There are so many pockets of madness bubbling away around the world today. Threat of war being endlessly spoken of in the news.
“Hey, I know! Let’s have another war…well, it worked so well last time we did it!”
Er…no.
Meanwhile, I am here, just talking about ordinary things again. Whatever else is going on, we all have our lives to live and I believe that the things we turn our minds and hearts to can help to sustain us in troubling times.
I love the glassware in my cupboard now. As with so many of you I am sure, we had reached that point in our life when the cupboard was full of patchwork families, of half sets of this and that, orphans, and hand-me-downs. There was a part of me that thought that getting rid of them all was somehow not living up to my “not wasting things” beliefs and values. But then one day, I dropped something and it smashed into an unbelievable amount of tiny slivers of razor sharp glass. What seemed like hours of vacuuming followed. The most dangerous types of thin glassware were wrapped and binned and the rest was taken to the charity shop in case someone needed just one or two of something.
I admit it. I am clumsy at times and also, being short in stature, my elbows always catch anything that has been left too close to the edge of any surface. I am a walking glass smasher- you have been warned. I needed to find something that was more suited to me.
Enter the Duralex Glass Company. Started in France in 1945, this company has come to dominate the French cafe and restaurant trade. I love France. I love everything about France, even some of the annoying and awkward things. My very favourite holidays have been in France and so many of the memories of those times include sitting in a café somewhere, drinking from these sorts of glasses-Picardie being the most iconic and the ones pictured above. This glassware has so many things going for it to my mind.
- Very tough- made of tempered glass, they practically bounce when dropped. If they do break they crumble into cubes and not splinters.
- Cheap enough to afford- they usually come in sets of 6 so affording more than one size is doable for most.
- Hot or cold- they are as suited for use with a shot of hot espresso (or that Coffee Affogato, espresso and ice cream, I mentioned in a previous post) as they are with a cold drink such as gin and tonic with lots of ice and lemon. Or cucumber!
- They stack up in the cupboard with out getting stuck inside each other. Anyone else’s pet hate?
- They do not date or become “out of fashion” as with so many other mass produced things. This company was wise enough to hang on to this design and it has become instantly recognisable, and loved for being so, around the world.
The glass ramekins in the photo are by the same company and I dithered about buying those for ages. I had some pottery ones, in varying stages of chipped and mis-matchedness but I finally gave into temptation. They are brilliant. They are far superior to any of this type dish I have ever had in the past. Do buy them for people- yourself, birthday presents, wedding presents. The are SO useful for so many things and, as with all of this Duralex glassware, they go in and out of the dishwasher ad infinitum.
We do have some other rather elegant glassware that we use daily for wine, which also has a little story attached, but that will need to keep for another day.
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Quotidian 