Confessions Of A Dish Whore

By Cassondra Murray

Hi. I’m Cassondra and I am a dish whore.

I know, I know. Those of you who have come to know me in all of my black-wearing, firearm-and-knife-wielding, suspense-writing glory will find this difficult to assimilate. But it’s true.

It doesn’t matter much where the dishes originated. It could be delicate Lenox or sturdy Pfaltzgraff, $30-per-set Gibson from Target or $30-per-teacup Prince Albert porcelain from England. When I see a pretty set of dishes, I immediately start building a table setting around it. Then I start building my fantasy life around it.

I compare it to what I already have, and think about which placemats, tablecloth, chargers and stemware I could combine to make something eclectic. Something different. Something stunning.
And then I start wanting it.

I can spend hours in the housewares department. I imagine MY table set with that, MY house perfectly clean and neat, and all my friends around me, sipping good wine, laughing and having a grand time while I finish dinner and we prepare to sit around that gorgeous table.

My husband, Steve, will come in and give me a kiss and hand me the flowers he brought, then he’ll stir the Bolognese sauce while I greet the first guests for the evening.
If only I had those dishes, you see, all else in my life would fall into perfect alignment. Just like a magazine ad.

Yes. It’s a disease.

And yes, I do need a 12-step program for this.

Or some sort of therapeutic intervention. Or, perhaps, service for 12 of the Lenox Holiday pattern china. I’ve always wanted that set….

Help me.

I’ve been doing better recently. I swear.

Last year I gave away three whole sets of dishes.

It was the summer of 2009. After 8 years of living in this old house, I was finally unpacking everything that remained in my garage. And in so doing, I took stock of all of my dishes. I had to do this because I was trying to find places in the kitchen to store the boxes and boxes of fragile emotional crutches I’d been hoarding. I considered storing dishes under the bed for about twenty seconds, but nixed that idea. I don’t want to have to clean around them, and it’s bad Feng Shui.

You see, I’ve made this asinine rule about bringing more stuff into the house. If I bring anything in, something else has to go out. It’s a hard-ass approach to an unendurable clutter issue. I’m determined I’m going to create a Zen environment, one in which I can actually focus to…you know…write.

So in that summer of 2009, I took inventory. In all, I had eight complete sets of china. I had one service for 36. All matching.

That’s right. I could have served a sit-down dinner for 36 people all on matching dishes.

Now, let’s stop, for just a moment, and consider my actual life.

My dining room—or perhaps we should call it a “nook”-- is 12’X12’.

I’m presently sitting at the round oak dining table, with my laptop propped up on a copy of Sherrilyn Kenyon and Dianna Love’s BLOOD TRINITY as I write this. The rest of the table is covered with stacks of paper of all kinds. Bills, manuscripts, week-old mail, magazines, receipts I need for tax prep, and stuff to be filed. I shoved the paper back to make room for the laptop so I could type this blog. I’m trying to plan time in my schedule to get a dishwasher installed in the (very small) kitchen. Am I seriously going to do a sit-down dinner for 36?

Sure.

Maybe.

In my next life. Where I come back as Cosmic Empress of the Universe.

You know…the life when I have a staff of fifteen and three Five-Star commercial ranges in the kitchen. The kitchen which tastefully combines primitive pie safes and an antique butcher block island with granite countertops, two sinks and two Subzero refrigerators.

Yeah. That life.

On top of that, I don’t KNOW 36 people who I would bring in for a sit-down dinner all at once, unless I had all the cabana boys, the gladiators, the Bandits, and most of the Buddies over at the same time (Sorry, Ermingarde, but you won’t fit through the doorway). And besides, we’ve got the main hall of the Lair for those big parties.

Ah, but I had these visions of round tables draped with festive linens OUTSIDE you see, for a summer party on the lawn by the waterfall.

I can see the audience lean forward, and hear the question vibrating across the ether…..”You have a waterfall?”

No. I don’t. But I’d like to have one. And when I get my waterfall, I’ll sure-as-shootin’ have the dishes to support the darn thing.

See? It’s part of the fantasy.

It’s not that I’ve spent a lot of money on these dishes. I haven’t. My complete service for 36 was on clearance at Target. I paid $27 for all of it. Six sets of six. That’s less than a dollar per place setting!

Who could resist a deal like that?

And it was beautiful. Folk art representations of a village in all of the four seasons painted on the dishes. One season on each piece. I could just see it juxtaposed on a sage-green tablecloth with woven, mustard-yellow placemats and deep Aztec-red napkins, with a rich centerpiece made of red apples, golden pears, and jewel-tone turban squash, with autumn leaves scattered across the table. I’d weave in some gold-glitter-coated dried flower stems and gold-paint coated giant acorns, Then I’d set out some votives in deep red cut glass holders. My emerald-green stems with gold rims would be perfect. I’d turn the lights down and light the oil lamps and the table would glow.

