BOWLED OVER
I'm showcasing a few of my favorite bowls this week, the ones that bring me joy when I use them. Bowls are more than containers for food. They foster our imagination, holding hope in our hands.
Last weekend, I went to Las Vegas to visit my son and daughter in-law.
For ten years I lived in Las Vegas, from 1997-2007. Most casual visitors don’t know that there is life beyond the strip. They travel to Vegas to party, to let loose, to see a show or two, to live large in a twenty-four hour city, even if just for a long weekend.
So what does visiting Las Vegas have to do with bowls?
Las Vegas Blvd. sits firmly at the bottom of the Las Vegas Valley, a bowl otherwise known as the Strip. That’s right. The Spring Mountains rise to the west, while Frenchman’s Mountain and Sunrise Mountain rise to the east. South of the Strip, the Las Vegas Range is dominated by Gass Peak. To the north lies the Sheep Range.
The Las Vegas strip sits at the bottom of a sandy, desert bowl ringed by mountains on all sides.
When I picture the bowl-shaped Las Vegas Valley, this is the actual bowl I picture. Its’ flat bottom rises to steep sides encompassing a lot of real estate.
As you can tell, I’ve been on a bowl kick these past weeks.
Additionally, and quite unexpectedly, I’ve been bowled over.
The first night of my visit to Las Vegas we were enjoying dinner at a lovely off-Strip restaurant. As we waited for our appetizers to arrive, my son and daughter in-law said the darndest thing. Hang on to your hats here folks. You may be bowled over too when you hear this.
My son glanced at his wife before saying, “When we don’t know what to do or have a decision to make, we think about what you, or dad would do in our situation. That’s our metric. We try to think like you guys, imagine what you guys would do if you had a similar decision to make.”
Is that your hat blowing down the street?
Did you not just feel yourself being bowled over?
I can’t stop thinking about it.
What a compliment! It’s possibly the ultimate compliment I could have hoped for as the parent of an adult child. We went through some tough years as a family during our son’s teen years.
Remember Erma Bombeck’s book, If life is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits?
We’re no longer in the pits. If my family is a bowl, it is now full of cherries. No pits in sight.
Here’s a few of my favorite bowls, the ones I reach for the most frequently, the ones that make eating my food an experience rather than a mundane chore. Ok, truth be told, I never think of eating as a chore. I’m someone firmly based in the lives to eat camp and will probably never be one who eats to live. But maybe you too have a favorite serving piece, coffee cup, plate, or bowl that fuels you with joy while you sip from or eat out of it.
The cream colored bowl on the far right is my absolute favorite. I purchased it a couple of years ago at the Albuquerque Empty Bowls fundraiser. You probably know that Empty Bowls is a global movement dedicated to raising money for food related charities in local communities. Potters donate selected hand-crafted bowls for patrons to buy. Local restaurateurs donate freshly made soup to fill the empty bowls. When I purchased this lovely bowl, I had a hunch it would be one I reach for and fill over and over.
This bowl has held everything including my lunch salad, various soups, ribbons of egg noodles topped with steamed vegetables, leftovers of all kinds, and most recently–breakfast.
This breakfast bowl is filled with quinoa which cooks up just as quickly as rolled oats. I sauteéd zucchini and sweet peppers in some olive oil and then fried up a couple of eggs in the same sauté pan. All of it made its way on top of the quinoa. A grind of black pepper and a sprinkle of salt finished off the bowl.
It made me so happy to start my morning with my favorite bowl. I know that might sound weird, but try to imagine for a minute the same freshly cooked ingredients in a plastic bowl, or a disposable bowl. Or a shallow bowl that would allow everything to cool off too quickly. It just wouldn’t have been the same.
Here's another breakfast bowl from two days ago. This time I used one of my pasta bowls whose gently sloped shape was better to hold the fish filet. A crispy layer of hash browns lies underneath, and some quickly steamed green beans got tossed on top with those little grape tomatoes. I drizzled a teaspoon or so of some sauce I mixed up consisting of half a cup of mayo, a tablespoon of Dijon mustard, lemon juice from half a lemon, a large dash of cayenne pepper and a bit of salt.
And once again, I was bowled over.
Thank you, I too love bowls. A true compliment to cherish.
I love this organizing bowl theme. That is a huge compliment, indeed (my primary goal as a parent of a teenager is that my daughter will choose to spend time with me as an adult). And: I loved OUR bowl last night!