I’m drawn to bowls. I have had way too many in my lifetime — we were given 32 bowls for our wedding. We returned a few fancy crystal serving bowls to stores, knowing we would never use them. Though beautiful, formal food service is not my entertaining style. In fact, I’ve learned that entertaining is not my style at all! I’m still working on that 40 years later.
What I love are mixing bowls. I want them to be sturdy and basic, with a touch of nostalgia. My favorite go-to mixing bowl arrived in my kitchen with the wedding gifts. It’s a creamy white with a blue stripe around the top edge. This classic bowl has held decades of cookie dough, pancake batter, potato and fruit salads, bread dough, and dozens of forgotten miscellaneous ingredients. It has been through all the food stages of my flourishing family, the patina of age adding to its charm.
At one time and place in our lives, we were given the precious gift of bowls made by a local potter. They were a going-away gift from the friends our children grew up with. I love the painterly beauty of these one-of-a-kind earthenware pieces but what makes them precious is the memories they hold of life-long friends. I cannot use the bowls without thinking of the love I have for these people and the years we spent with them. Who could know bowls would have such power?
Some of you will remember The Butterfield House. During my short tenure at the helm of this twenty-year family business, I had the opportunity to “shop” for the products I wanted in the store. One of my favorite companies carried vintage-style mixing bowls. When the time came to close the store, I chose to keep several of my favorites. I use the smaller ones for serving side dishes; every weekend the ingredients for Mick’s sourdough bread come to life in a beautiful yellow-ware bowl I had to have.
A decade ago, I came across the crowing glory of utilitarian bowls: a Martha Stewart oversized fifties-look turquoise mixing bowl that can handle almost anything I need to make in quantity. It was on sale at Macy’s, most likely because of its size and weight. Not too many people like bowls THAT much. But Martha and I do!
Like cupped hands, bowls are made to hold things, mostly the ingredients to feed family and friends. Over the years, those ingredients turn into memories of time spent together: Holidays, popcorn nights, cookie baking, potlucks, traditions and experiments. Bowls allow the mixture of scents and flavors which, when placed in an oven or in a pan on the stove, waft throughout the house. Bowls serve food being passed from hand to hand, nourishing, comforting, grounding, connecting those to whom they are passed. Bowls hold the history of a family.
My newest acquisition is a bright yellow vintage (the real thing) mixing bowl of the era of my childhood. It came from my mom, who loved collecting. When she died, I didn’t have the opportunity to think through what of hers I wanted; but what tugged my heart in that moment was the yellow Pyrex nesting-mixing bowl. This isn’t the same bowl I grew up with — the original had faded to a pale yellow and was most likely sent to a second hand store when my mom had the opportunity to “upgrade” to something new. But many decades later, when she began collecting antique glassware, she was drawn to the yellow Pyrex. I wonder if she experienced the sweet ache of early memories of her own growing family when she saw it and added it to her collection of “usable” bowls.
The yellow bowl sits on a small open shelf next to the Martha Stewart showoff. Together they represent generations of use. And they continue to give as a part of our present Ohio life. Our kids are coming home for Christmas and they will be served favorite foods created in the bowls of their lives. It will be interesting to see someday which bowls will be important to each of our children!
A bowl,
a nest,
cupped hands:
Symbols of home, holders of history, simple beauty.
