If you like cast iron, I would also recommend the "Old Hickory" knives. I think Ontario Knife Company makes them now. They are the old carbon steel knives with wooden handles. Most people may remember them from their grandparents' kitchens. They rust if not cared for, but do they ever take on a great edge for just about anything you would want to cut and they sharpen fairly quickly.
Thanks so much for the recommendation! I will certainly look them up.
I LOVE cast iron. I always make pancakes and grilled sandwiches on my cast iron griddle. It is practically non-stick now due to years of use. If I care for it properly, it will last a long LONG time (can't say that for an electric griddle or typical non-stick). Somehow it seems poetic.
Cast iron does seem to inspire devotion, and a sense of connection to the past and future. It truly is poetry. 
You do realize that Lodge has a line of unseasoned AND a line of preseasoned cookware, right? Perhaps you bought the unseasoned one? Here's the review from Cook's Illustrated--
"The Lodge Manufacturing Company in South Pittsburg, Tenn., longtime maker of plain, old-fashioned cast-iron cookware, brought a new, pre-seasoned line to the market in late summer 2002. According to Jeanne Scholze, product manager at Lodge, this new line, called Lodge Logic, gives the home cook the equivalent of one to two years’ worth of “seasoning” in a brand new pan and makes it unnecessary for customers to give a pan its first seasoning at home. (As explained in previous issues of Cook’s, the mm ore use a cast-iron pan gets, the more
...a cast-iron pan gets, the more seasoned it becomes, the more its performance improves. Over time cast iron absorbs and transforms the oils and fats from cooking to produce a smooth, black surface that keeps food from sticking and cleans up easily. Lodge instructs home cooks to give a traditional pan its first seasoning by coating it with vegetable shortening and then baking it upside down in a 350-degree oven for one hour.)
The company preseasons each piece of cookware in the Logic line by spraying it with oil electrostatically, a process similar to that used in painting automobiles. After being sprayed, the pan goes to a very hot oven that opens the pores of the metal and thereby allows the oil to penetrate deeply—moreso than is possible in a home oven, according to Scholze. Lodge won’t reveal the temperature at which the pan is seasoned; Scholze would say only that it’s higher than what can be achieved in a home oven. Likewise, Lodge will not disclose the type of vegetable oil it uses. According to Scholze, it contains no animal fat and is kosher.
To see if this logic about preseasoning applied in the kitchen as well as on paper, we purchased a preseasoned skillet and an unseasoned skillet from Lodge, seasoned the latter according to Lodge’s instructions, and compared the performance of both with that of a cast=iron skillet that had seen 60 years of use and careful seasoning. We seared steaks, pan-fried salmon, and fried eggs in each pan. The food browned well in all three pans, but the browning was the most even and thorough in the 60-year-old pan. What’s more, the food did not stick to this pan at all. The food stuck slightly to Lodge’s preseasoned pan and a bit more to the new pan we had seasoned ourselves.
To test the extent to which the pans would transfer a metallic taste to acidic foods, we cooked canned diced tomatoes in each one, checking the flavor every five minutes. (Acid dissolves some of the metal from the surface of cast-iron pans; a more seasoned pan will be more resistant to the acid because its surface has been better sealed with oils and fats from cooking.) The newly seasoned pan picked up a metallic taste in only 10 minutes, the preseasoned pan in about 20 minutes, and the old pan in about 30 minutes.
Finally, we noted how easily each pan cleaned up after each of the tests. The 60-year old pan cleaned up just as easily as a new nonstick pan would. Both the preseasoned and newly home-seasoned pans required equal amounts of elbow grease to remove all traces of food.
Based on our tests, Lodge logic outperforms a pan purchased unseasoned, but it can’t hold a candle to the performance of a pan that’s been seasoned by generations of cooks. And while the Logic pan does release you from the responsibility of that crucial first seasoning, thereafter the company recommends spraying the cooking surface with oil prior to each session on the stovetop or in the oven, so it’s not maintenance-free. Preseasoned pans are mor
...more expensive than the old-fashioned kind, but not by much. A 12-inch preaseasoned skillet can be purchased from the Lodge Web site (www.lodgemfg.com) for $21.95, whereas the company’s 12-inch unseasoned skillet sells for $17.95.
I have heard that this phenomenon of "seasoning"--absorbing fats and oils into the surface of the pans--goes both ways; that trace amounts of iron actually get into the food. I have no idea what this does flavor-wise (my family is largely non-stick, sadly), but supposedly it does boost the iron content in the food slightly, or so I've been told.
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