When I was growing up in the 60s and 70s, everyone's kitchen seemed to contain at least one cast iron skillet. Slowly but surely, these skillets were replaced with the Teflon-coated monstrosities that are sold in nearly every department store in the U.S. today.
My wife has gone through at least 20 or 30 of the Teflon skillets since we were married in 1985. Before we left the U.S. in 2006 and after we had been visiting at my parents' house, we went searching for the cast iron skillets. We wanted something to send ahead of us to the Philippines that we knew would last for a long time. We were not successful in finding even one in the many department stores of Phoenix.
Since my wife is working in the U.S. right now and our crappy Teflon "nonstick" skillet now causes everything to stick, I decided to scour the Internet to see where I could find some decent cast iron skillets. After Googling the term "cast iron skillet", I found myself at the Wikipedia page for cast iron cookware. Checking brands, I saw that "Lodge" was a manufacturer still making them in the U.S. I checked their site at Lodge Manufacturing and saw how low the prices were. I then checked DealTime to see which stores carry them. I was surprised that JCPenney carried them. It was the one department store I and my wife always stayed away from. I don't know if it was because they had higher prices or just because they didn't carry much of what we couldn't find elsewhere.
She's going to be shipping a box to us in a month, so I'm going to have my wife buy at least one skillet to add to the shipment.
