Cooking without plastic

I recently decided to ditch our nonstick pans.  Teflon, which is the coating that makes the pan nonstick, is a plastic.  While it is generally considered safe to use these pans at a medium heat, I decided to just go ahead and get rid of them before they figure out how unsafe they are.  It just seems like plastic and food don't go together, and especially as I consider having kids in the next few years, I figure I might as well do my best to play it safe. Fortunately, many people do want nonstick pans, so ours sold quickly on Craigslist.  I found some used Revere pots on ebay, I already had a big stainless steel skillet, and I borrowed (stole?) a couple of cast iron skillets from my mom since she said she didn't really use them anyway.

If you have nonstick pans, you can't use metal utensils on them!  As such, we also had a set of plastic cooking utensils that we put up on Craigslist yesterday.  We found the replacements for the essentials at Goodwill for a couple dollars each, and we already had some of what we needed in bamboo that we didn't have to replace.

Our old set came with a plastic bucket thing to hold the utensils.  When I knew I was going to make the switch, I got a coffee can from my mom so that it could hold our utensils.  Of course, an added benefit of this was that I could decorate it however I chose!  Today I got around to painting some adorable little birds onto my can.  I'm very pleased by how it turned out!  What a cheerful container of utensils!

So there you have it, we've made the switch!