Shoes & Belts, Mickey and Aebleskivers

It was buried in a big Tupperware bin of belts that I dove into and busied myself with. From Brighton and Disney, crocodile printed, my sized Mickey and Minnie?! In a train!

With Pluto and the Duck, either Donald or Daffy, I’m not good with names. The belt part itself is a little ratty, it's a very tired crocodile.  But how could I not. 

 But I wore it to work today, and it got lots of compliments and managed to stay intact. Win!

There’s a husband/wife leather shop in Laguna Beach I really like (LagunaLeather), I called and inquired about new belts - $40 to make one. So, I guess that could be an option. In a purple crocodile print, yes?

Same bin featured another Brighton belt, looky like brand new, and an older leather Spanish made belt that I just thought looked cool. 3 belts $2.75 each. Normally $3.75, but it WAS a sale day for belts. Ha.

The kitchen department was a bit of a fail, since I own 500 lbs in cast iron, and I really should own a couple pans only, so I can cook on them all the time and keep them seasoned.  (But Jesse thought we might need a chicken fryer, a wok, a brownie pan, and several others.  So, he started it.)

It's a cast iron Griswold aebleskiver pan.  (Don't think it was cooked on, but it ain't rusty either like some Ebay beauties).  I actually have a Lodge one, but the older pans like Griswold were machined smooth back in the day. I guess it’s too expensive to do anymore, and the current cast iron, for the most part is a little grainy. Which typically isn’t a problem, but this is an Aebleskiver pan - they are spherical pancakes that you turn as they cook, so batter pours out and forms a ball. This turning happens with a knitting needle, a skewer, or a chopstick, there are some YouTube videos of it happening.

So, here’s where the smooth surface comes in – if the batter sticks at all to the pan, it won’t turn, the batter won’t pour out, and it becomes a mess.  I've seen it happen:

That middle aebleskiver didn't wanna turn.. :( 

It's a pain in the butt to wash, too.  I'm being a little dramatic, since I've actually made perfectly successful batches of 'skivers on my 'grainy' pan.   And I actually prefer the way it looks.  But, apparently I couldn't walk away from a  $3.75 Griswold.  So, I now  have two aebleskiver pans, and I have a feeling Jesse will make me get rid of one.  There’s a very short section in my address book of people who make Aebleskivers. Extremely short. Non existent, one might say.  May be I'll poach eggs in one of them WHILE I flip aebleskivers in the other. 

Jesse skipped away pretty excited despite a new 10lb kitchen addition, because he found these at a neighboring G-Mart:

They were brand new, $12, and his size. When does that ever happen? He promptly looked them up online, because it’s always exciting to find out how much stuff costs in real life, and feel like you saved some money, and spent some time last night polishing them.  The "after" :

Yes, those are shoes on our dining table.  I guess he was really fond of them.  I was a little jealous, and looked through shoe racks I usually avoid, but no new shoes were waiting to get adopted. I found a cute green Rampage top and called it a day.