Wouldn’t you like to eat a meal with good friends at a table like that?

I am a Goth, Martha-Stewart Mini-Me. I love all things beautiful and tasteful. I just happen to love them while I'm wearing black.

And I think pretty table settings are one of life’s most complete sensual experiences.

Think about it. Nobody serves Kraft mac & cheese on fine china. If the good stuff is laid out, you’re gonna get a home-cooked—or at least a home-catered—meal. And you’re going to sit down to that meal at a table laid out and decorated in a way that makes you stop and savor it.

I am hopeless.

I have dishes I’ve inherited. Some of them fairly valuable, though I’d have no idea how to sell such things. Some of them are quite ordinary, but hold fond memories because my grandmother served “dinner” (lunch for you city folk who don’t understand these things) to work hands on those dishes. Some of them are odd pieces of what I know to be collectible china, and some are 100-year-old pieces that I just think are beautiful. Platters, gravy boats, vegetable bowls and footed cake plates.

Jeanne’s post about decorating the Lair yesterday set this off. It's her fault. And the Christmas season makes it worse, yaknow….All the parties…all the opportunities to use that Lenox Holdiay china....

Let’s talk punch bowls for just a minute here.

When we did our First-Ever Bandit Bash in San Francisco in 2008, I created a wine punch recipe and then contacted our West-Coast Bandits, asking who had a punch bowl we could use for the Bash.

Not one.

That’s right. There are no punch bowls in California.

Apparently, people on the West Coast do not drink punch at baby showers.

I live in the south. I cannot comprehend this.

I called Jeanne, who lives in Maryland, but grew up in North Carolina, which is technically the Upper South.

“Do you have a punch bowl?” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “I have two.”

Ha! I was vindicated.

I have not one, but TWO punch bowls of my own. No matter that I use them only once every three years. I have one large cut-crystal punch bowl, complete with cut-crystal cups hanging on little s-hooks around its rim, which used to belong to my mom. And I have one smaller, blown-glass, footed punch bowl I earned as a bonus when I was a crystal dealer. It’s magical. Faeries would drink punch out of this bowl.

Yes. I was once a crystal dealer. Not only am I a dish whore, I was once a dish pimp.

I did a presentation to a group of ladies when I was a dish pimp, and have never forgotten the words of one woman, as she was moved to the point of poetry by the sparkle of the lights glinting off of the 24 percent lead crystal, and said, ”my lips LOVE to drink out of pretty glasses.”

Mmmmmm. Mine too.

Yesterday I stopped by a little consignment store at a corner I pass on my way into town. They had two pedestal punch bowls, complete with complete sets of matching cups. Dirt cheap. I very nearly came home with one.

I resisted. Just barely.

I have a deep disdain for paper plates. Even at picnics. I tolerate them only to experience the awesome food heaped upon them, and to be polite to the people I love.

But honestly? I want the picnic sets with the porcelain-like, hard plastic plates and the real silverware, all nestled in a pretty chintz-fabric-lined, lidded basket.

It’s not that I’m uber-formal. I’m not. I hate snobbery, and dislike formality as a rule.
One time I was in a five-star restaurant in Florida. You could have heard a pin drop in that place. (Totally NOT a fit for my personality) There was a little girl at the next table. The lace on her skirt was so stiff it cracked every time she moved. She had to speak in a whisper and looked about to cry. Absolutely miserable. I felt so bad for her.

The little guy who filled the iced tea was pestering the bejeebers out of me, filling it up every time I took a drink and messing up my sacred tea/sugar ratio. (It’s a sin to have to sweeten one’s own tea anyhow, especially in the South. What were they thinking?) I pointed to a spot low on my glass. I gave him my most threatening squint. “When the tea gets down to here,” I said, “you can come back. But not before that.”

His eyes got wide. He didn’t come back for a long time. I was way too loud for that restaurant.
I am not Miss Formal. Honest. I just like dishes.

No. I LOVE dishes. And pretty table settings. I love eating at a beautiful table.

I grew up on a farm in the country, eating on mismatched plates. I don’t know where this came from.

Seriously. I need professional help. Something is wrong with me.

Am I the only one?

Is there another Buddy out there who will raise your hand and say, “Yes, I am a dish whore!” along with me?

Or are y’all the paper-plate –for-dinner types?

I recognize that you paper plate types are, truly, the practical ones. It’s not that I can’t accept, intellectually, that you’re right.

I just don’t understand you.

I can’t relate.

Is there anybody out there like me? Do you love pretty dishes?

Do you stop and stare when you pass the Macy’s housewares window?

Do you covet the Lenox Holiday set, even though you’d only use it one month out of the year?

Be honest. You know you want it.

Don’t you?

Do you like sitting at a beautifully-laid table?

Or are you just as happy with paper plates and cups, and serving out of Tupperware?


Am I the only Dish Whore in the Bandit Lair?


Say it ain’t so.