The Hog Trough

Growing up I lived in Colorado. My parents were from South Dakota so all my Grandparents, Aunts, Uncle's, and Cousins were there. Really, my parents and Uncle Al were the only ones to really the state. South Dakota was where we went on vacation. When my Grandpa was alive, one of his favorite places to eat was at "The Hog Trough." It was really the Royal Fork Buffet in Rapid City. Which I have just found out has closed. Anyways, that is where we would go. My grandparents loved it, and since it was a buffet there were no doggy bags. Well my grandpa, he had a great slight of hand. He would pack some food up in the small bowls, one on top of the other, and wrap them in napkins so they would not spill and put them in my grandma's purse. I am pretty sure they also had some of the flatware from there too. My grandpa was a hoot. Every time we would feed the cats at my Grandparents house we could not help but think of Grandpa since the cat dishes were stolen from "The Hog Trough." He left that legacy with my family.

My brothers have kept the tradition alive. My husband and I have a matching set of Chili's mugs. We got one for our wedding from one brother, and one for my birthday from the other brother. Seriously, they crack me up. Now I have my own stolen mugs that remind me of him and my brothers who stole them. It was an unexpected gift but oddly very meaningful.

Do any of your dishes have an odd story to tell? Please share?

Oh, and please don't go and start a stollen dish collection. That is illegal. :)

Save Everything

Growing up in Small-Town America, I used to spend a good chunk of my summers in Even-Smaller-Town America with my grandparents. In addition to weeding the garden, watching summer rainstorms out the big front window, swimming at the high school pool, camping at the ranger station, building clubhouses out of cardboard boxes (only to watch them disintegrate in the above mentioned rainstorms), I helped my grandmother clean out her china closets. I've talked about my Granny before, but I hope you'll indulge me once again. .

She put a lot of trust in a clumsy 11-year-old girl to carefully take all of the dishes out of the cabinet and all of the salt and pepper shakers and tiny tea sets out of the corner glass-front closets. I'd heard stories about them, where they came from, who gifted them to my grandparents, how old they were, and yet I never tired of hearing them.
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All of the dishes sat atop linen doilies with a crocheted border out of thread so tiny it made my eyes hurt to try and pick out what stitches she used. We removed them from the cabinets, washed them, starched them and layed them out on old pillowcases and pinned around the edges to keep their shape. The "play room" as we called it looked like a snow storm had come through with all of those doilies resting on the floor like giant snowflakes. Granny always told us to stay out of there so as not to disturb them before they were dry, but when she wasn't looking I'd tiptoe in between them just to get a closer look or touch.
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Each dish was hand washed, dried and put back to rest in its cabinet until they made their appearance at Thanksgiving and Christmas. My Granny treated everything she had as if it were a prized possession. Living through the Great Depression I'm sure had much to do with her conservationist approach to living.
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We loved drinking out of her special little fancy glasses, later realizing that they were these glass bottles that once contained various cheese spreads used to make her holiday cheese balls.

She saved styrofoam "plates" that brought donuts home from the store bakery. Aluminum foil was washed and reused countless times. If a plate were to break, she glued and glued and glued it until it was more glue than plate. Her 9x13 aluminum pan (she called them "drippers" which I still don't know the origin of, but I like calling it that) had a tiny hole in it, and she plugged it with a little piece of a dish towel - good as new!
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I could go on and on, but what I take from these experiences is how she saw the good in something that to others seemed unusable. That's how she was with her family too. This month marks the eighth anniversary of her passing. I was a newlywed of less than a month when she died, and I've always been afraid of forgetting her. Thankfully, the memory of her is kept alive in the few dishes of hers that I now have, an occasional dream, and I think in the way I approach my own life, and how I'd like to do so even more.

And to share part of her with you, here's one of her famous dishes she used to make. If you like maple bar donuts, you will die over this because it's all that and more! This was always in the kitchen waiting for us after we made the 12-hour drive for Christmas. I think she even made it in the plugged-up-hole-dripper...that made it taste better!

Maple Nut Cake

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1/4 tsp. salt

1/2 pound walnuts, chopped

1 cup milk

1/2 cup shortening

2 tsp. baking powder

2 tsp. maple flavoring

Mix well with enough flour to make a stiff dough (thicker than boxed cake mix but thinner than banana bread dough consistency), about 2 cups. Spread in greased and floured 9x13 pan, and bake at 375 degrees for 30 minutes. When cool, spread with 7-minute icing.

7-Minute Icing

2 egg whites

1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tsp. maple flavoring

5 TB water
1 1/2 tsp. light corn syrup

Cook all ingredients except flavoring in double boiler seven minutes over medium heat, stirring frequently. Remove from heat, add flavoring and frost cake.

