Charity shop bargains
Posted by Fiona Nevile in Kitchen equipment, Save Money | 18 comments
Although my mum gave me a superb giant Le Creuset casserole a few months ago we have no medium sized casseroles for the oven. So when I spotted this wonderful old stoneware crock pot gleaming out from the Cancer Research shop window this morning, I was drawn across the road. The diminutive price tag had me standing beside the till within seconds with the coins in my hand.
“Now what have we got here.” The lady counted out the change and glanced quickly up at me. “Is it only £3.50?”
“Well yes.”
She gave me a long look, perhaps assessing if I’d pulled off a sticker swapping heist.
The pot’s probably older than me but doesn’t have the chips and wear that one would expect from such an ancient vessel. Just a cosy roundness and the promise of lifting the lid to wafts of something delicious. I wouldn’t have been surprised if we had seen one of these in the Victorian kitchen at Audley end when Magic Cochin and I visited on our Interblog Garden Event. They had a lot of pots and pans that I remembered being used when I was a child.
As I drove slowly home, my new friend stowed carefully on the seat beside me, I marvelled at my good fortune. Perhaps next week they’ll have the longed for bastible for under a fiver.
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Well done!!! I love Charity shops and bargains like that.
Wow! £3.50 is such an excellent price. I love pots and pans.
I miss charity shops 🙁
….. but we do have lots of boot fairs here through the summer.
Rosie x
I’m off to the charity shop this lunch time
Marmites are really good for casseroles- the shape of pots and pans definitely affects the flavour of the food cooked in them. My marmite, purchased in a china seconds shop for a song some forty years ago is still going strong, it lives with my niece now as it was too heavy for my arthritis to lift in and out of the oven, but its magic cooking properties are undimmed by age.I had some tiny ones too that I used to make little casseroles for my daughter when she was tiny-now feeding my great nephew.They are real heirloom kitchen pieces- very hard to destroy!
Well done with that find! I wonder what you’ll cook in it?
I thought what’s a Bastible? Then I asked Google and found this http://www.sodabread.us/DutchOven/SodabreadBastible.htm
Ahaaaaa!!!!
Celia
How peculiar – I have the exact same casserole, purchased from the Hove YMCA shop about five years ago and I paid £5 for it then and thought it a bargain! You really did well, in my opinion. Mine is perfect for a small rolled lamb roast with stuffing.
The pot is called a marmite – pronounce marmeete – based on a french design. It may even be french and that famous british toast topper was named after the shape of the pot. I have 3 of different sizes, somewhere in the loft, but I must admit I have only ever used them for decoration, never in the oven. Maybe I should go and search them out as the weather has definitely turned into casserole weather today.
Rosie x
I’ve never seen a charity shop here. No car boot sales and no garage sales either. I miss them. Still regularly use an enamel roasting tin bought for next to nothing 20 years ago and my favourite handbag was also bought in one of them.
What a wonderful find! I’d have been doing cartwheels down the street if I’d found that for £3.50!!