For pots and pans, buy Demeyere. The Demeyere Apollo pots and pans I bought 21 years ago still look just about as good as the day I unboxed them, and I am rough on my cookware. I have a little weathering along the edge of the heart conductive disk on the bottom of some pans, but that is it.
They sit dirty too long and get crusty. They go right into my dishwasher. They fall out of my lower cabinet onto my tile floor all the time. None of this phases them. I bought them over two decades ago because I had an employee discount at a cookware store and the company rep classified them as, “dishwasher recommended.” As an avid home cook and occasional caterer, these pans, a Le Creuset Dutch oven, and my grandmothers’ cast iron are my daily workhorses.
You are going to pay through the nose for Demeyere pans, but they will last long enough for your kids to cook with them after you are gone. You can get their least expensive line of regular pans, cry once, and be good for life.
You might see used Demeyere indoor smokers, asparagus steamers, egg poachers, and other similarly oddball pans in online market places. Ignore those. They were a cheap line made in a different factory at one point. They are not the same quality. All of the regular style Demeyere pans (skillets, sauce pans, woks, sauciers, etc.) are excellent, and I would not hesitate to buy them used.
I added the recipe link and notes to the post as an edit.
If anything, it’s consistency was a little thicker than many chowders. Between the roux, the cheese, and the many small bits in the soup, it is very thick. I liked it this way, but I could see using more broth to thin it out a bit.
The soup is heavy. I am a big guy who can easily put back a few bowls of soup at dinner. I could barely finish two half-full bowls.
I added the recipe to the post. We did have hard rolls with it, but I further hardened them out a little too much as I neglected them in the oven. My youngest still enjoyed hollowing out his roll and using it as a hand-held bread bowl.
That is exactly where I was with it. It wound up being delicious, but I was unsure at every step along the way. It was a gamble, but both of my boys loved it as a fun spin on a food they enjoy.
This is a solid medium rare, but it looks a more red from the color correction I used. If you dislike medium rare, then it was not cooked enough for you.
It is 100% medium rare by texture, color, and temperature. My wife prefers medium-rare bordering on medium, and this roast was acceptable to her. She strongly dislikes rare beef.
I chose between a couple easy color correction filters on my phone, and this gave the best overall representation of the meal. It made the color a little too red, but my other choice made it a little too brown/beige and sucked the color out of the scene.
It was LARPing, but then I got clever. Once my wife was pregnant, it was only a matter of time. Now my kids have grown up in the hobby, and they love it as much as their old man.
This is the best thing about having kids as they get a little older. I put one gift under the tree labeled, “To: Billy and Dad; From: Dad.” My wife wants nothing to do with a 2-player historic war board game about the battle of Stalingrad and the difficult choices commanders must make. My oldest, 11-years, loves military history and war games. I could not lie, though. I was buying it for me and not just for him.
Has the child flown on a commercial airline, yet? My son loved having a Southwest branded toy airplane - realistic looking one - after he had flown on that carrier. It let him relive his flight and expand on it in his imagination.