Confession - we live in France, and hardly ever drink wine. My husband and I have water, soda, fruit juice, the occasional hard cider or beer - and wine only on special occasions. So when Chrsitmas was coming and he family was going to descend upon us "en masse", we looked into our dish cupboard and sighed. We have been living with the free mustard glasses for twenty years now. I think the last cups I bought were from Ikea, and they were plastic so the kids couldn't break them. That should give you an idea of how old our cups are. We decided to go to a discount shop and buy dishes.
We needed twelve shallow ironstone bowls. Plain, heavy, serviceable, and cheap. They were 75 cents a bowl - perfect for my thrifty Scottish soul.
Then we took two boxes of six wine glasses. The box was on sale for 6€ for 6 glasses. gerfect. Again, balm for mystingy thrifty soul.
The glasses looked very nice on the box, but when we unpacked them, they turned out to be incredibly fragile. The glass was so thin it was like paper, and the stem was long and skinny. It felt like it would snap in in your fingers. We hardly dared touch them. Carefully I rinced them off and dried them and put them in the cupboard. When we set the table, with the heavy, plain while ironstone bowls and fragile, delicate wine glasses, it did look pretty. And to my amazement, no one broke a single glass. We toasted Very Carefully.
Then, after dinner, I looked at the wine glasses and said, "You are going in the dishwasher. If you break, I won't cry. I won't need wine glasses for another twenty years, so it's make it - or break, guys." I put them in the machine, and wonder of wonders - my machine has little clips to hold the stems in place while they wash - and even more amazingly - they came out sparkling clean - and intact! So I have twelve wine glasses that match, and twelve matching ironstone bowls, and I even have twelve matching water glasses, because my husband was all for tossing out our mustard glassses.
The mustard glasses - all 20 of them - were adopted by Alex & Sara for their new apartment.
The wine glasses take up a whole section of my dish cupboard!
We use the white bowls nearly every day, since I make so much soup, and since there is so much leftover couscous from Christmas dinnner!
Then we took two boxes of six wine glasses. The box was on sale for 6€ for 6 glasses. gerfect. Again, balm for my
The glasses looked very nice on the box, but when we unpacked them, they turned out to be incredibly fragile. The glass was so thin it was like paper, and the stem was long and skinny. It felt like it would snap in in your fingers. We hardly dared touch them. Carefully I rinced them off and dried them and put them in the cupboard. When we set the table, with the heavy, plain while ironstone bowls and fragile, delicate wine glasses, it did look pretty. And to my amazement, no one broke a single glass. We toasted Very Carefully.
Then, after dinner, I looked at the wine glasses and said, "You are going in the dishwasher. If you break, I won't cry. I won't need wine glasses for another twenty years, so it's make it - or break, guys." I put them in the machine, and wonder of wonders - my machine has little clips to hold the stems in place while they wash - and even more amazingly - they came out sparkling clean - and intact! So I have twelve wine glasses that match, and twelve matching ironstone bowls, and I even have twelve matching water glasses, because my husband was all for tossing out our mustard glassses.
The mustard glasses - all 20 of them - were adopted by Alex & Sara for their new apartment.
The wine glasses take up a whole section of my dish cupboard!
We use the white bowls nearly every day, since I make so much soup, and since there is so much leftover couscous from Christmas dinnner!
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