Neven Mrgan’s Tumbl
Missing vowels since before it was cool.

Here it is, ladies and gentlemen: the Mt Rushmore, Fender Stratocaster, Moby Dick, iPod, Hercules, and Frank Sinatra of cooking vessels. The All Clad 12 Inch Stainless Steel Fry Pan - the single best workhorse of a pan. No kitchen in the world would be ashamed of it, and every kitchen could use it.

And so now you’re thinking, really, Neven? A $180 pan? Does it make that much of a difference? It does, it really does. This thing cooks evenly, thoroughly, and beautifully. You’ll never brown in a Target-bought pan like you will in an All-Clad. It’s also built like a damn anvil - no way will this ever warp, dent, or lose its handle.

But $180? Ok, fine - that is a lot of money. But you’ll save in the mythical long run, and in fact, I recommend you trash most of your current pots and pans. You need no more than, say, five. Next time you buy, skip the set and pick a few great pieces. The 12” should be your starting point (a Dutch or French oven should be your next piece, by the way.)

When America’s Test Kitchen puts cookware through its paces, you don’t even need to read to the end of their review to know that All-Clad will come out on top. It always does. It’s made here in the USA, and your dollars will go to well-paid workers with high standards.

But… one hundred and eighty dollars? Alright, alright, alright - what if I told you Amazon is currently selling this, the world’s best fry pan, for $90, lid included?

I’m not kidding - $90, free shipping.

P.S. This isn’t nonstick, you say? Look, for decades now, we’ve been told to buy teflon everything. This is mad; you need one nice nonstick pan, and that’s it. Much of the flavor of chicken, steak, potstickers, green beans, garlic, and apples comes from the very fact that they do partially stick to the pan. That’s how rich, caramely goodness is born.

About two years ago, I was walking the streets of Southeast Portland - my neighborhood at the time - when I noticed a giant banner on someone’s front lawn. It said:

KIDNEY URGENTLY NEEDED. PLEASE CALL XXX-XXX-XXXX OR COME IN.

That was a nice little how-do-you-do in my walk. There I was out to grab some late lunch, now made to ponder mortality, empathy, sacrifice, and desperation, as I walked on. I imagined the day when they’d take down the banner. How would that even feel, amid all the other practicalities that need to be dealt with when death is the one who called or came in?

Two years later, we’ve moved back to the same neighborhood. It’s a golden autumn day and we’re driving around, thrift-hunting for a dining set. The banner catches my eye once again.

“Wow,” I say, “they’re still looking for that kidney.”

But as we drive up, it becomes clear that this is a different banner. This one says - as afternoon light rains down on it through turning leaves - in bigger letters, with more dance in their curves:

WOOHOO! GOT A NEW KIDNEY! THANKS!

I don’t know how that feels either!

(Hi, Tumblr Dashboard user!)

I love the Tumblr Dashboard, I hate the Tumblr Dashboard.

I love that it solves, in some way, the problem of RSS (said problem being, very few non-techies care or even know about RSS.) Anyone can easily set up their own stream of “what’s new” and read their friends’ streams, all with simple, mercifully restricted social features. It just nicely fills the gap between a Twitter account and a full-on website.

But I don’t like that the Dashboard strips away all the custom formatting and code in my posts. I know this helps keep things simple, but… I want my cake on the plate and in my tummy.

See, every now and then I’ll want to do a slightly more art-directed post, where the form matters, not just the content. Or perhaps I want to combine video with photos with audio files in a single post. This doesn’t fit any of Tumblr’s post categories, so it looks very broken when viewed in the Dashboard.

My solution has been to insert a hidden, Dashboard-only paragraph at the top of such posts, saying something like:

This post uses formatting and features not visible in the Tumblr Dashboard. If anything below doesn’t make sense or looks plain ugly, consider viewing the post on my website.

Hidden how? Well, I edit the HTML code of the post and give this paragraph the CSS class dashboardonly. This class is defined in my Tumblr theme’s custom CSS as:

.dashboardonly { display: none; }

Since the Dashboard knows not of my custom CSS, the paragraph will be visible in it, but not on my website.

By the way, if you’re wondering how to get from the Dashboard to the post’s original website - and I recommend doing this, since a lot of people make their Tumblr websites real pretty! - mouse over to the top-right corner of the post, right above the little heart icon. See that page curl? Click it!