Cooking with cast iron

I like cooking with cast iron.  I have a couple of frying pans, a small covered pot and a 2 quart Dutch oven that are cast iron.  I made vegetarian chili in the Dutch oven this past weekend and realized that I needed to re-season the Dutch oven.  That is not difficult, just putting lard or oil on the cast iron utensil, and cooking it in the oven for a while.  Tonight was a really good night to do that:  it is cold outside, and rainy , so even the inside of the house was a little raw.  Warming the kitchen was not a bad thing.

The unexpected benefit of this is that a pool of oil has collected at the bottom of my oven.  When it cooled enough, but had not totally solidified, I was able to clean the oven, even if it was late tonight.  I do not mind.  It is a chore I have often put off, but it needed to be done.  

So, after I took the Dutch oven and cover out of the oven, I used some disposable cloth to sop up the oil on the oven floor.   It did not clean the sides, or top of the oven and I still need to clean the oven thoroughly at some point but this was a good thing to do.