Archive for August, 2009

Lets Dish

Aug 27th, 09 / 5 Comments

I have what some might consider an unhealthy zealous obsession for dishes. Pottery, china, stonewear – you name it, I love it. I come by this naturally as my Mom is quite the dish collector. When I was a child we lived in Europe when the dollar was strong and my Mama was quite the deal finder - we are talking about finding plates for a dollar or two.  Needless to say we came back to the United States with numerous sets of gorgeous dishes.  Mom never collected shoes or purses, but she always had a keen eye for a set of dishes. Somehow, miraculously, she manages to use them all at some point during the year. As you peruse please be sure to tell me what dishes you lust after – or if you are a sensible soul who prefers Fiestawear or paper plates. At the end of the day we all eat off of something…..

Growing up these were our every-day dishes that I’m still madly in love with:

Dinner Plate in the Perpignan pattern by Villeroy/boch China

Of course after Mom bought them & we returned to the United States they were discontinued (Perpignan by Villeroy & Boch) and now to replace a dinner plate you need a small loan or the GDP of a small European nation. Needless to say Mom gives you a mean, mean look if you don’t handle these dishes with care.

 

While we lived in Germany Mom managed to find two entire sets of Portmeirion Botanical dishes for a song. We used these dishes a lot during the summer and when we had company over because we had plenty of place settings. Each dish depicts a different flower and most of them were nice and sweet like this:

Botanic Garden pattern by Portmeirion

But lurking in the stack was the venus fly trap plate. The venus fly trap became a bit of a household joke- my Dad dubbed it the ugliest plate ever and refused to eat anything off of it. As such it became a goal for the child setting the table to “sneak” the venus fly trap plate into Dad’s spot. Of course he always noticed and made someone swap him right away. In retrospect, it isn’t that bad:

Round Pie Plate-Oven To Table in the Botanic Garden pattern by Portmeirion

Steering away from flesh eating flowers, the formal china that I’ve selected is very traditional so I picked out some whimsical chargers to put under the plates for more casual affairs:

Larabee Road-Platinum pattern by Lenox China

I think they will make these traditional dishes that I love a bit more “fun” don’t you?

44 Piece Set

 

(Kate Spade by Lenox- the polka dot chargers are Larabee & the simple place settings are Library Lane in platinum.)

 

About a year ago I was given a few place settings of these fun, modern dishes (Wave by Villeroy & Boch). When I use them I feel as though I’m some fancy Food Network chef plating up something exotic…even if the reality is I’m serving up salad & lasagna for a few friends!

villeroy-boch-dinner-plate

My Mom still manages to find great deals on dishes (it must be inherent to her genetic makeup) and when I was in college she purchased my every day dishes- a 52 piece set of simple white china- for less than $20, all because the salt shaker was cracked. Needless to say I bought a set of stainless steel salt & pepper shakers to go with the dishes which are fabulous because they go with everything: every day

 

Because they go with everything I picked up four of these cute bowls (on sale!) to pair up with them…I like to serve salsa and dip out of the fish: fish bowl

My brother found four of these dinner plates up for me for my birthday one year- I think he found them at Tuesday Morning. Unfortunately Williams Sonoma had discontinued them (Dijon- Fleur De Lys) & he found the last ones at Tuesday Morning,  so I’ve had to put in a request with Replacements to try & find a few more  plates. Of course I then discovered the set had some lovely matching cereal bowls that I clearly need. Right? fleur de lis

 

Finally, rounding out the dishes around these parts is my loot from the Pioneer Woman contset that I won- they are on backorder but I can’t wait for them to arrive:

 

Of course I won’t even get into holiday place settings…all I’ll say is isn’t Pottery Barn’s reindeer series adorable?

Family, Travel

Pounded Chicken

Aug 25th, 09 / 1 Comment

My Mom and I have a special relationship. I’ve already told you about our “secret” (or as it may be, not so secret) phrases we use in times of trouble or craziness. I wish I had a photo of the two of us, squaring off in her kitchen while we got ready for my brothers wedding: I was covered, head to toe in butter-cream frosting and she was clutching roses for bouquets- I can’t tell you what we were disagreeing about but we were. Toe to toe, frosting to roses. She just looked at me and in front of twenty friends and family helping said “Monkey Butts” and as I stared her down I said “Well Monkey Butts back to you” and we walked away from each other. That’s how we do things. We were fine a few minutes later. We always are.

