Grandma's Mixing Bowls

In my kitchen cupboard sits a set of milk glass mixing bowls. The large is yellow, the medium green and the small is blue. Their colors have faded and are even missing in a few places but their faces bring back warm memories of the days of my childhood when my grandmother’s hands used them. She wasn’t much for baking cakes and cookies but I remember potato salads occupying the large yellow bowl and bacon grease seasoned garden grown green beans filling the medium green bowl. Though I haven’t used these treasures for more than a decade they still hold their place of honor in my cupboard.

I became the proud owner of these bowls when I moved into my first apartment not long after my Grandma Emory passed away. These inexpensive bowls were among a few choice kitchen items needed for starting a home. There was a set of blue and white dishes bought from a gas company’s special offer through the mail. We used S & H green stamps to buy a small set of pans and a lamp. And my mother gave me a wooden handled potato masher that had been a wedding gift to my parents 35 years before. They weren’t “show pieces” or culinary marvels by any means but they were just what I needed and have value far beyond dollars and cents.

In a world of disposable containers and ready-to-eat dinners on the grocery shelves, it is comforting to remember a time when supper was a family event and these simple items were every day tools of life. I guess that is the reason Depression glass that came as prizes in Quaker Oatmeal boxes or the china from the laundry soap boxes are considered “highly collectible”. They are pieces of history that we can hold and remember the stories told at family gatherings. They are our connection with the past.

I invite you to take a moment to look back and share some of your favorite memories of days gone by. Take a picture and share the wealth of family, friends and heirlooms. Send them to me at jhsales.joyhawkins@gmail.com and maybe next time it will be your story on this site!