"Intriguing color" <snort> Not a color I would choose. For myself, I'd get the "flame", "cerise" (which bears no resemblance to any cerise I've ever seen, cerise being a cool color, and Le Creuset's being decidedly warm), or the "deep teal". But to each her own.

I'll have a look at the braising cookbook. It might be good for her. A few years ago, when she told me about working on learning to cook, I gave her my 1952 edition of "The American Woman's Cookbook", which my grandmother gave to my mother when she got married, and Mom gave me when I moved out. I used it a lot when I was younger, and kept it as a good reference and for sentimental reasons. It has what I still consider to be the ultimate muffin recipe -- simple, light, fluffy, and not loaded with sugar and oil.

There was no Roundup Ready in my youth ... but conceptually, yes, that would be part of the "organic" concept. "Organic", at its heart, meant "wholistic". Living a whole life meant recognizing that while you were a part of the earth, the earth did not exist solely for your benefit.

I really miss the "health food stores" of past years. Of course they were commercial enterprises, but they were so much more about community than are places like Whole Foods and Sprouts or Trader Joes. (For the record, I shopped at Trader Joes in Eagle Rock long before it became a massive chain, and it was very different from the current Trader Joes.) Health food stores were unique, local, individual, and shopping there, you felt that fellow shoppers shared your basic values. We cared about "walking lightly on the earth". We cared about the "seven generations". We cared about sustainability. We didn't shop there for the latest trendy supplement or superfood or whatever it is people shop for when trying to create a perfect self. There were such products, but they were in other kinds of stores -- stores that catered to athletes.

Apart from the technical:

In my understanding, the biggest difference is not in the end product (how does the tomato taste, does the carrot have more nutrients). It's whether the farming practices are sustainable. Are we depleting the soil, are we poisoning the water, are we polluting, are we destroying, how much damage are we doing?

Back when I was young, that was understood to be the major reason to grow organic and buy organic. It used to be the "us as community, sharing the earth", now it seems "me as individual, does this apple taste good".

Thanks. I don't own any Le Creuset myself, never saw the need for it, and have generally raised my eyebrows at what you refer to (quite properly, IMHO) as the "aspirational" price.

I am quite willing to pay when price = value and it's something that I need or will improve my life, but so often, this isn't the case. I buy nearly all my clothes at GoodWill for exactly this reason, and it's the same reason I own a superb 50-year-old luthier-made Spanish guitar (how I lucked into that is another story).

Anyway. My point is, I want the gift to be of practical value to my niece, and also be something that will bring her joy, not frustration.

A little clarification.

My niece is a lovely young woman, and my impression of what she has put on her registries is not so much "stuff she really wants" as "stuff she'd be happy to receive". The registries have very few expensive items. She would not want to appear greedy by soaking her friends and relations. It is more than likely that there are other things she would very much like to have that she did not put on her registries, or could not because they are not available on those sites.

On my niece's registry, there are a few items that strike me as things she really wants, and one of them is the Le Creuset skillet. If the skillet is a good product, I will get it for her. If not, I will ask her whether she has cooked with something similar and liked it, and would she prefer that skillet or something else, like the dutch oven, or a couple of the Lodge pans. Or, if my nephew the impoverished minister whose birthday is coming up doesn't actually need a phone upgrade quite yet, I might be able to get her the $430 Kitchenaid stand mixer. (I'd've gotten that right away, but another niece had an emergency vet bill of nearly $1,000.)

Thanks! It's a gift registry, so technically "suggestions", and from what I know of my niece, I think she made the registries to make it easy for people who don't know quite what to get them.

I like the idea of a ECI dutch oven. I used to have one myself and used it quite a lot. I can't remember why I got rid of it; probably downsizing when I moved into my tiny 1941 house with very little cabinet space and I figured I could make do with one of my AllClad pans.

I see Lodge has an ECI dutch oven, also an open cassarole and an covered cassarole. I could get her two pieces for the price of that one skillet.