i have no allusions of grandeur when it comes to tableware. i don't care who designed it, where you bought it or how expensive it was. i see no point in spending a bunch of money on a matching set of service for 12 with dinner plate, salad plate, soup bowl, etc, etc. etc. it may look nice but i'd always be afraid of breaking something or accidentally leaving a fork or serving spoon behind when i take food somewhere. i think chargers are absolutely pointless. i think that more than one fork next to my plate is silly (will the world end if i eat my chicken with the same utensil as my salad? i think not). as long as everything does it's job & looks nice, i'm happy.

this attitude may be born from my childhood. my mom had her set of wedding china with a rose design and gilded edges that lived in our china cabinet for probably 364 days of the year. for every other day, we had a huge stack of corelle plates in several different designs collected over the years. we also had several heavy crockery-type plates that mom got at the grocery store (one of those "buy X amount of groceries and get these plates for a nickel" type deals). so, not only are the corelle "unbreakable" (although, i did break one once) but the others were so cheap that no one cried if one got broken.

this is why i always buy the cheap sets of dishes in a box at target or wal-mart. i want inexpensive & cool looking stone or earthenware. i want dinner plates, bowls & saucers and that's it. they usually come with coffee/tea cups that i don't want or need but i take 'em because the price is right (and they are good for whipping up one egg or a gulp of water to take pills with). the one big problem i usually have with these sets is the size of the bowls. the set i have now are barely big enough to hold a can of campbell's condensed soup (and i only put in half a can of water when i make it). when i lived by myself, this wasn't a big deal, i dealt with it... or i'd eat my soup out of the sauce pan. but john likes to put even more soup or chili in a bowl than i do & he would always use my smallest mixing bowl (which bugged the heck out of me!) but that bowl was recently sent to that great kitchen in the sky due to an unfortunate washing accident. so, i finally started looking for some good sized cereal/soup/chili/ice cream bowls.

i love crate & barrel but hadn't been in one of their stores until today, i always shopped from the catalog or website. like a lot of stores & restaurants, until a few years ago, crate & barrel skipped right over missouri. i was looking online to find some bowls but it's so hard to tell how big they really are by looking at a picture on a website so,when i saw that there's a crate & barrel pretty close to me, i decided to head over there today. the store is in leawood, kansas and is situated across an intersection from a mall with pottery barn AND williams sonoma. i love these stores but am too poor/cheap to buy much of their wares (but i do have a few & love the style). crate & barrel, on the other hand, has a lot more items that are affordable.

within about 30 seconds of walking in the door, i'd found my new bowls. they are white, heavy porcelain bowls measuring 6.75" across and wonderfully deep. they are in the "staxx" collection (mine are the "large bowl") which all nestle together when put in the cupboard to save space, which is always nice. i just realized that they have a very similar shape to the set of mixing bowls i got from crate & barrel years ago (the smallest of which is the one that was broken. you can see them here but only 4 came in the set & they were different colors when i got them).  the bowls were only $2.95 each so i got four of them.  i can't wait to make some soup or chili to put in them!

notice how much shallower my other bowls are compared to the new ones!  and, wow, do ya think i like white dishes?

another item i needed to replace recently was my dish scrubber brush.  i went to bed, bath & beyond and the only brushes they had are the kind that dispense soap too.  i don't like that kind at all.  the only other one they had wasn't exactly a "brush" in the traditional sense.  it doesn't look like any other dish brush i've seen.  the bristles are thin strips of plastic packed VERY tightly.  but, i took a chance & bought it.  let me tell you, it works better than ANY brush i've had before and it's cute too!  i couldn't find it on the bb&b's website (or the manufacturer's, casabella) but here it is:

I'd say you've made some fine purchases. Those bowls do call for something soupy, delicious and comforting.

Sounds like you scored in the kitchen department. I may have to run to BB&B to check out the scrubber. With moving I can't seem to find ours and we're now using just old fashioned sponges.

I had the opposite problem with our bowls until recently -- everything we had was too big. My kids would pour their cereal into the bowl and would have 2 1/2 cups worth before they were done. We have since switched to some plastic bowls that are just the right "serving" sizes.

I love them! Especially the bowls. Guess what color is in my cabinet? White looks great in my opinion.

cynthia- i happen to be making some chicken soup right now! :)

alisha- maybe i should send you my old bowls! i'll probably need some smaller ones when i have kids, now that you mention it, though.

pat- i always wanted a kitchen with all white & glass accessories. i haven't managed to keep everything else white or glass but i always buy white dishes!

thanks for commenting, everyone!

I'm a lot like you. I have my nice set of Pfalzgraff (sp?) white dishes that I use all the time. They're not fancy and they don't have colored designs but that way they work well with any linens I choose, which I'm a huge collector of. Plus being Pfalzgraff (sp?)and a classic design I should be able to replace pieces forever if I need to. Other that I have hand-me-down dishes for fun but nothing expensive that I have to guard with my life. I have a couple of pet peeves about china. 1) I don't like owning anything that's so expensive that I'm afraid to use it, and 2) I really hate wasting money on weddings where the people want $200/place setting china sets when they're not the kind of people who do any kind of formal entertaining. Not that it's my place to judge but I hate the waste idea of it all. I think we should use what we love and love what we use.

I have a kitchen-full of white Pfaltzgraf (I'm not sure how to spell it either), for all the same reasons. It's what my in-laws were using around the time I got married, and we asked for a set of our own. Now we have the surviving pieces from wedding gifts, as well as the in-laws' entire collection that they passed on to us when they decided they'd rather have clear glass.

My husband's granddad has a bunch of the same stuff, too, and I have a sneaking suspicion we'll inherit it eventually. I'm not complaining-- I still like it for all the same reasons.

i had to check & it's spelled platzgraff :) http://www.pfaltzgraff.com/index.asp

i just remembered i DO have a set of china but it's my great grandmother's wedgewood. like i'm every going to actually use THAT to eat on. yeah, right!

crap... i spelled it wrong while trying to tell everyone how to spell it right!! pfaltzgraff pfaltzgraff pfaltzgraff!!

Now you've done it. When you say the word three times like that, you open an interdimensional portal to kitchenware hell.

no wonder evil dishes have taken over my kitchen. now i need to find an exorcist! i wonder if bed, bath & beyond provides that service?