The Milk Pan

In collaboration with our friends at Objet: We’ve asked five writers to write about a single object that is significant to them.

Objet embeds memories into clothing via regular soirées—parties with a French touch—where they invite local tailors to customize your favorite garments. Imagine that piece now, carrying your best moments into the next century. An NYC party is coming next week.

Today’s OBJET is Akosua Adasi on micro-utopias, going Matilda-mode, and embracing her consumerist impulses.

Don’t say cottagecore is over. It certainly wasn’t for me last fall when I started regularly visiting Salter House’s Brooklyn Heights location. It wouldn’t be that problematic if I lived close by—except I was taking two trains from Bushwick and walking twenty minutes so that I could linger over their porcelain homewares and gauzy sartorial offerings. During one of those trips, I noticed a set of pastel-colored pans with long handles and small spouts. I had never had any use for a milk pan—I don’t cook, bake, or own a farmhouse upstate—but seeing them twinkling on a shelf in Salter House, a milk pan was suddenly the only thing I’d ever needed. Good to know that I continue to be the perfect neoliberal consumer. Ultimately, practicality won out (I really couldn’t remember the last time I heated up milk at home) and I left the store sans milk pan. That didn’t mean I stopped thinking about it. Every once in a while, I would browse through the SH website and thumb longingly over images of the pan.

Then I went home for Christmas. It was the first time I’d been back in four years and my older sister was dead set on making the trip as lovely as could be. This meant a weekend trek to Duchess Bakeshop, a popular bakery that I had been gently obsessed with in high school. Intoxicated by the feel of Christmas in the air and the smell of melted chocolate and butter, I was once again susceptible to my consumerist impulses. So when my eye caught a speciality hot chocolate mix complete with handmade vanilla marshmallows, I was quick to pick it up.

With the hot chocolate mix in my possession, I knew exactly what I had to do. I opened the Salter House webpage, only to find that they no longer had any milk pans in stock. I googled the brand they carried—Riess, an Austrian enamelware company—to see if I could locate units elsewhere, but only ran into dead ends. Even the brand’s website lacked what I wanted. Was everyone really buying milk pans without me?

I returned to the city with my hot chocolate mix and a dream. Faced with two obligation-free weeks until the semester started, I decided to use my time to indulge, as much as a grad student with a limited budget can. I went Matilda-mode: making my hot chocolate and curling up to read Zadie Smith’s White Teeth. As I began to relish this simple routine, I came across the concept of micro-utopias in aesthete Katie Merchant’s newsletter, thank you, ok. Merchant got the idea from John Baldessari, who wrote about the satisfaction of making a perfect egg. For Merchant, micro-utopias are about “everyday joys and simple beauty,” the delight and satisfaction that comes from perfecting a daily ritual down to minutest details—like what kind of spoon you use. I was moved by the idea, and recognized that it perfectly described the anticipation and pleasure I got from making my hot chocolate every day.

But even as I found delight in my new ritual, it wasn’t exactly perfect. As I mixed my organic whole milk and rich hot chocolate mix together, underneath the feeling of contentment was an inkling that things could be better. There was nothing enticingly quaint about the $10 T-Fal pan that I regularly used to make pasta. My mind drifted to milk pans again. Of course, now that I could make an argument for needing one, there were still none to be found. Winter break came to a close, I hit jar on the hot chocolate mix, and the milk pan was once again relegated to my list of distant future purchases.

Sometime in the spring, I stopped by Salter House’s East Village location (I promise I don’t work for them, I just have a problem) for an event; across the crowded room of young women obsessing over rose-printed pointelle camisoles, I spotted my dream commodity: a baby blue one-serving milk pan. Despite my massive backpack and the tight crowd, I scurried across the room and snatched the pan off the hook. I cradled it admiringly, taking note of its butter yellow interior and its chunky, rounded shape. Summer might have been approaching, but I was already dreaming of the cozy winter afternoons I would spend making use of it. Milk pan in my possession, there was no way that I was going back to my standard two-packs of Swiss Miss mixed with hot water. Things would have to be elevated from now on.

Whenever I mention my milk pan to people, they tend to give me a look of confusion followed by a “Sure, Jan” smile once I explain what it is and what it’s for. I’m ok with the weird looks. Apart from being a key part of my Matilda-mode micro-utopia, my milk pan is one of those aspirational purchases—like my Dyson vacuum or the two ultra-nice wine glasses that I’m scared for people to use—that don’t make sense in my life right now but represent the adult life I want to one day live. I’m not going to be a grad student living in Bushwick forever, okay? Maybe one day I’ll have the means to turn a house into a home and my gorgeous milk pan will take its rightful pride of place in my bourgeois kitchen. Till then, it remains stuffed in a cabinet, along with all the water bottles my roommate and I no longer use.

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