Run, Quick! Cake Pans Are on Sale!

Lest you think I have totally lost my mind, which  I have not but have thought often about, I'm not just saying cake pans in the general terms. I'm talking about those heavy-duty, really nice ones that people actually use for baking cakes.

Not me, of course. A whole cake in my house would be a deadly thing, much like alcohol to an alcoholic. If I get an overwhelming desire for cake, Publix has perfectly good slices of cake that I can get halfway through before falling into a sugar-induced coma.

It's the cake pans that I cannot live without.

What self-respecting Southern girl who actually cooks could ever do without at least three or four? I mean, honestly.

They are the perfect containers for breading cutlets or chicken. Milk-egg batter in one, and seasoned flour in another. Roasting vegetables is easy-peasy using cake pans...throw in some garlic and butter and pop it in the oven. They make great storage containers for batches of cookies, baking bread is easy using a small cake pan and heck, you can even feed the dogs in one. One simply cannot be without a cake pan. Or four.

So when I see the darned things on sale, I have to literally talk myself out of buying another one "just in case." Recently the retail store where I work had them on clearance and it was everything I could do not to squirrel away two or three to purchase after I clocked out.

I know it seems trivial, but it really isn't to someone who grew up with their momma having a "favorite" fork, without which she could not function in the kitchen. She also had cake pans galore and although she made cakes constantly, she also used them to make stuffing, bread oysters, caramelize apples for pies and soak okra in milk. She used beat-up old aluminum ones that had certainly been used way past their expiration date, but they were perfectly good in her eyes, being the frugal woman that she had grown up to be. She would probably shake her head at my extravagance in using my heavy-duty name-brand ones.

I sorta wish I had those old aluminum ones now, just for the sake of memories. And they would probably be just as useful to me as my new ones.