The old butter dish was one my grandmother had picked up for me at a yard sale, I think. It was white, and the cover had flowers on it in brown ink—kind of in an old Corningware pattern. Plain and unattractive.
I didn’t like it.
It wasn’t hideous or anything. But it certainly didn’t match what I had, and it wasn’t pretty. It was Serviceable.
Serviceable is good, in its way.
Sometimes I would cut a stick of butter in half and put it on a small Blue Willow plate. That was pretty, and it matched my dishes, but it had no cover, so it wasn’t really Practical. Set loose in the refrigerator on that plate, the butter was apt to spread itself on Other Things, at least until the chill set in.
But when I was putting the butter in the cabinet where I keep the butter when it isn’t too hot (because who likes trying to spread hard butter on toast?), I had to put the butter in the butter dish with a lid. It needed a lid.
Then the local grocery store started selling Blue Willow dishes. Perhaps you’ve seen deals like this one. For two months they displayed the dishes in the store, and every week they featured with sale prices a piece of the service: this week a place setting for four; next week a set of four soup bowls; the week after that the covered casserole.
And one week: a butter dish.
I wanted to buy All The Serving Pieces. I love dishes. Dishes and linens—I am a sucker for these things. And I don’t really have matching serving pieces.
But this came during a time when money was, shall we say, a scarce commodity. I noted when the butter dish would be featured and so would be almost affordable. I thought I would treat myself to this—just this. The butter dish.
And then I missed the sale. The week came, the week went, and I failed to buy it. I missed it somehow. I was So Disappointed.
But you know, it’s just a butter dish. The one I had was Serviceable. It would Do.
And then, one morning, I reached into the cabinet to get the butter. I think it was already on the counter before I noticed that it was a new Blue Willow butter dish, and Someone had already put new butter in it.
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In recent years, we have kept hardboiled eggs in our refrigerator. A handy snack, a handy lunch, a quick breakfast. We’ll hard boil half the dozen, or a third of the eighteen, and put them back in the carton.
An interesting fact about hardboiled eggs, one that, perhaps, you yourself have noted: an egg raw looks exactly like an egg hardboiled.
To distinguish the hardboiled ones from their raw counterparts, I usually mark them with a little dot on one end. When Bill’s brother Jeff lived with us, he would mark them with faces, and these faces were usually simple depictions of horror and outrage, expressing much that one would guess an egg feels—if sentient–after being boiled and boiled and boiled.
Although Jeff left a few years ago, Bill has continued the tradition, and my hardboiled eggs make themselves obvious in the refrigerator. But the other day, the cooked eggs declared themselves in a new and beautiful way.
