Saucepan Memories

A friend brought soup for us the day we moved to our new place. As I hefted the saucepan onto the stove, memories flooded into my heart and mind. This pan is exactly like the one Mom cooked with her entire adult life - Revere Ware

How many batches of mashed potatoes were cooked in the pot like this? Seems like we had mashed potatoes at 3-4 times a week - always with peeled potatoes. Only later in life did Mom decide to quite peeling potatoes. She said she was tired of doing it and anyway, the skins were good for you. She called them "dirty" mashed potatoes - I think that's what one of the grandsons said when she served them. 

Hot chocolate simmered in this pot to warm us after ice skating or playing out in the snow. 

7 Minute Icing for a multitude of birthday cakes - the recipe came from Mom's Joy of Cooking cookbook. 

Dad often cooked oatmeal or grits on Sunday morning when Mom got to sleep in. This is the pan in which the oatmeal was cooking the morning my dress caught on fire and I was burned. *Sometimes Dad put food coloring in the oatmeal. I remember green for St. Patrick's Day and purple. Mom was not a morning person and her mind didn't do well with purple or green oatmeal in the morning!

When I thanked our friend for the soup, I told her about some of these memories. She's about my age. She said she had a pan like this when she was first married. She and her family then moved to out of the country for her husband's job. Before their move she sold many of their possessions, including her Revere Ware. When she moved back to the States, she bought more Revere Ware but was disappointed that it wasn't as good as the older pans. (This is confirmed here.) When either her mother or grandmother died (I can't remember which), our friend was delighted to find this Revere Ware saucepan - just like the one she used to have - and just like Mom's. 

*added October 25, 2015