Monday, May 31, 2010

Copper Pots! And More!

It was a lovely day on Saturday, so besides strolling the farmer's market, I checked out a couple garage sales. I bought this really nice hammered copper bowl:

It's really pretty and in great shape. It's about 5 inches deep.
I've just learned that it's hard to take photos of something that's really shiny.
Oh well. Be assured that it's much prettier than this.
I tried looking up similar bowls online, but the only thing I found was a swanky auction site that was selling a hammered copper bowl made by some swanky culinary company. I don't really know if this has any culinary use. Copper bowls are used for beating eggwhites, but all the ones I see for sale now are smooth. So for now, this is decorative unless I find out more. It's a pretty heavy gauge copper, too.

I've since found out that hammered bowl are used for beating eggwhites. But they're getting rare. Most of them are made in France, and the smaller ones are hand-hammered.

But that bowl wasn't the best thing I found.

The buy of the day was this copper pan. It's solid copper with either a stainless steel or tin lining. It was made in France.
It's a little over 10 inches in diameter, and it's obviously been used, but still in great shape.

I went online looking for something similar, and it looks like it's made by Mauviel. Apparently they didn't start stamping the company name on their products until recently, but the design of the handles and the measurement of the pan matches what they used to sell as a paella pan with a tin lining.

A non-food purchase was this little bank:

The large writing says, "The Foundation Plan" and there's small writing on each side of the triangle. The left side of the triangle says, "Protection" the right side says, "Accumulation" and the bottom says. "Industry."

It's designed to look like a book, and has a slot to insert money on top and a lock on the bottom.

There's was no key. The person who sold it said that he thought you had to take it to a bank to unlock it, but he wasn't really sure. It's pretty heavy for its size, and all of the visible metal parts appear to be brass.

There seem to be "fingers" inside the slot where you'd put the money in that would make it difficult for the money to come back out that same slot.

It's an interesting item. We're trying to pick the lock. I don't want to break it; I want to see what's inside and how it works. Anyone got a key?

The last batch of goodies I got was some cookbooks:


I wasn't really interested in all of them, but it was one price for the bunch.
I guess I'll end up taking some to one of the used bookstores after I weed through.
Yum