 

When I was about 13, I pulled the infamous kid trick of letting my Mom know about a huge project or deadline at 8:00 pm the night before it was due. This was no small project either, I needed to bring in an indigenous dish from Africa and I’d selected some sort of peanut & chicken dish. Mom was none to thrilled about this late night cooking and when I asked for her help with the pounded chicken she came in wordlessly, found a mallet and began whacking the ever living daylights out of a packet of chicken breasts.

 

Whack.

 

Whack.

 

WHACK.

 

“Um Mom?”

 

“What??” WHACK WHACK WHACK.

 

“What are you doing?” WHACK.

 

“I’m pounding this chicken for you.” WHACK.

 

“Mom? I need a pound of chicken. Not pounded.”

 

Meat mallet in hand we both died laughing. And that was the end of that argument, but the beginning of our hi-jinks. As long as we are not navigating together (a recipe for disaster, please imagine us in a rental car in a bad part of Providence with nothing but an airport map and a complete inability to figure out where the heck our hotel was…..) or manuvering a canoe together, we get along pretty well. Even when one of us is being a monkey butt.

Family

An Epic Post Office Fail

Aug 20th, 09 / 3 Comments

I’ve been none too subtle in previous comments about how much I loathe the US Postal Service. In addition to being inefficient and unhelpful, their rigid rules seem to exist only to frustrate & annoy you- and typically cost you more money.

When I mailed my save-the-dates I discovered that the  ”nominal” square postage surcharge was not in fact nominal, it was in fact slightly substantial. When you are mailing 150 objects, a $.20 surcharge adds up and it adds up fast.

 

The surcharge rule for a square envelope however is consistent- while I wasn’t thrilled with the rate, I knew it existed.  I knew my envelopes were square, and thus, I’d pay an extra twenty cents per.

 

Today B took our freshly arrived wedding invitations to the post office to be weighed & inspected so I would know exactly how much postage to put on the envelopes. As it turns out, they don’t really know. It seems some of the postal service employees think that 61 cents will get it there just fine, others think that we need to pay the 20 cent surcharge- again. Except this time they are calling it an “invitation” surcharge, also known as a “nonmachinable surcharge” because, and I quote from the postal service website,

“the piece is too rigid”

Please note that it doesn’t provide dimensions or any other identifying information so one could determine the thickness and/or rigidity.  It doesn’t provide any helpful information other than a picture of someone trying to mail a compact disk. Let me tell you, my invitations are not nearly as thick as a compact disk. This mysterious surcharge in fact seems subjective, as though a pissed off postal worker could choose to charge you, or perhaps not choose to charge you.

 

My biggest fear is spending weeks hand addressing & compiling these suckers, paying an obscene amount of money for postage, dropping them in a mail box only to have them returned a week later, scruffy & mangled with a huge “insufficient postage” stamp on them. That? That would be an epic fail. But an equally epic fail (in my opinion) is paying an extra $60.00 to mail invitations – which is essentially handing a failing, inept agency money they don’t deserve & will mis-spend.

 

You see my conundrum, no? What you can’t see is my pure, seething anger over this. Our government, one of rules and definitions, literally entire feet of bookshelves dedicated to the definition of each and every thing in the entire country (down to what constitutes appropriate goose down and what doesn’t) now has a definition attached to a surcharge that simply lets a post office employee (already known to be the lowest of the low and the dumbest of the dumb) decide how much they want to charge you.

 

That ladies & gentlemen makes me want to move to Europe. Not Presidential elections or liberal versus conservative, but just the generally inept way our country carries on every day. The fact that while the US Postal service will spend millions of dollars on shiny new advertising plans telling you how darn easy it is to purchase postage online, allowing you to drop mail in a drop box and circumvent the lines that we all loathe so much, it turns out that you can’t really use their website. Their website is filled with “check here if the object you are mailing is square” options and then that helpful feature simply gives you an asterisk telling you that your object is subject to extra fees. Without actually telling you what the fee is. Again, I say EPIC FAIL. Forget fixing health care, the war, the enviornment or anything else.* Fix the darn post office.

 

(*Ok fine, fix those things too. But fix the post office as well. That or I’m switching to Fed-Ex. FOREVER.)

Chicago, US Post Office Failures, Wedding