The Importance of a Happy Hodge-Podge

Just like the rest of my house, my collection of dishes has been thrown together over time with very little thought other than "ooh, I like that!" It ends up feeling like a bit of a hodge-podge at times, but when I look at them like this it just seems to work. It's a hodge-podge, but it's a happy hodge-podge. Every one of them is important to me, and it makes me happy just to look at them, and I'll tell you why:

These are the dishes that we use every day. They're at the very center of every meal we share, and that makes them Important. We've had them since we got married, and I still love them.

This is just one piece from a set of serving dishes I received from my grandmother when she had to sell her house for something smaller. She'd had them since her wedding in 1939, and that makes them Important.


I don't remember if my mother received china for her wedding. But I do know this is the china we kids grew up with. It came out every Thanksgiving and Christmas, and most of it survived 8 children and 30-something moving vans. The pattern is not one that I would have chosen, but it still comes out at my house on special occasions, because my dad bought it for my mom when they were newly married and he was overseas, and that makes it Important.

I saw these little cups and saucers at Goodwill a few years ago. There was a big set of them, and I was so tempted to buy the whole thing I loved them so much. But I already owned enough teacups and my kitchen didn't really have space for any more, so I allowed myself to buy just 4 cups and saucers. A few weeks later I spotted the same cups in my dear friend Cortney's house - she had seen them at Goodwill, too, and bought a few for herself! That sort of synchronicity between friends is what makes these dishes Important.

This cup is one of two given to me by another friend who was downsizing her things just before she left for a year and a half in Amsterdam. It reminds me of her, and it reminds me of traveling, and it reminds me of new experiences and being brave, and that makes it Important.

And this one was handmade by my mom when she decided to learn pottery. It makes me think of her, and learning new things, and it's pretty, and that makes it Important.

Of the rest of them, some might have similar stories that I don't know about since I bought them second-hand. Some of them are reminders that plastic can be pretty. One of them is my egg-dish, which I just love because ... well, because I do. And that makes it Important, too.

How about you? What's the story of your favorite dish or set of dishes?

White

I love this time of year!  I love the smells and the sparkle and the bustle of it all.  I love the anticipation I see in my kids...okay, in me... and the gift giving process.  I love the shopping and the making and the tons of decorating.  Is this starting to sound a little bit Dr. Seussy?  Sorry!  I have Christmas cards on the brain.   What I really love is the entertaining.  I get all silly and Jennish about setting a pretty table with dishes that make me swoon. 

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I adore all things white.  I have it in every room.  I remember looking at pottery barn catalogs when I was in high school and dreaming about how my home would one day look.  * Little did I know that those prices would keep their simple white furniture out of my home.  That is not the point.  To me the perfect room has a whole lot of white and a little bit of some other color.  I think it's fresh and inviting and clean and so easy to change for the season or for my mood.  I have started to collect white serving ware to help whiten up my kitchen. I paint just about anything I can get my hands on white.  One of these days I'll get pictures up of Sadie's room and our bedroom.  I'm pretty sure I am obsessed!  It's in my Christmas tree and is a big part of all of my quilts.  I love when it snows because it brightens and cleans up a icky looking winter mess.  I can be really fickle when it comes to favorite colors and because it changes so often I like having that white canvas in most of my rooms to do small adjustments to.  Some think that white is boring.  I think it's...to be cheesy...magical!  Among the many white things in my home I have a particular favorite, especially at this time of year.

Enter my prettiest tiny collection of dishes...

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I think I mentioned my china before and how it's become one of my most favorite treasures but I have to just tell you how grateful I am for my mother and her understanding of what china really means to a wife and mother.  I registered for it after my wedding, out of registration regret - not doing it when I should have, and my sweet mom lovingly gets me a little bit of it every birthday, anniversary and at Christmas. My husband thinks it's fairly pointless to put an expensive plate on the table, only to have it covered up with food and then wishing all night long for it to make it safely into a locked cabinet.  I, on the other hand, find it to be comforting and timeless.  It seems like having kids has changed our whole home to plastic and having this one nice breakable adult thing helps me feel grown up when I need to be.  I have so many memories of setting my mom's and even my grandmother's table with their own fine china.  I want that for my Sadie.  I want the moment those dishes make an appearance to signify a special occasion, to sparkle things up a bit, and then one day I want to pass it, or at least the tradition of it, on to my children. 

I believe that giving china as a wedding gift use to be a big tradition and I wonder why it's fizzled out.  Was it a fad?  Did it become a pain to find?  I guess if you are a practical thinking person, like my cute husband,  these types of things just don't really matter.  Thank goodness I am not a very practical person.  I love that they came from my mom.  I love that they are me and that I picked them out to last forever.  I really love that they are white.  I can't wait to bring them out again this Christmas.