Ingenious

This house came with one of those flat cooktops.  The kind where you can barely tell where it is going to get hot.  I am not a fan.  After having cooked on a gas stove for the past 15 years, I had a great appreciation for the fact that when you turned off the gas, it was OFF.  Sure, the cast iron was still hot but it wasn't producing any heat.  The food didn't continue to cook.

This new cooktop was making me pretty crazy.  And then I was in the Salvation Army store and stumbled across these wire baskets meant for casserole dishes I guess.  This one was round.  Hmmm. It could work like a trivet on the stove but better.

Good size, already finished in black and obviously heat proof.  Better yet, it was $1. It wasn't going to go to waste.

I got it home and tested it out with a few pans.  Sits on the cooktop and gets my pan off the heat!

And a new use - for my bigger pans, I can tilt them within the frame so drain grease from browned meat!  To be honest, it's not all that often that I have all four burners going that I can't shift around a hot pan but there are times where you want to keep the pan warm but not really cooking the food in it so this also works quite well in that respect.  I'm pretty thrilled with this ingenious idea!