One Item for BMan 2013 a Day

[danibel]

The Coleman none stick fry pan w/folding handle was crap.. I scratched with nylon tools..

I went with porcelain (glass) this year.. It worked good.. Damaged one from stacking.. Put a tissue between stopped that.. Used much lower heat to cook.
I use (2) one burner hiker stoves..

I like cast iron. I know a lot of people avoid them because they think they are hard to clean, but a well seasoned cast iron is just as easy to clean as a non-stick. Just never use soap and have some steel wool in your kitchen gear in case it needs a scrub. Also - to quick dry one (they can rust!) put it back on the heat for a few minutes and "cook" the water off. Don't walk away though, you may come back to a smoking hot pan! Also, I am careful to never leave it out for another campmate to wash. Most people do not know how to care for them and they soap it up and ruin the seasoning. Doh!

Porcelain sounds intriguing. I would worry about breaking the damn thing though. I use a porcelain coffee drip at home, plastic when camping. I will have check out these glass skillets....

[AntiM]

We have good cast iron skillets, but they never go to the playa. Even MyLarry, who should know better, soaks them and scrubs them too much and ruins the seasoning.

I wipe/rinse mine out. No soaking!!!! I use a green meanie to get the crusty bits. Very hot water, as hot as I can stand. Then heat on the stove to dry, add oil, spread it around (I use tongs and papertowels), set the pans on low until the oil doesn't really wipe out. A couple times a year, I oil them and bake them at super-low heat for an hour or so.

Mostly I don't take any cast iron because yeah, other people.

[Martiansky]

I made my first specifically-for-Burning-Man purchase last night and picked myself up a pair of tinted goggles. I'm oddly giddy about that, because I'm a dork. Other than that, I've been working on my research, making up lists, and planning out when I need to be picking specific things up over the next year (easier for me to budget that way).

I've also started planning out some costume pieces I want to do, but I have to finish the stuff I need for a steampunk convention I'm doing in October first.

Greetings, Bedlamdoll!
Imma dork too so don't worry!
Your steampunk costume sounds great and a convention to boot!

[danibel]

We have good cast iron skillets, but they never go to the playa. Even MyLarry, who should know better, soaks them and scrubs them too much and ruins the seasoning.

I wipe/rinse mine out. No soaking!!!! I use a green meanie to get the crusty bits. Very hot water, as hot as I can stand. Then heat on the stove to dry, add oil, spread it around (I use tongs and papertowels), set the pans on low until the oil doesn't really wipe out. A couple times a year, I oil them and bake them at super-low heat for an hour or so.

Mostly I don't take any cast iron because yeah, other people.

Yeah. Other people. But they are so great to cook with! They heat up so nice and are easy to clean... sigh. I will have to find a green meanie. I have not ever heard of that before. I just have a special steel wool piece that never gets soap and is only for my cast iron.

I am low in iron. Always have been. So the doc said to cook in cast iron as much as possible. And I do!

[AntiM]

Green scouring pad made by Scotch-Brite, also available as generic.

Or the eplaya mods. But we don't do dishes.

[unjonharley]

I use those green pads when sanding lacquer coats.

I have cast iron.. I has been put away for years.. We have a glass top stove at home.

[AzJames]

Yahoo! Just finished washing off and patching up the last tarp I used as ground cover! Now onto upgrades for my Dome (better cover and lighting). I did rebuild a bucket cooler a few days ago, works great now.

[Lonesomebri]

I cook it in the can....

Anyway, this weekend for my birthday a lady musician I know invited me to see a band then get a lap dance at the Condor Club in SF, a famous landmark complete with the piano that killed a man...look it up kids. Anyway, my friend knows some girls there so one came over and sat by me. We got to talking, turns out her camp was set up a couple blocks from mine. She gets out her iphone and shows me photos of her camp and bus. Never do get that lapdance...

This weekend I made a new playa contact.

[Ratty]

I now have 2 of those plastic chest of drawers. One for the van one one for the tent. It worked out great to have stuff contained in drawers this year. Labeled and easy to find. Sooooooooo...I have a drawer for lights, toiletries, tank tops & vests, shorts and lightweight pants, bras & panties, socks etc... Plus now I have even more drawers. They are almost packed now except for the socks that I wear everyday. New year I will be so ready.

[AntiM]

We tried the drawers one year, but they don't work very well in our carport set up. It was one of the dusty years, it wasn't in our tent, and the drawers are not at all dustproof. But I use it for art supplies and paint now, so it is all good.

We have a cheap greenhouse to hold our food, like a pantry. Much easier than digging through the bins each time.

[BoyScoutGirl]

Signed a contract on a hefty grant to start the tradition of nightly lamplighting processions at my regional. Now it's time to make purchases and get creating art!

[Savannah]

Was very pleased with the triple drawer system myself this year for toiletries and towels and kleenex, etc but yeah, they're not dustproof. Very nice inside a tent, though. Used a wooden tv tray as usual to hold a lantern and swag bowl, and shoved a mesh wastebasket underneath.

[Ratty]

TV tray!! Great idea. I don't sleep in there but I bathe and dress in the tent. I burnt a small hole in my precious tent with the lantern. That's what happens when you set your lantern on a bin too close to the fabric. By the time I get it right, it will look like home. that's OK. My home looks like Pee Wees playhouse.

