Cast Iron & Life

Cast iron, it is a lot like life. Treat it well and it will bring you pleasure for a lifetime, treat it poorly and it can be rancid, nasty and rusty. The fact is, you only get out what you put into it. Treated right, you only need one set for a lifetime and it can be handed down at the end of it and kept working. It can even be scrubbed back up, the old burned out, and the new seasoning applied to make it usable once more.
How many can say this about their current cookware? Most think I can buy many sets for the cost of one.
Unless you buy quality, you will buy quantity. No matter what you are buying expect quality, so you won't need excessive quantities. You may pay more initially, however, over a lifetime of the product, it pays off in not having to buy quantity. There is value in a quality build that is not readily seen at first, but as you fall in love with your item, you would not sell it or trade it for anything. Giving it away, most would rather give something less valuable.
Want to know why things that routinely cost over $1500 back then and now are offered as cheaply as $20 a set. The industry learned more sales could be easily obtained with cheaper and less quality being built directly into a product. More people would buy new yearly instead of once for a lifetime, they have built in profit margins they can depend upon.
When I hear people say the older generation was not into recycling, I reply how can that be? I personally feel they truly didn't need a label for it and a movement to get them to do it. I honestly think with the quality offered to them routinely, they did not need to be thinking about it all the time.
Glass jars they bought with jellies, condiments and sauces were reused for other items, coffee cans once empty became storage containers for all sorts of items, not simply tossed in a bin. They canned and grew a lot of their food(organically because they did not have pesticides) they did not get 150 choices for cereal, there was less than 5 at the grocery store. People cooked and ate real food. Bought quality instead of quantity and lived with their furniture for a lifetime, seldom replacing them, having them reupholstered and repaired instead. Recycling did not need a label back then, it was called life.
I think one of the main reasons we were told using cast iron originally was unhealthy, is they could not sell us 10-20 sets of cookware over a life time. Now the current health conscious people are saying it is healthy and we need the extra iron released when cooking because we are iron deficient as a society and they sell us pills now to combat it.
The industry is coming back around to let us know covertly to buy quality so we can be prepared, are you doing it? Or are you simply buying the cheapest to replace later on.
Life is like cast iron, you can have a quality of life not many think to achieve, or you can have a crappy throw away life that is of little use to anyone on the planet, because you take out more than you put into it.
Choose wisely and you can have enjoyment for a lifetime, choose unwisely and you can have misery and work. Your choice. Your life. Taught simply by your choice of cookware.