Phyllis’ Blog

A couple of weeks ago, our one daughter and I attended the International Housewares Show in Chicago. We’re planning to open a store for cooks, so we went to the Show because we wanted to touch and handle the things which Rebecca (who will be the store’s manager) has been looking at in catalogs and online.

It’s a vast world, this housewares universe. And our store is a pretty small space. So we tried our best to go armed with discernment. This is a tempting, and sometimes baffling, world.

• We saw stuff that is irresistibly clever and colorful and full of promises about turning annoying tasks into joyful ones.

• We met troublesome and somewhat foggy subjects, like PFOA and PTFE—both related to creating highly popular non-stick cookware, but with a dark cloud of safety concerns hanging over them.

• We had big questions take shape in our minds. Will customers buy cookware and bakeware they’ve never heard of, even if those products work equally as well as, but cost a fraction of, the best-known brands?

These are the kinds of things I figured would surface as we tramped for 2 ½ days around the vast spaces of the McCormick Center.

But I hadn’t counted on this:

1. The city’s plumbers union dyes the Chicago River green for St. Patrick’s Day. We stretched our necks each morning as our cab drove over the bridge to see if the water was still green—and it was, days later! News to us Easterners who know something about the grip the Irish have on New York City, but until now didn’t realize the extent of their strength in Chicago.

2. On the first morning of the Show, we set out in good time. The Show is huge and we had only 2 ½ days to see just the housewares part. (We had decided not to visit the electrics or tabletop exhibits; our store isn’t big enough to carry everything.)

All’s well when we step onto our hotel elevator at floor 21. The elevator takes off, and then abruptly stops between floors 18 and 17. Funny lights blink. Rebecca and I look at each other. We keep hanging there between floors. I push the one red knob on the panel with all the innocent-looking buttons.

A cheerful voice asks how she can help. I ask if she can promise that we won’t freefall 18 stories because the elevator cables tore. A pause. She quickly promises that the hotel’s elevator technicians would begin work immediately. And that we might hear banging but we shouldn’t worry.

I ask if this has ever happened before in the hotel. A longer pause. (Okay, how would you answer that if your first goal was to keep your hotel guests from panicking?)

By then Rebecca and I were very focused on not screaming. We did pledge to each other that we would not call our loved ones and tell them what was happening—UNTIL we had gotten out.

The friendly voice informs us that the hotel has called for help from the city fire department. Within two minutes we hear the sirens.

Within a few more minutes we hear voices just outside the elevator. And insistent banging. We’re still thinking about dropping suddenly. We both grip the waist-high bar that runs around the elevator more tightly.

We see beams of light flashing around the edges of our cubicle. Eventually the elevator doors part slightly. When they open fully we see that the floor of the elevator is about four feet above floor 17, where four firemen and the hotel manager are standing. They tell us each to jump out. Which we do. Into their arms. It’s been a long 20 minutes.

Did we want to ride to the lobby on the neighboring elevator, they ask. We tell them that we’ll walk down, thank you. The hotel manager goes with us, and then presses 10 bucks into my hand for a cab since we had missed the convention’s shuttle bus.

Rebecca and I declare to each other that we’ll be walking up the 21 flights of steps when we get back to the hotel this evening.

Confession: We walk up seven flights (after seven hours of walking the trade show), and then I state that I’m riding the rest of the way on the elevator. I tell Rebecca that it’s got to be the safest day possible to use the elevator because I’m sure the hotel has had it serviced since our morning episode.

We did approach the elevators warily every time thereafter. And both of us breathed an audible “Whew” when we checked out of the place.

3. Rebecca and I had never spent five solid days alone together—just the two of us—ever. We shared a room and ate all of our meals together and visited all the exhibitors together and had vigorous give-and-take about what we were seeing and hearing and what we thought would work for our store. It turned out to be a take-your-breath-away treat. I gotta say—it’s a true pleasure to respect your child for displaying good judgment and wisdom and responsibility. And to function as professional peers—and friends. Boy, did I feel rich and blessed.

4. You can’t run a kitchen without a brown-butter pan. Well, I can’t, anyway. I didn’t grow up in a béchamel- or hollandaise-sauce culture. We did gravy and brown butter instead. Brown butter is one of the world’s simple great wonders. But despite the acres of exhibits at the show, I didn’t see anyone selling a brown-butter pan. I had to go home to my little town’s hardware store to find one on their housewares shelves. Something ironic in this fact.

We’ll be carrying brown-butter pans in our store for cooks—made of just the right metal with just the right thickness to send melted butter into that rapturous state of nutty brownness. These humbly common pans will be next to the heirloom cookware and bakeware and wildly colorful stacked bowls and gadgets that will make your most wearisome kitchen task a breeze. We’re aiming to carry the essential supplies.