A Peek At My Three Favorite Platters

I love dishes, and I love to serve food to friends and family.

I especially love to serve food on pretty dishes!

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Welcome to my Three Or More Tuesday post, for the blog party hosted by Tam at The Gypsy's Corner.
Click here for more!

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When my in-laws still lived in Massachusetts, there was a small antiques shop in their village, and I was the lucky recipient of many of the treasures my mother-in-law spotted there. Probably my favorite is this platter:

I use it all the time, for just about everything. (Well, not for soup.)

I think it is ironstone, as it is very heavy. What I love is that it is very deep.
You can put the pasta and the sauce on this.

I love the soft pink and lavender flowers, and the worn touches of gilt:

You can see the depth in this shot; this big platter is at bottom right:

It is marked underneath with a shield, with "Weimar"
diagonally across it, and "Germany" beneath.

I always assumed that meant it was made during the Weimar Republic years, 1919 to 1933, but I did a little quick research this morning, and there was a porcelain company of that name, using that stamped shield. So -- I have no idea how old this platter is after all!

If you ever find a big, pretty platter with a deep, deep well -- buy it!
Your tablecloth will thank you, because nothing will slop over the sides when people are helping themselves (not a problem if you have a butler, but we've let ours go -- the economy, you know).
Plus it is just the perfect showcase for your food.

My other two platters are twins, almost. Same platters, different sizes.
And I love them because they are just so durned purty.

Plus I got them both for $5.00, when I bought some matching
dinner plates on Ebay. They are Limoges:

I have about 15 dinner plates, and perhaps 6 luncheon plates in the same pattern, and 6 bouillon cups, all bought piecemeal on Ebay, for cheap. But what I use the most are these two hardworking beauties.

They don't match the big ol' German gal, but they look great working right alongside her.

I love the delicate flowers --

and the gilded touches --

They are perfect sizes for so many things -- asparagus, couscous, roasted root veggies, and of course -- cookies for tea! These three platters get more use than any other serving pieces, even though they do require hand washing. It's well worth it.

And that's my Three Or More! I think next week I'll rummage through
my Grandma's china cabinet and find some neat things.

Do you see the chair to the right, below? It is wicker and metal, with great patina. Anne brought 3 of them home from college; these I like having around!
We found them at the side of the road last fall.

Someone commented on my post yesterday, that I was keeping it real by showing my upstairs hallway completely filled with my daughter Anne's home-from-college stuff.

I liked that comment; That Old House and its insides and its outsides are very real, creaks and cracks and all. Plus, I had to laugh when I looked again at yesterday's post -- talk about real --

I should have noticed the lovely coating of dust on the newel post
in that last hallway picture, before I published it for all to see!

Oh well.
I blame Annie; surely plopping all that stuff down in the hallway raised a big ol' cloud of dust.

Speaking of Anne, she was supposed to get home yesterday afternoon from her singing gig on Guam, but her flight from Tokyo was canceled because of a volcano (yikes!). She had a 30-hour "layover" and hopefully is on her way home by now. I'll pick her up late tonight at Kennedy Airport.

A "real" picture, taken to test my camera batteries: my morning coffee, a plate stand from Dollar Tree lying on its side on our dining room table, and the three platters waiting for their closeups by Mrs. DeMille.
There's probably some dust there somewhere, if you look closely enough!

Real life is like that . . . there's always some dust, somewhere.

Thanks, Tam, for hosting one of my favorite blog parties! -- Cass