The Apple Dishes

𝒯𝒽𝑒𝓈𝑒 𝒹𝒾𝓈𝒽𝑒𝓈 🍎

I admit it. I’m sentimental. I hold onto things and memories and cherish them deeply. I am in love with the history behind the things that I display and use in my home and will walk you around and tell you all about them, a trait I gladly adopted from my Memere (My Grandmother)

That’s why I want to share the story behind these apple dishes with you this Thanksgiving. When I was nineteen and expecting my son I had little to nothing when starting out. A few hand me down pieces of furniture and my childhood bedroom set was about it. I was learning to cook and loved it...which meant many trips to the local grocery store. This particular grocery store was having a promotion - it went something like this-for every dollar you spent you would receive a stamp in a stamp book. After you collected so many stamps you could turn them in for dishes. These dishes were thin and white with green plaid and dark red apples and leaves scattered around the rim of each plate. Wife’s and Mother’s all over the Midwest were collecting and rounding up dishes, serving bowls, serving platters and cups & saucer sets. These apple dishes were the first set of dishes that I obtained on my own. Night after night I would pile each plate up with first try meals like lasagna, chicken casserole and scallop potatoes. Many winners and a lot of not so palatable maybes were served on these daintily little apple dishes. Others were shattered during a move or became victim to a sink full of slippery hot soapy water.

Eventually, after a few moves and some passing time, this first set of dishes found their way to a second hand store and were replaced with wedding dishes and a Kohl’s sale that I couldn’t pass up.

I bought these apple dishes twenty two years ago and gave them away a few years later....and just a few months ago while scrolling through Facebook I saw a post. Dishes for sale. The entire collection. There, in all of their dainty yet sturdy social media glory, twenty two years later, were these precious apple dishes. A few days later they found their place back home with me and today I used them to serve Thanksgiving dinner to my family who I had no idea would even exist twenty two years ago.

So much has changed since I was licking stamps and filling up books in order to get one dish at a time but I will always be thankful for the lessons and patience I learned back then. I will always be thankful for the many nights of trial and error while learning to cook which introduced me to a life long mission of showing my love through food. I will always be thankful for the harder times and the full heart I feel when I watch my daughter enjoy her dinner on these dishes or my husband gently dries each one, knowing how far I’ve come and how much strength it took me to get here.

I admit it, I’m sentimental and I hope that someday my Grandchildren will walk around their home and tell someone the story of the apple dishes that were once lost but found again and passed down to each generation. They might not be expensive and they might not be perfect but it’s the story behind why these sweet little dishes mean so much to me that matters. I hope you have things that you cherish. I hope you have stories of how far you’ve come and I hope you find thankfulness in the little things today and always 🍎