Spies, Eggs, Landfills & Non-Stick Polymers

Last night I watched the premiere of show called Human Target. I had no intention of doing that until it was was described as "James Bond on Adrenalin." Isn't that redundant? I had to see what would be "James Bond on Adrenalin."

The show was over-sold, but still pretty good. It's about some sort of top secret get-the-bad-guys team. Like spies, but not quite. And apparently the adrenalin part is that they keep flashing forward, then flashing back, then flashing back again. It made an OK story slightly more interesting.

I'm going to try that technique in this post - in hopes it will make this OK post slightly more interesting.

Last Thursday night I had a nightmare. I was at the stove, trying to fry an egg. People were watching me do this for some reason. The details of this dream are sketchy. I must've been watching the Food Network before bed.

So I'm trying to perform egg-frying before the audience but it is sticking horribly to the pan. I go through all the pans in my kitchen, and it won't work on any of them. This upsets me greatly and I wake up all the sudden with panicked heavy breathing. (You mean you've never had a nightmare involving eggs?)

About 7-8 years ago Rick (yes Rick, not me) was pining for Calphalon cookware. I found a great deal on a set of Calphalon non-stick. Plus I had a 20% off coupon for that store, so we bought them. I have loved them (and only hand washed them and only used nylon utensils in them). However, the non-stick coating was starting to flake off in the most used pans.

Not only is this frustrating, causing food to stick to them, but we've all heard the health warnings about ingesting the non-stick coating stuff, right? Eww. Those warnings get to me.

Yesterday my husband announced that he knew what he wanted to buy both our children when they get married. Both our kids are currently under the age of 12. "Um, what?" I took the bait. "Calphalon," he replied decidedly.

So what prompted this given that our Calphalon non-stick was not sticking to the Calphalon?

Not only do health warnings get to me but so do all the warnings I hear about how our landfills are filling up. I'm into recycling. So the idea of throwing away perfectly good, expensive cookware because the top 1/16th of an inch of coating was failing, made me cringe. But I can't fix these pans either. So the first week of January, I spent $12.00 to ship them all back to Calphalon, with a letter explaining my ordeal.

Every Sunday this month I've been going to cooking demonstrations at Williams and Sonoma. They're free and fun - although they're not really free unless you can get out of the store afterwards without buying something. I love me some (overpriced) Williams and Sonoma, y'all. Well, the nice lady at Williams and Sonoma told me Calphalon might replace my pans with new ones if I sent them back. But if they did, she said they would replace them with the newest version of the same product. Meaning, more non-stick cookware. I didn't want more non-stick, given those health warnings and my proclivity for Epicurean nightmares.

On January 6, Rick, the kids and I walked our boxed up flaking Calphalon into the UPS shipping store. We chatted it up with the nice 20-something man working the counter. He told us his mom gave him new Pampered Chef cookware for Christmas because she got it 1/2 price for hosting a party. Pampered Chef lets you return anything that fails at anytime if you have the receipt. The guy said, "So I've now got cookware for life! When it wears out, I'll send it back for free replacements." You're seeing the impetus here for Rick's wedding present idea.

Enclosed with the flaking cookware was a letter I wrote, kindly telling Calphalon that I would love some replacement pans if they were willing to send me some but that I absolutely didn't want non-stick coatings on them. That I'd rather get nothing back - have they not read those health warnings?

So that Friday morning I wake up still rattled by my egg-frying dream. I come downstairs and eat a Zone Perfect bar for breakfast - remember all our pans were shipped back over a week ago. Then I sat down to my desk to work. Ding-Dong. Thud. I open the door to find a large brown box on the porch. Inside were brand new, Calphalon One, hard-anodized pots and pans without the traditional non-stick coating. There is some non-stick polymer thing, however, infused down into the pan. They say it cannot scratch or flake off.



I don't know if they will hold up any better over the next 7-8 years, or if the sticking-egg dream will become a recurring nightmare. (Rick's first batch of scrambled eggs stuck to the pan, but cleaned up easily with Bar Keeper's Friend.) But for just $12 in shipping, I'm willing to give this new set a try.

If it doesn't work, perhaps I'll call on the team at Human Target to pay a little visit to the team at Calphlon and demonstrate to them the kind of adrenalin I experience at night when I have pans that won't fry eggs.

Thankful for good customer service and my new pans.

{This post is linked to Food on Fridays at Ann Kroeker's blog}