"Life's short. Use the fine china."
-- Colin Wright, exilelifestyle.com
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| PB&J on white, on Royal Stafford 3-15-14 |
"My mother's a genius.
She just kept feeding me art on whatever we had;
paper plates, silver platter, didn't matter.
You know, she just kept feeding it to me."
-- Jill Scott
I try not to eat lunch over the kitchen sink.
Usually I sit at the table like a big girl.
On Fridays, though, I like to eat lunch sitting in my husband's recliner, with my feet up, watching a recorded episode of my favorite TV show. It's one of my little indulgences.
I kicked the indulgence up a notch yesterday and plated my lunch (egg white omelet with zucchini, bell pepper and micro-watercress) on the good china. We have nine place settings of Noritake "Brook Hollow" gold-rimmed Japanese bone china that we got as wedding gifts. It lives hidden away in the back of a dark cupboard, zipped up in quilted, padded protective cases. We use in once in a blue moon -- maybe a total of 10 times (a generous estimate) in our 25 years of marriage.
I cook omelets exactly like this one all the time, but I thought this omelet looked so lovely -- way too lovely for scarfing over the sink -- that I broke out one of the pretty plates. I even used a fancy fork. I still sat in the recliner and watched Thursday night's recorded episode of Project Runway: Under the Gunn. But you know what? With a fancier plate and a fancier fork, my usual Friday lunch tasted even better somehow. Maybe it's because I slowed down and actually tasted it for a change.
Pretty as my omelet was on it's pretty plate, it didn't really photograph that well. So the sandwich in today's photograph was actually Leo's after school snack, peanut butter and jelly on a plate of antique Royal Stafford "Garland" hand-painted English bone china. He usually gobbles a protein bar right from the wrapper, or extra crunchy Jif on Ritz crackers on a paper plate. I was still in my post-fancy-lunch afterglow, so I thought why not let him in on it. This delicate little blue plate is one I got from my grandma. (It's a saucer, actually, with a matching teacup that also lives in a dark cupboard.) His sandwich may not look very tough on it's prim, dainty plate. But after eating it, Leo went to football weightlifting and squatted a personal best 405 pounds. Just sayin'.
The reasons I don't reach for the good china more often have nothing to do with whether I like it or not. I do. I chose it for my wedding gift registry, after all. My reason is practical. Simply put, bone china can't go in the dishwasher, and hand-washing all those breakable dishes is a real bitch.
But washing a single plate is no sweat. It was a pleasure, actually. And after I washed it, I stacked it with its mates, zipped it into it's little quilted sleeping bag and tucked it away back in its dark cupboard. Except this time I rearranged things slightly, moving the plates from the back to the front of the cupboard, just in case I want to use one again next Friday.
Who knows? This could become a regular thing. A regular good thing.
