Let’s go back a healthy number of years, before HA and when my sons were small. I had a credit card through Costco, and it “earned” a reward when I used it. At the end of a year, they sent me a voucher for (IIRC) a couple hundred dollars, redeemable at Costco.
I’m not much of a retail therapy kind of guy, and I really didn’t know what to do with the voucher, Then, as I was cooking dinner, I realized that cooking was a big part of my life and I was getting by with a dirt-cheap cookware set that was probably shedding aluminum and nonstick microplastic particles into our food. I took my voucher to Costco and left with a set of Kirkland Signature stainless steel pots and pans. They were beautiful and worked really well.
Lo these many years later, the set still looks great, still works great (even with induction cooktops), and they’re still our primary go-to set of cookware. While HA was away, however, I needed to use the medium saucepan and couldn’t find the lid. Since moving to the island, our pan lids ended up in a heap in one of our mobile kitchen islands.
Even after I took them all out, I couldn’t find the lid for the medium saucepan. I did have an epiphany that The Internet would probably have a nice rack that would turn our lid heap into organized lid storage and, indeed, one is being delivered tomorrow.
When HA returned, I asked her about it and she said that she hasn’t been able to find the lid since we moved. The move was a Very Big Ordeal, and one that I largely skipped out on by virtue of having cancer. All-in-all, it went quite well. The washing machine got damaged but was repairable. Some parts of our spare bed went missing, but I was able to get replacements at our village’s local hardware store. Joulee the Free Salvage Tesla got lost for a time, but eventually made it here with only one new dent in her bumper. So losing a lid to one of my venerable saucepans wasn’t a big deal.
HA said something like “we can just throw that pan away and get another one.” Nooooooo! It’s part of a set. We can’t just throw it away! My reaction was visceral and out-of-proportion and, fortunately, I didn’t let it bubble to the surface. I’ve always been overprotective of my tools, and get particularly irked when a small part of a big set goes missing. I don’t think we’ll throw the pot away, but we can probably find another lid that fits. (I did check eBay for the real thing, but though several sellers have the pot with and without the lid, they’re quite expensive and nobody is selling just the lid.) In any case, it’s still perfectly functional and still matches the rest of the set. I think I’ll survive.
—2p