LUG approved pots and pans

In early 2003, I was outfitting my kitchen, and
posted the following question to the Leica Users Group:

So..... Let's say I was to have some luggers over for dinner.

"What a wonderful hat!" Someone remarks at my Tilley, perched atop my hat rack. Everyone photographs it. My dog walks through the kitchen, someone remarks "Well! A Brittny! Fancy that! Feisty little pointer!" to which someone else enviously adds "What a lovely breed of upland bird dog! Fine, fine animal!" Shutters whirr and click. After seven or eight glasses of Chivas Brothers Royal Salute 50 year old scotch (mmmm!) someone suggests that we go outside and shoot a bunch of the empty scotch bottles with my very impressive Browning Citori over-and-under shotguns. We photograph one another firing guns and blasting bottles off of one another's heads. When we can barely stand and one or two of us have been winged by stray pellets, we retire to the house and stack our cameras on the kitchen table. "Holy crikies!" says one of the luggers, stumbling over my 200 year old Hammadan hand knotted Persian rug, and collapsing to the floor like a bag of sod and pinecones. He staggers to his feet, pulling the elegant Madeira hand embroidered Portuguese tablecloth with him (Leica's clatter and scatter everywhere, but we really don't care by now). "You have," he teeters back and someone almost catches him, but instead, now off balance, crashes into the stove, knocking my Kitchen-Aid mixer into the sink, "you have," says the first lugger, staggering to his feet, "the most excellent set of pots and pans!" He points vaguely at my iron pot rack which seems to be swinging from the ceiling. Or maybe the floor is rocking. "Yeah!" chimes in a third lugger, accidentally firing the shotgun into the floor, blasting my Bosh rotary hammer drill to bits and slightly injuring my dog, "what kind of pots and pans are those? They're FANTASTIC!"

"Well," I say proudly, "they're...."

And that was where I left it. Hoping for a little input from the top shelf snobs on the LUG. And I got
much more than a little input. The entire LUG went off the rails to respond. And I'm proud to say
that I have outfitted my kitchen, upon their recommendation, in snob-friendly gear. I present it to you now:

" ... mostly All-Clad, you silly fools," I say, reeling backwards and dislodging a shelf of Risling Crystal which plummets to the floor in a melodious tintinnabulation of delicately shattering ice.

"An All-Clad 12 inch fry pan?" Belches one of the Luggers, picking it up and swinging it like a mace. "And the non-stick version as well!" I reply, deftly deflecting his blow into the Cifial Brass Works Asbury Widespread model kitchen faucet with a resonating "ting!" Someone vomits in my hat.

"There seems to be some Calphalon," someone remarks with a frown. I wave a broken bottle at him and he shuts up, quick.

"And the two quart sauce pan! All-clad!"
"Fo shizzle, it's all blinged out!"

"The pride of my kitchen," I say, opening a cabinet and searching for the bottle of The Macallen 50 year old I seem to remember hiding in there, "is my Barfing Frog Tea Kettle."

I notice some inspired individual barfing in one of my Le Creuset Dutch ovens but I'm too murky to complain, and the dutch ovens are all swimming before my eyes anyway. The red ones are faster. Though none of them match my lever Screwpull.

"Let's make Grey Goose martini's it in the Sunbeam Mixmaster Model 11!" a Lugger giggles.

"Mixed, not stirred! bahahahaha!" another chimes in.

"No, I say, "let's not!" The room swims before me, and the last thing I see before firing my 1842 John Rigby Smooth bore .50 caliber dueling pistol in the air at a bug is one of my Bruno Magli's (size 12) laying, inexplicably, in the sink filled with free range organic guacamole.

The next morning, I throw all those jerks out and make some breakfast in my Le Creuset 10 inch ceramic coated skillet, bonded with triple-layer Silverstone nonstick surface. I sit back, sipping a cup of Aged Yunnan Tribute Pu-erh tea from the Anhui province of China thinking what classy friends I entertain. Later in the afternoon I will notice a strange odor coming from one of my Dutch ovens and reconsider.

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