Se7en + 1’s Love With Le Creuset Dishes And Why…

A while back I wrote a series on one of the most often asked questions about life with eight kids… Table for Ten: About the Food That We Eat, the How, the What, the Where and the Why!!! Seriously, folk will stop us in the street and ask, “How on earth do you feed eight kids?” and I typically say, “One meal at a time!!!” But honestly it is at least thirty meals a day and we almost always have one or three extras, so thirty five meals a day – se7en days a week, three hundred and sixty five days of the year… Don’t do the math for that, it is really kind of crazy!!!

Since I wrote that series I have had more than a few folk contact us and ask about using Le Creuset dishes… “Are they really as fabulous as folk say they are?” Well we do use them and we do love them. In fact, we have a little history with them. A long while ago, I blogged about our honeymoon… and how we stayed in Knysna, a beautiful seaside town and the place we stayed at a spot that had Le Creuset pots throughout… forgive me for the ancient photographs – but I did say history…

Perfect spot for a honeymoon and the oh my, the dishes… there was no way we were heading out to eat when we could stay in and cook in those fabulous pots. The father person should have seen it as a sign… young wife happy to stay home and cook meals in pots that were quite sufficient to feed a family of ten, rather than go out for dinner!!! Anyway, way back in those student days we set up home and we didn’t use Le Creuset dishes. Honestly we didn’t start off using them in our home at all… two students scrambling to pay the rent and dishes were not a big part of the budget. But slowly but surely we have been building up our Le Creuset collection and replacing the old with the new.

Se7en + 1 Reader Questions about Le Creuset Dishes

1. How do they stand up to everyday use? We use our dishes a lot, all day, every day!!! We need really robust dishes that can handle a lot of wear and tear. We don’t keep our Le Creuset dishes for special occasions, we use ours for every day… believe me, every meal in our house is a bit of an occasion!!!

2. Aren’t they just too heavy? Yes they are heavy, but that is the joy, they get biffed and banged and they survive my kids clearing them to and from the table and they just seem to survive. Not to mention that for the cast iron dishes you can roast in them and then pop the dishes on the stove top to make gravy… really they just seem to survive everything…

3. What’s wrong with regular roasting pans? We use our roasting pans daily – for making potato wedges at lunchtime, apples pies at tea time and then again roasting vegi’s at dinner. Regular roasting pans that we have bought in the past, just can not go the distance… they quickly become impossible to keep clean and they become warped and very good candidates for the kids’ mud kitchen. It is well worth saving for one fabulous Le Creuset roasting pan than having five pans that you just can’t use.

4. What about cleaning? If you follow our blog then you will know that our dishwasher is simply a grand drying rack and doesn’t actually wash dishes. For dish washing in our house we have lots of hands, and soaps suds in the sink!!! So all those dishes used to bake and roast need to be washed easily, again and again and again. Literally these dishes seem to just wipe clean, if anything does get stuck on them then all they need is a quick soak.

5. How on earth do you afford them? Yup, these dishes come with a price, and we have found them really well worth saving for. Le Creuset do have a lot of specials and sales and you can follow them for the best deals. In fact when I have been in the store I have found that the staff are really helpful and quick to point out any specials or deals that are better than the one I might have been planning myself.

6. How do you store them? This looks like a strange question at first – because: “Like you store anything really…” Well this is perhaps my Le Creuset fail… I love them so much that we never actually pack them away, just leave them out on the counter to look at all day!!!

7. Where do you buy your Le Creuset? You can shop online directly, and if I ever have Yuppie Chef vouchers – then that’s what I buy!!! And otherwise their stores are fantastic… I used to be a little intimidated, because I was always “just looking”… but Ive got better at it and I love going into their stores – even with se7en+1 kids. There staff are fantastic and are great at sharing their new products or answering questions. Not to mention that they love their products, they totally understand when you ooh and ahh over a mixing bowl, or an expresso mug – or just rapture on about the rainbow of colours… they get it!!!


And the se7en +1th

8. What Make Le Creuset so Great? Well for me, all the endurance and easy cleaning advantages are great… but the key factor is that their dishes are beautiful to look at. Simply stunning dishes!!! I love cooking with them and putting them on the table for a feast… I might have to put a shelf up along the wall for our growing collection!!!

And Then We Were Gifted…

And so… it has been a long winter and plenty of cocoa moments have filled our instagram feed… Basically it has been “cocoa ‘o’ clock” for weeks around here. And Le Creuset SA contacted us to say they would like to send us a gift for our (bordering on insane) loyalty… We were so excited, and kind of hoping that we would maybe get eight little mugs arriving at the gate… Well like most things in life I was completely wrong… two crates of goodies… there was literally dancing on the table!!!

Twenty four boxes of magic!!!

A frenzy of unpacking…

I am apparently not the only one around here that loves Le Creuset!!!

Our kitchen counters will never be the same again!!! Welcome to Le Creuset Junior Range for children – times “se7en + 1…”

Mac ‘n Cheese just got better…

Lasagne just became personal… why have I never thought of this before!!!

Breakfast is so much more thrilling in a Le Creuset bowl…

We have never even had an entire collection of egg cups before…

And everyone can make their own…

Apple Pie…

We have a long list of things to create in our dishes and every day the list grows longer… Thank you Le Creuset SA for the fantastic and totally, totally unexpected surprise!!! You can be sure that we will be baking our way through this rainy season and on into Spring and Summer… a lifetime of good food and cooking!!! Not to mention lots and lots of Le Creuset dishes on our kitchen counters!!!

Le Creuset SA did surprise us with a wonderful gift that we have shown you on this blog post, they didn’t ask us for anything in return. I chose to wrote this post and share our happiness, we weren’t paid to write this post and all the opinions expressed are as usual entirely our own!!!