Le Creuset Offers and The State of the World.
Andrew Bluett-Duncan
Director
Offers on Le Creuset's Spring Cook's Specials.
I’ve got some good offers for you this week, but before I get to them, a friend mentioned a book she read, some time ago, called Factfulness, by a Swede named Hans Rosling. Near the beginning he asks the reader to answer a number of questions about the world, as it is today And out of curiosity I thought you might be interested in a couple of them and their answers.
1. In the past 20 years, the proportion of the world’s population living in extreme poverty has:
A. Almost doubled.
B. Remained more or less the same.
C. Almost halved
2. How many of the world’s 1 year old children today have been vaccinated against some disease.
A. 20 percent
B. 50 percent
C. 80 percent
Out of the 13 questions, I got very few right and the average of correct answers, when he’s asked people around the world, is just 7%, so most people get less than one question right! The answers to these two questions, surprisingly, are C in both cases. People living in extreme poverty have halved in the last 20 years and 80% of 1 year olds in the world have been vaccinated against some disease. Very encouraging and very impressive.
To give you a slightly broader idea of the book, I pinched the following off Rosling’s own website called www.gapminder.org
When asked simple questions about global trends―what percentage of the world’s population live in poverty; why the world’s population is increasing; how many girls finish school―we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates and investment bankers.
(The book) Factfulness offers a radical new explanation of why this happens. It reveals the ten instincts that distort our perspective―from our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of us and them) to the way we consume media (where fear rules) to how we perceive progress (believing that most things are getting worse).Our problem is that we don’t know what we don’t know, and even our guesses are informed by unconscious and predictable biases.
I’m finding the book intriguing; I hope that maybe you do as well. To name drop, both Bill Gates and Barack Obama seem to believe it’s worth a gander.
Ok, to product.
Le Creuset Cooks Specials
Le Creuset, it seems (as I am always mentioning them) have come up with another tranche of offers for your delectation. And this morning I’m mentioning three of them and listing quite a few more.
Le Creuset 24cm Cast iron Sauteuse in 5 colours
A lovely pan, with a decent capacity, and possibly a slightly misleading name, in that yes, it’s a good sized sauté pan for a family of four, but this is also a shallow-ish casserole as well, and by Le Creuset standards well priced at £167. There’s no original price, as this is what Le Creuset refer to as a Cook’s Special, so a product they’ve made specially for promotion and this one, I think, looks the part, as a sauté pan/casserole, maybe even a deep (very) frying pan. Available in 5 colours, Volcanic, Azure, Cerise, Black and Meringue £167 (currently Price Matching at £156.50).
Le Creuset Toughened Non Stick 26cm Open Sauté Pan
An archetypal sauté pan, with a long handle and a generous 26cm (10”) size. It has an aluminium body (which means great and even heat distribution, if a bit slow on induction) with a magnetic disc insert in the base, making it suitable for Induction, as well as working on Gas, Aga, Ceramic or any other Electric heat source. These days, I can’t say I’m a huge fan of any of the more common plastic based non sticks (which for me are unnecessary) but of its type, this is one the best available. £135 (currently Price Matching at £118.00).
Le Creuset 25cm Round Grill. And imperfections in the glaze.
As we head towards BBQ weather (I hope), this grill will come into its own and at £87, down to £69.95, in Le Creuset terms, is a bit of a bargain. Beautifully finished in either Volcanic, Cerise, Azure or Black.
Speaking of which, we had a customer the other day, who was worried about the finish on her Le Creuset cast iron pans, principally along the top edge, which had some slight blemishes in it.
And I think this is understandable when you’re paying a hundred to two or three hundred pounds for a pan. Well, with cast iron generally and certainly with Le Creuset’s cast iron, there is no such thing as a perfect piece, without some sort of distinguishing marks. The reason is because of the material they are made from, cast iron, is really too coarse to produce something that is flawless.
About 25 or 30 years ago now, some bright spark at Le Creuset decided to not put the enamel on the top edge anymore, leaving the dark grey matt enamel undercoat exposed. Were they doing this to save on enamel? No. The reason was simple. The top edge gets the most wear and abuse, and with us knocking metal utensils out on it, the enamel got chipped and it looked unsightly. So, this was their solution. Remove the enamel, then it couldn’t get chipped off.
The downside to this is that the dark grey under coat of enamel, that all their pans get, (the top edge being the only place that you can now see it) is not beautiful to look at and usually has blemishes in it. These don’t have any effect on the performance of the pan, or on how long the pan will last you, but they are visible. So, I mention this to make you aware of this characteristic, so that you don’t regard it as a flaw.
That’s about it for this week.
I’ll leave the last word to Susan Abbott, “The truth always comes after the word, but...”
I hope you have a pleasant and peaceful weekend.
Kind regards
Andrew
Andrew Bluett-Duncan
Director
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