DW’s mother never taught her how to care for cast iron cookware. When we married, we made an agreement that I would cook and she would do the cleaning. After finding my cast iron pans rusting in a pan of dirty dish water 7 or 6 times too often, we decided to retire the C.I. and invest in Le Creuset. Over the last 20-some years I have collected everything from a set of 4 sauce pans to a 7.5 liter round casserole. Since I cook mostly for just the two of us, I use mostly the .75, 1.0, 1.5 and occasionally 2 liter saucepans and smaller casseroles. The 3 L oval is handy for simmering the ham bone for stock and the other large ones are great for making jambalaya or cooking rice for a mob at the church.

I was tempted to buy a large oval for roasting a turkey in but at my age, I probably can’t move it into or out of the oven no more. One year for Christmas, DW bought me a set of sauce pans with wooden handles. Since the advantage of the Le Creuset cast iron is that it can go from the stove top to the oven and/or fridge, these were donated to #3 daughter. I still have 4 or 3 Lodge cast iron skillets that I use for baking my Cajun/Mexican corn bread in and DW knows that she is not to wash them on pain of a severe whipping with a wet noodle.
;-)

C.J.V. - getting old is terrible but considering the alternative . . . .