How It All Started

A Peek Into Crisbee Cast Iron Seasoning

By Palmer Stuart (Son Of Mrs. & Mr. Crisbee)

Crisbee Cast Iron Seasoning is rooted, more than anything, as a dearly-held
family business. The seed that would sprout the idea for Crisbee as a means
to season and protect cast iron cookware, had been started while trying to
find a solution to a health concern in our family.

But first, a little background.

Actually, before that, let me preface this by letting you know my mother or
father have no idea I'm putting this on the website, so on the chance they
want this removed, congratulations on reading this before it is taken down!

(Disclaimer: This is a story of my family, by reading on you understand
that I am not suggesting using cast iron can improve health or well-being.
I am saying, it did with us.)

I seek good people, and even so I have yet to meet anyone nearly as humbly
generous as either of my parents. They both give more than they take, which
is art to me. Ever since I can remember, my mother has been a die-hard blood donor; whether to routinely help those in need, or to add a little flavor boost to our smoothies. My father began metal detecting in quite a bit of his time of
freedom in between weeks of work. None of us had the slightest of a thought
that these two very separate practices would soon correlate, that he would
find what she would soon be missing.

He would find handfulls of old coins, and we would fascinate ourselves by
bringing them through a time machine of restoration, uniting the metal blob
today with the silver coin it was a century ago.

The garage gradually shapeshifts into a much smaller garage, holding tanks
for restoring tarnished metals, and buckets of to-be and has-been cleaned
findings.

Meanwhile, my mother is at the blood bank to make a deposit. She is denied.
Strange, because she has always been phenomenally healthy. It turns out
her iron levels are too low to donate blood. That was the focus of my
massively generous mother when she told us her iron content was too low,
not that it was unhealthy for her, but that she could not give blood.
Iron-deficiency-driven anemia is fairly common and largely undiagnosed,
at the time I write this.

After supplementing iron, she still did not have enough of an iron count
to donate. My father, the man we call "Google King," begins hunting. He
hunts for information, and then he hunts for cast iron skillets at our
neighborhood thrift stores and flea markets. He does this very abruptly
from the treasure hunting he had become acquainted to, and makes the
shrinking garage grow with space and the diy restoration tanks triple in
volume to make room for this vintage cast iron that is finding him.

I was mesmerized by seeing him put one aged skillet into the tank, and
pulling out an entirely different one hours later, uniting the recently
neglected iron with the gold coin it was a century ago.

Seemingly immediately to this collection's birth, there is the birth of
his experimentation with seasoning the cast iron cookware. Such beautiful
twins. The twin born minutes first grows into a prestigious arrangement
of cast iron cookware, the latter grows into becoming a refined blend
of cast iron-shielding delicacy.

The entire family eats more and more cast iron-bound meals. One ordinary
morning, I recognize my elivening ability to lift cars clear above my
head. Well, maybe that was just a dream I had. But, my mother's anemia?
Gone. What a beautiful coincidence, eh?

I'll never know the grand bliss this must have made my dad feel, because
he is the type of superhero my mom is, the kind that serves great deeds
without asking for the deeds to be discussed or honored.

Benjamin Franklin said "either write something worth reading or do
something worth writing," and I relay this glimpse of my family to you,
in hopeful certainty that you fuel yourself to do either of those so
we can continue evolving society into what I know it can be.