My earliest food habits when I was growing up in New England were very much of their time: meat and potatoes, and a roast for Sunday dinner; Boston baked beans and hot dogs on Saturday nights; Chef Boyardee spaghetti and meatballs; grilled cheese sandwiches on Sunday nights. Meatloaf. Later on, my parents favored what nutritionist Gayelord Hauser called "nature foods," freshly juiced carrots or celery, B vitamins and fish oil capsules. (That juicer caused the lights in the kitchen to dim, I swear.) The candy drawer in the kitchen was filled with early versions of protein bars that were composed mostly of blackstrap molasses. But no matter the food, I insisted that I eat off the red plate (each of the set of plates was a different color).
As an adult I have been a picky--that is, selective and probably a little lazy--cook. And thus eater. My initial idea of cooking, learned at home, was adding an egg and water to a Duncan Hines spice cake mix. A tuna-out-of-the-can sandwich on toasted white bread. Campbell's tomato soup. Beans and hot dogs (I had learned well) with brown-bread-out-of-a-can (still a treat). Early on, on my own as an adult, I learned to make a quiche, a quick-enough one-dish meal if need be. Plus it could serve as breakfast, lunch or dinner. I snacked on apples and bananas. But as the years passed, later, after busy days at work, I often ate microwaved meals on a plastic tray out of a small cardboard box. Lunches at work tended to be cheeseburgers, maybe an occasional salad, but more likely a slice of pizza that was so greasy that I sopped up what grease I could with a napkin before I ate it. At least breakfast once in a while was healthy: plain yogurt and fruit, or oatmeal.
Since I retired, one of the most successful changes I have made is to my diet. I eat better. I cook more--which is to say I very likely cook less than other people, but I do cook. I put a slab of fish in the fry pan, boil or steam fresh veggies, and I make broccoli salad. Carrot and raisin salad. Spinach salad. Even what I think of as the retro three bean salad. My small crock pot has become my friend. And last week I made a vegetable quiche.
I have never been much of a material girl. If I have a choice, I will choose to spend my money on experiences (such as travel) rather than on things (such as dishes, or even expensive food), but I am coming to understand that healthy food, if funds allow, is worth the expense. I am certainly not one to value presentation, presentation on a plate anyway, but I have to admit it is nice to have meals at home on other than a trough. Of course I speak metaphorically here; I have never had a trough. (My inherited Wedgwood and the silver tea service remain safely stored and unused.) But I have my limits. As long as I don't feel deprived, I'm okay. I am not out to impress anybody at this point--and certainly no one will be impressed by my limited culinary skills.
Over the last fifteen or so years, I have finally bought grown up dishes to replace my ancient Corningware; once I bought Fiestaware, I stopped eating on old maybe-good-for-a-student dishes. For those of you who do not know (and for most of my life I did not know), Fiestaware is the only American-made dinnerware company left. The bold, solid color dishes do catch your eye, and they are the right kind of hefty. Classy, the dishes are both comfortable--that is, informal enough--and substantial. The colors: marigold, poppy, sapphire, sage, lemongrass, plum, shamrock, cobalt blue, ivory, and many more. (Check out www.homerlaughlin.com in Newell, West Virginia.) Initially, not knowing better, I bought over half a dozen dinner plates of various colors, each of them ten and a half inches across, and which were just too big for everyday use and which are now in a box in the garage. I also have a few nine-inch luncheon plates, but mostly what I eat out of are the Fiesta rimmed soup bowls, nine inches across. The bowl part of the dish helps anchor the food--the salmon and the spinach, for instance.
But the two rimmed soup bowls that I have used for years have hairline cracks, and they are both in the now-discontinued apricot color--a pale pink-orange--that I have to admit I do not really find, well, compelling. So recently it was time to replace them, and, in a circling back to my golden days of yesteryear, I ordered two rimmed soup bowls: bright scarlet and poppy colors, even though my very favorite color, if I had to choose, is juniper, a snazzy dark teal, a color out of Fiesta production for years. The scarlet is just that, and the poppy is a bright orange-red. If a rimmed soup bowl can be cheerful, these certainly are.
These two everyday-use kinds of dishes will complement what I have already accumulated, which is far more than I need: a dozen or so Fiestaware mugs of various kinds and colors; four glasses; and four sets of silverware that look increasingly mismatched and worn. I have a loaf pan, a casserole dish, and a pie pan--although I did not use that last when I made the quiche. Rather, I bought a crust already made and in an aluminum pan. With eggs much more expensive then they were when I first made quiches, plus spinach, mushrooms, a little cheese, and onions, the quiche tasted much like I remembered it tasting, and later the leftover were certainly as rubbery as I remembered as well. Oh-- and I have a small red tea pot and a larger sapphire blue one and a few completely impractical disc pitchers that were impulse buys. (Why in the world did I buy an orange disc pitcher? What could it serve as other than as a dust catcher?)
Much of this has been purchased in the Fiesta outlet store in Newell, West Virginia. A small flaw on the outside of a ceramic mug is not a problem to me. (Note to Homer Laughlin, though: you could develop a whole new market if you took some of those seconds, contracted out to starving artist jewelry makers, and then sold the results: vivid jewelry. But perhaps doing so is not as business-savvy, or as much as a tax write-off, as selling as many of the seconds to people like me is.)
Other people collect and use Fiesta. I only use. But I do understand the passion of the collectors. A while back, someone added me to the I LOVE FIESTA Facebook group, and the other people there are enthusiastic and informed the way any kind of fans or devotees are: cat people, Beatle people, vintage train people, Star Wars people, Deadheads. The object of their passion is different, but the nature of their passion is not. Every once in a while someone posts before and after photos of a collapsed display shelf (even my rimmed soup bowl weighs two pounds), but for the most part, the online exchanges are about good buys, place settings, and questions about the tasteful and eye-pleasing collectors' market. Ebay? Kohl's? Dillard's? Estate auctions? Some items ordered online arrived in smithereens. Some members seem to aim for complete sets of all (or maybe as many as possible) of everything that Homer Laughlin makes--or has ever made since 1936.
I am not a collector. For me, the plum canister without its lid is a pen and pencil holder. (If I didn't have the canister, I might well use a coffee can. Well, maybe not, but you get my drift.)
If I have a choice--and I am fortunate that I do, at least at this point--I am going to choose what I like, even if I chose modestly. I did not order a collection of rimmed soup bowls, after all, but two that will be of daily use. And I am certain the way I am about few other things that this purchase does not augur more Fiesta. There will be no Fiesta-binge on my part. Even if I did have room for more dishes, I am ever the student of literature, and I appreciate the Victorian William Morris' idea: "Have nothing in your houses that you do not know how to be useful or believe to be beautiful."
And as you know, since these days I am partial to old rockers, so let me put this in more contemporary terms. I think David Bowie was onto something when he said ageing is "an extraordinary process whereby you become the person you always should have been."
I lived most of my life without red plates and with what might generously be called uneven (and at some points genuinely unhealthy) eating habits.
And so I bought two reddish plates. I cook some. I eat well.
And here I am.
Copyright Sandra A Engel, 2016
