One of the ongoing debates in my marriage is about our plates and bowls. I think that when you sit down to eat, you should have a big enough plate or bowl that you don’t have to fill it multiple times to get enough to eat. My wife agrees, as long as your appetite is the size of the typical Lilliputian. And don’t even get me started on ramekins; what is the point of a bowl that is empty after one good size spoonful? You might as well eat straight from the container. Anyway, the reason that I am the way I am probably links back to my grandmother and her amazing plates.

While much of the time spent in my grandparent’s house was with my grandfather, holidays were definitely grandma time. My grandmother was an amazing cook and holidays were always a big deal in her house. Holidays usually started out with cinnamon rolls, and hers were the best.  Just the right size to eat a few of them, with raisins and nuts and baked golden brown, yum. We would then proceed to graze our way to the main meal. There was always an amazing amount of food, both in quantity and variety. I typically liked everything my grandmother made, except sweet potatoes (my uncle and I always passed if we had a choice), so I needed a lot of room for all her creations.

Enter my Grandma’s amazing plates. In a moment of pure genius, my grandmother ordered the serving plates in her china pattern as her main dinner plates. They were awesome! They had this wide green band around the outside that always seemed nice at Christmas. The best part was I never went hungry and I didn’t have to spend precious eating time going back and forth for seconds, thirds and fourths. They were huge: easily 50% bigger than a mere mortal dinner plate. There was room for anything on them. I always took a huge mountain of mashed potatoes and made an enormous crater to fill with her great gravy. Kids and mashed potatoes, always a great combination. Not only was there room for all the heavenly foods, but if my mom forced me to take the debacle that are sweet potatoes, there was plenty of room for the required 1” buffer between them and the edible food. I certainly wasn’t going to lose a piece of roast beef or mashed potatoes to that orange abomination.

It seemed like the desert plates were big as well because I could always fit a few different types of pie on them. Maybe they were the dinner plates. Oooooh, genius grandma, genius.

Well, my grandmother passed away many years ago now, but I think of her often. While she gave us all many wonderful (and interesting) gifts over the years, her greatest gifts were probably the enormous feasts she always prepared for us. Feasts that wouldn’t have been quite right served on anything less than Grandma’s amazing green ringed plates.