Thrifty Acres: Kitchen Capers

Hello! For this academic year, our daughter has opted to live in a room-only residence hall - as opposed to the more typical room-and-board dorm with its much higher cost and food that may or may not look better than it tastes. We were happy about her choice - not only does it save a lot of money, but I had once lived in the same residence hall myself! (each room comes with a 10 cubic-ft refrigerator, and there are full-size kitchens for meal prep)

Our daughter was home for the summer, so occasionally I'd remind her that she needed to consider what kitchen supplies she'd use at school. She never bothered to do that, even as the time to head back to campus loomed ever closer. Her roommate said she could borrow her kitchen things, which was nice, but what if both of them wanted to eat dinner at the same time? That wouldn't do, so I finally decided to take matters into my own hands. 

Made the rounds of three local thrift stores the day before we were going to take her to her residence hall. The shelves were pretty bare of bakeware, pots and pans. We live in a college town of sorts ourselves, so perhaps students needing to stock their  kitchens beat me to the punch. 

Note to self (and to our daughter: don't wait until the last minute to find kitchenware in a college town!)

But I still found flatware, measuring cups, measuring spoons, bowls and various kitchen utensils. So at least she'd start out with a few basics of her own. (I'd already given her some extra plates, drinking glasses and food storage containers)

The day after we dropped her off, I saw a notice for a moving sale, so I checked it out. And I came home with this:

Behold, a 2-quart saucepan and 7" skillet. There's only one lid for both pans, but I love its red color. I also like the design:

The woman running the sale said this set had belonged to her grandmother. Not sure how old this is; couldn't find a manufacturer's name anywhere and a brief online search didn't turn up the same pattern. However, I saw enough similar pans that I figure this is probably from the 1970's. It's classified as enamelware. There's no chips, although the saucepan does have some scratches. The skillet has none.

Customers must have been infrequent at the moving sale, for the seller insisted on throwing in a pile of bakeware. I didn't even look at it that closely; I just let the seller put it all into the tote bag I'd brought with me. 

Once home, I learned that she'd included a one-quart saucepan, one modern 9x13 cake pan, one vintage 9x13 cake pan (probably from the seller's grandmother again; it comes with its own slide-on lid), one tart pan, one 9x9 round cake pan and one pizza pan. 

The vintage cake pan and the pizza pan were in need of some elbow grease to clean them up, but the other pans were already in good shape and just needed to be thrown in the dishwasher. 

All this - plus the saucepan and skillet - set me back only $5.00. Not bad! I'd spent around $7.50 the other day for kitchen stuff at the thrift stores, so I'm doing pretty well. 

Our daughter's only been in her residence hall a couple of days, but reported one guy had already ruined a skillet. Hmm, maybe I'd better stockpile a couple of extra skillets when I see them around at secondhand sources in case our daughter accidentally does the same. 

I hope she doesn't - I kind of like the vintage pot and skillet I got at that moving sale. I'm half-tempted to keep them for myself!