The Griddle That Fixed Camp Breakfast

For the better part of a year after Wendell passed, breakfast at my campsite was whatever came out of a box. A bowl of cereal eaten standing at the little fold-down counter, or half a granola bar while I let Biscuit out to do his business. I told myself it didn't matter, that cooking a real breakfast for one person wasn't worth dragging out a pan and dirtying a plate just to wash it after. For a long while I believed that. It took me longer than I'd like to admit to notice what the habit was actually telling me. A Lodge griddle is what eventually broke that habit, and not for the reason I would have guessed.

I'd cooked breakfast every morning of my married life, most of it on a griddle Wendell's mother had left us, and somewhere in the move to full-time camping that old griddle got left behind with a lot of other things that didn't fit in the trailer. What I didn't plan on was how much of my morning routine went with it. Cereal doesn't ask anything of you. It also doesn't give you anything back, and I hadn't noticed how much I missed the giving-back part until I'd gone without it a long while.

I bought the Lodge reversible griddle almost as an afterthought, at a hardware store outside a Corps of Engineers campground on Kentucky Lake, because I was tired of the thin nonstick pan I'd been using warping on the propane burner. It's a serious piece of iron, 16.75 by 9.5 inches, heavy enough that I feel it in my forearm when I carry it from the trailer to the stove. I almost put it back on the shelf for that reason alone. I'm glad I didn't.

The first morning I used it, I made eggs and bacon and a slice of toast browned right on the iron, and I sat down at the little folding table outside with all three of it on one plate instead of eating standing up over the sink. I don't know that I can explain why that felt different, except that a griddle that size doesn't cook a sad breakfast. It's built for a crowd, for a family, for Sunday mornings with everyone home. Using the whole thing for just myself felt almost stubborn, like I was insisting on something.

What I was insisting on, I think, was that my mornings still mattered even with nobody else there to see them. That sounds like a small thing to hang on a cooking pan. Some mornings it was the only thing holding the day together.

Cereal doesn't ask anything of you. It also doesn't give you anything back.

It became a ritual faster than I expected. I set it on the two-burner stove, get the flame going low while I make coffee, and by the time the percolator's done the iron is hot enough to hold a drop of water and skitter it across the surface, which is how I know it's ready. I crack two eggs, lay down whatever bacon or sausage I've got, and flip the Lodge griddle over to its ridged side for that when the flat side's done, since one pan does both jobs and I only have the one burner to spare most mornings anyway.

I've cooked breakfast on it now at four different state parks and at least three Corps campgrounds, always the same routine, always for just me, Biscuit sitting close enough to catch anything that hits the ground. Pearl and Sable stay curled up inside the trailer through all of it and couldn't care less, which is about the reaction you'd expect from cats. Nobody is watching any of this. That turned out to be the point rather than the problem. Taking the time to cook and sit down and eat off a real plate, when there's no one keeping score, is its own kind of self-respect. I didn't understand that before Wendell died. I understand it now.

The iron itself has held up exactly the way cast iron is supposed to. It came pre-seasoned and cooks better with every use rather than worse. I wipe it out and give it a thin coat of oil while it's still warm, and rust has never been a problem for me, though I know it can be if you let one sit wet. It's heavier than I'd recommend for anyone with real trouble in their arms or shoulders, and I won't pretend otherwise. For me it's a manageable weight, and the two flat handles make it easy enough to carry from the trailer step to the stove and back in one trip.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

If you've caught yourself eating cereal over the sink because cooking for one felt like too much trouble, I wouldn't lecture you about it, because I did the same thing for the better part of a year. I'd just tell you that a pan built for a full breakfast, used for one plate, is a strange but real way of telling yourself you're still worth cooking for. That's really what this griddle did for me. It didn't fix the quiet mornings. It gave me a reason to sit down inside them instead of rushing past them. If you want the longer list of what won this pan a permanent spot on my stove, I wrote that up in my full honest review, and if you're weighing whether cast iron is worth the extra weight at all, I laid out my reasons in ten reasons a cast iron griddle belongs at camp.