[trilobyte]

Deplayafication's a thing for Burning Man, right? Injuries, urgent projects, and other assorted curveballs have me behind my normal schedule for going through everything post-event, so I'm still slogging through. Today I finished going through all the tool bins, got everything cleaned and put away....huzzah! I'm glad I got that one done, it would have been fairly easy for me to let that slide and then just have to dig around a few flip-top bins as well as our big red tool cart whenever I needed something. This will make it much easier for us to find stuff when working on other projects in the months ahead, plus gets my head around the stuff that went missing or needs to be replaced.

I also got through 3-4 bins of other stuff. Washed, cleaned, sorted, put away.. w00t.

I made a few notes to add to our lists for next year.

[Savannah]

Deplayafication's a thing for Burning Man, right?

I hope so! I'm feeling pretty chuffed to have cleaned and put away my bins and washed all my clothes.

I do have the playa coat left to wash, but it's huge and needs to be done thoroughly & by hand and dried flat, so that'll be a special challenge. And my beloved boots need some hard work put into them.

I made a few notes to add to our lists for next year.

*scribble*
*scribble*

"Avoid . . . 9 o'clock . . . portal."

[trilobyte]

I got my tophats and playa boots done the other day, they look good as new again (well, the boots have some dried paint on part of 'em and some scuffs and scratches "battle damage" spots, but otherwise don't look like they've ever been to the playa). Dr. Marten's Wonder Balm to the rescue

[BoyScoutGirl]

...my tophats...

Note the plural, folks. In trilobyte we truly have the very model of a modern burner-gentleman.

[Savannah]

...my tophats...

Note the plural, folks. In trilobyte we truly have the model of a modern burner gentleman.

I enjoyed the plural, too.

[strange love]

I ordered a bullhorn! Gonna use it to heckle land grabbing yellow tape camps who end up not using 50% of the space they hog.

[theCryptofishist]

...my tophats...

Note the plural, folks. In trilobyte we truly have the very model of a modern burner-gentleman.

Does he have information animal, vegetable and flammable?

[Ratty]

I would also love a bullhorn. I can think of several uses. Maybe it deserves a thread of it's own. "If I had a bullhorn at Burning Man...."

[theCryptofishist]

If I had a bullhorn, I'd annoy them in the morning, I'd annoy them in the evening, all over this town
I'd yell out fire, I'd yell out wake up, I'd yell out let's all get together and burn and blow up shit all over this town


(work in progress...)

[unjonharley]

If I had a bullhorn, I'd annoy them in the morning, I'd annoy them in the evening, all over this town
I'd yell out fire, I'd yell out wake up, I'd yell out let's all get together and burn and blow up shit all over this town


(work in progress...)

When I catch them squatting on the open playa???
I will annoy the piss out of them. all over this town

[Ratty]

Crypto, My husband and I sang it. Well done. Take a bow.....

[phil]

I have a different take on cast iron cookware. I'm old. My mom grew up in the Depression, and my grandmother cooked on a woodburning stove all the time my mother remembered till in the 60s when I remember, using cast iron all those decades. We used cast iron stuff when I was growing up.

We kids were the dishwasher back in those days, and we washed cast iron skillets and griddles in the same sink with the same soapy water as we washed everything else. Dried the cast iron with a towel and put it away. I've continued this practice. Louise and I use our cast iron on the playa, wash it in soapy water, and leave it in the sun to dry. Here's a sample:

[media]

Mmmmmmm ..... bacon.

I realize washing cast iron in the sink with soap and water goes against all the rituals, but since that's how I was raised to do it from the 50s on, and I presume my mom did it the same way she taught me (from back in the 30s and 40s) and her mother before her (in the Teens through the 60s), I know no other way, and my cast iron (and my mom's and grandmom's) have never suffered from it.

I'm contemplating on switching to Canadian bacon for the 2014 Burn. But we'll still be washing our cast iron griddle in hot soapy water and letting it dry in the sun.

Eschew magic rituals with your iron. Thor will take care of it and of you.

[bedlamdoll]

My brilliant plan of "start looking for a cheap bike as soon as the weather turned nasty" turned into "find said cheap bike in the first day of looking at postings," so now I have a bike. I'm doing a bike repair class being held by one of the locally based theme camps next month so I can at least be able to take care of the basics by myself.

Now I need to 1) pick up bike repair tools and 2) remember how to ride a bike.

[tahiti_treat]

Big one today: got an RV! It is a T@B travel trailer (a teardrop) - kitchen galley outside in the back, no shower or toilet, but feels like a significant upgrade from our 10 year old tent.

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[C.f.M.]

Ohmehgod, so jealous. I love those teardrop campers! And I can't imagine how lovely the peace and quiet is...my first, maybe second night there this year, I had the dumbest #firstworldproblem complaint: the wind+my tent = so much noise, even with my earplugs, it was worse than an art car...so loud! I hope you rig it out (I hate the phrase "pimp") and have some fun.

I did laundry. I did Ranger training. That's not for BM, but it's related, non? I gifted a t-shirt* and showed off the boa Ratty made me.

*Best mail ever: box with some stuff in it, but said box came with shipping label for mailing back. Saved my ass, stuffing that box full of stuff and just dropping it off at the hotel. If you ever want to do something awesome for someone in the playa, try a big empty box with return postage. Makes packing SO MUCH easier!!

[Ratty]

Tahiti, That is the cutest thing ever. It's like a puppy. What's it's name? You are going to be so happy in the little house.

[VultureChow]

It's times like these I wish i was on the west coast so I could do the funky trailer thing.

I might have to steal tamarakay's idea and do a dyed monkey hut or something more interesting than the silver tarp.