* The cast-iron pan on the right in the photo is actually for making cornbread, not roasting corn. The little loaves come out of the oven imprinted with the pattern of miniature ears of corn! Cute, huh?
Oh wow. Could you use them for corn? It wouldn't occur to me to put cornbread in them because they seem so shallow, and the best part of cornbread (to me) is the thick fluffy inside.
You season them and oil them up and pre-heat them in the oven. Once they’re HOT, you pour in the cornbread batter. It cooks REALLY quickly and gives a crispy top [bottom?-the corn pattern] and nice fluffy center that is easy to eat with one hand and a lot of butter. It’s kind of a cornbread analogue to eating corn on the cob, thus the shape.
Yeah, that’s how we make most of our cornbread too. (Well, when my daughter makes it; when her dad makes it, well, he likes cast iron and fun shapes, so…).
It’s REALLY good for chili though to mop your bowl. And, you know, with LOTS of butter.
Vaguely related, we do (or did) business with a farm supply store in Bogota for a farm about an hour from Bogota. Over time it has morphed into a pet supply store for city people and their pets. :) And the farm supply stores in the little town close to the farm have gotten better as the farms around have gotten more commercial and product specialized. Ours is not specialized, but around us are mushroom cultivation, floral shop greenery cultivation, a largish hog farm, and several small timber lots.
Interesting to see economic development happening up close.
I grew up in a Central Illinois town where Rural King was the other big store along with WalMart. It was a big deal when it closed. The next closest one was 20 miles away, but people definitely treated it like a hometown business.
I'm in Northern Virginia and my go-to for a lot of things is Tractor Supply and Southern States, I think that Front Royal Rural King is the closest one to me. Perhaps I should make a pilgrimage. The Kmart in my community became an Amazon fresh prime Market, whatever, but I honestly would have rathered a Rural King!
One of the things that I really like about these stores like Tractor Supply and Southern States is that the folks that work there are really knowledgeable and love to share their knowledge, as well as the people who shop there, and that is not something that you always get at Lowe's or Home Depot.
We just went to a Southern States in Purcellville (likely your location) and it's great. Small but the people are older and probably either long-term employees or semi-retired folks. They seemed to actually enjoy working there. At the big-box stores the people on the floor don't even know the configuration of the store. If you ask where something is they just look it up on their tablet. Good luck if you need some very specific thing or need a general thing and are hoping that an employee can recommend the right specific one.
Actually, I am closer to DC than that--in Manassas! I came down here from New England 16 years ago, grew up in a tiny town in CT and went to college in RI (Providence) where everyone knows everyone so NoVA is a real different animal so any place where I go where people are nice, and even recognize me? OMG I am in heaven! TAKE MY MONEY. There are some great old hardware stores here too, there's one out in Warrenton we like and two in Prince William County who have also helped us find folks to help us with projects we couldn't manage on our own.
Wish we had more little pubs and bars like we do up north though. I can't find a place to get a Seltzer and watch Red Sox game or any game down here that isn't a gigantic sports bar with 900 screens.
Couldn't help you there, we don't go out for that sort of thing haha. It is true that we don't have the same density of hole in the wall little places. We have a lot less streetcar suburb/small town sort of places, more exurban sprawl.
Our Rural King in the Northern Suburbs(or outside the suburbs but growing to be suburbs), is a former Super Walmart. Actually too big of a building for the current Rural King. It carries lower cost items, with sometimes the lower quality that matches “you get what you pay for” philosophy. Sometimes that’s what you need though. And I often feel out of place as I wander into those more “red hat” areas who actually vote for a dictator.
Hot take: Lodge is garbage. All cast iron is sand cast. GOOD cast iron is finished before being sold - Lodge isn't. That pebbly, rough surface? You will NEVER season it correctly, it's designed to attach to food. It's absolutely criminal that Lodge is convincing a generation that they can't use cast iron correctly, entirely because they are too lazy and cheap to do it right.
I have plenty of properly finished pans, many different makers. They work great and I can fry eggs in them all day long.
Also, the corn thing is for making cornbread. Which will be a disaster with that crappy finish.
The finished stuff is 5x more expensive isn't it? Or are there lower priced brands doing that? FWIW I have a smooth cast iron wok and nothing I do with that gives it much non-stickness at all.
My first visit to Rural King was August, 1987, Terre Haute Indiana. I had just begun my freshman year of college there. Being from Iowa, my father could not resist dropping by a place so evocative of our roots. We walked in to see how "these" people lived compared to "our" people.
It did not disappoint.
We found Rural King to be the Complete Package. Our farm supply stores all sold the subset of Rural King that you can't also find in Wal-Mart. We decided before leaving the store that, "If Rural King doesn't have it, you don't need it."
That became something of a mantra in our family when contemplating the purchase of another item of dubious utility. The deciding factor in many cases came down to a discussion of whether said item was likely to be found in a Rural King. Items that weren't, we understood, were things you *wanted*, not necessarily *needed*.
Postscript: A few weeks after my parents drove back to Iowa, a few friends and had a functioning dorm-room distillery fabricated exclusively from Rural King parts and supplies. I guess we needed it.
* The cast-iron pan on the right in the photo is actually for making cornbread, not roasting corn. The little loaves come out of the oven imprinted with the pattern of miniature ears of corn! Cute, huh?
