, I am quite fond of my cook-anything-in-it toaster oven, and I always smile when I pull out my immersion blender. But my all-time, go-to, favourite item is a good-quality, not-overly-large frying pan.
I have used a few different pans over the years, with varying results. But recently I believe met the pan that I will last me the rest of my life. I have cooked pasta sauce in it, chicken (it goes stove-top to oven easily), fish and even some really delicious lemon-thyme scallops. It helped me out with a stir-fry, some corn cakes and even pancakes one Sunday morning. Then one day I started thinking about how delicious a grilled cheese sandwich would be made in this pan. I daydreamed all week (please don’t tell my boss!) about the melted cheese, the warm fillings and that perfectly caramelized crust it would give the olive-oil’ed and buttered bread.
When the eagerly anticipated day finally arrived, I stopped at the market on my way home from work for a few essentials – skim milk mozzarella, some thinly shaved turkey breast from the organic butcher, a good, ripe tomato, a loaf of crusty white bread – and then made my way home, my thoughts centered on what I was about to create. I breezily told everyone we were having sandwiches for dinner, watched their faces go from expectant to bored in less than two seconds flat and left them for the kitchen. Less than thirty minutes later I was surprising them with glorious sandwiches, full of flavours and textures.
If you want your own perfect pan, why not try bidding on once of the four Mark McEwan by Fresco pans that the amazing folks at Fresco have graciously donated for Menu for Hope this year? The codes to bid on these beautiful pans are: CA07, CA08, CA09 and CA10 (and, sorry, shipping is limited to within Canada).
For further information on Menu for Hope, and to see the other prizes available this year, see Seven Spoons (Tara is the Canadian host) or Chez Pim (Pim is the overall coordinator and originator of Menu for Hope).
To Donate and Enter the Menu for Hope Raffle
1. Choose a bid item or items of your choice from the Menu for Hope main bid item list.
2. Go to the donation site at Firstgiving and make a donation.
3. Specify which bid item you’d like in the ‘Personal Message’ section in the donation form when confirming your donation. You must write in how many tickets per bid item, and use the bid item code. Each $10 you donate will give you one raffle ticket toward a bid item of your choice. For example, a donation of $50 can be 2 tickets for CA01 and 3 tickets for CA07 – 2xCA01, 3xCA07.
4. If your company matches your charity donation, please check the box and fill in the information so MFH can claim the corporate match.
5. Please check the box to allow MFH to see your email address so that they can contact you in case you win. Your email address will not be shared with anyone.
Check back on Chez Pim on Monday, January 18 for the results of the raffle.
Good Luck!!