Oh wow. Could you use them for corn? It wouldn't occur to me to put cornbread in them because they seem so shallow, and the best part of cornbread (to me) is the thick fluffy inside.
You season them and oil them up and pre-heat them in the oven. Once they’re HOT, you pour in the cornbread batter. It cooks REALLY quickly and gives a crispy top [bottom?-the corn pattern] and nice fluffy center that is easy to eat with one hand and a lot of butter. It’s kind of a cornbread analogue to eating corn on the cob, thus the shape.
https://www.lodgecastiron.com/story/ode-a-cornstick-pan
That's how we use ours.
That's really cool, I've only ever made cornbread like a Betty Crocker cake in a Pyrex. Surprised more restaurants don't sell this!
Yeah, that’s how we make most of our cornbread too. (Well, when my daughter makes it; when her dad makes it, well, he likes cast iron and fun shapes, so…).
It’s REALLY good for chili though to mop your bowl. And, you know, with LOTS of butter.
Vaguely related, we do (or did) business with a farm supply store in Bogota for a farm about an hour from Bogota. Over time it has morphed into a pet supply store for city people and their pets. :) And the farm supply stores in the little town close to the farm have gotten better as the farms around have gotten more commercial and product specialized. Ours is not specialized, but around us are mushroom cultivation, floral shop greenery cultivation, a largish hog farm, and several small timber lots.
Interesting to see economic development happening up close.
Your list of what they sell reminded me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFI6cV9slfI (around 2:20 but the whole thing is a classic)
Would ya look at all that stuff...
I grew up in a Central Illinois town where Rural King was the other big store along with WalMart. It was a big deal when it closed. The next closest one was 20 miles away, but people definitely treated it like a hometown business.
I'm in Northern Virginia and my go-to for a lot of things is Tractor Supply and Southern States, I think that Front Royal Rural King is the closest one to me. Perhaps I should make a pilgrimage. The Kmart in my community became an Amazon fresh prime Market, whatever, but I honestly would have rathered a Rural King!
One of the things that I really like about these stores like Tractor Supply and Southern States is that the folks that work there are really knowledgeable and love to share their knowledge, as well as the people who shop there, and that is not something that you always get at Lowe's or Home Depot.
We just went to a Southern States in Purcellville (likely your location) and it's great. Small but the people are older and probably either long-term employees or semi-retired folks. They seemed to actually enjoy working there. At the big-box stores the people on the floor don't even know the configuration of the store. If you ask where something is they just look it up on their tablet. Good luck if you need some very specific thing or need a general thing and are hoping that an employee can recommend the right specific one.
Actually, I am closer to DC than that--in Manassas! I came down here from New England 16 years ago, grew up in a tiny town in CT and went to college in RI (Providence) where everyone knows everyone so NoVA is a real different animal so any place where I go where people are nice, and even recognize me? OMG I am in heaven! TAKE MY MONEY. There are some great old hardware stores here too, there's one out in Warrenton we like and two in Prince William County who have also helped us find folks to help us with projects we couldn't manage on our own.
Cool! Yeah, as big as the metro area is, you can still get that old small-town feel not that far away. I really like it here.
Wish we had more little pubs and bars like we do up north though. I can't find a place to get a Seltzer and watch Red Sox game or any game down here that isn't a gigantic sports bar with 900 screens.
Couldn't help you there, we don't go out for that sort of thing haha. It is true that we don't have the same density of hole in the wall little places. We have a lot less streetcar suburb/small town sort of places, more exurban sprawl.
Our Rural King in the Northern Suburbs(or outside the suburbs but growing to be suburbs), is a former Super Walmart. Actually too big of a building for the current Rural King. It carries lower cost items, with sometimes the lower quality that matches “you get what you pay for” philosophy. Sometimes that’s what you need though. And I often feel out of place as I wander into those more “red hat” areas who actually vote for a dictator.
Hot take: Lodge is garbage. All cast iron is sand cast. GOOD cast iron is finished before being sold - Lodge isn't. That pebbly, rough surface? You will NEVER season it correctly, it's designed to attach to food. It's absolutely criminal that Lodge is convincing a generation that they can't use cast iron correctly, entirely because they are too lazy and cheap to do it right.
I have plenty of properly finished pans, many different makers. They work great and I can fry eggs in them all day long.
Also, the corn thing is for making cornbread. Which will be a disaster with that crappy finish.
The finished stuff is 5x more expensive isn't it? Or are there lower priced brands doing that? FWIW I have a smooth cast iron wok and nothing I do with that gives it much non-stickness at all.
My first visit to Rural King was August, 1987, Terre Haute Indiana. I had just begun my freshman year of college there. Being from Iowa, my father could not resist dropping by a place so evocative of our roots. We walked in to see how "these" people lived compared to "our" people.
It did not disappoint.
We found Rural King to be the Complete Package. Our farm supply stores all sold the subset of Rural King that you can't also find in Wal-Mart. We decided before leaving the store that, "If Rural King doesn't have it, you don't need it."
That became something of a mantra in our family when contemplating the purchase of another item of dubious utility. The deciding factor in many cases came down to a discussion of whether said item was likely to be found in a Rural King. Items that weren't, we understood, were things you *wanted*, not necessarily *needed*.
Postscript: A few weeks after my parents drove back to Iowa, a few friends and had a functioning dorm-room distillery fabricated exclusively from Rural King parts and supplies. I guess we needed it.
very bad business: live chicks and guns===just horrible