Serve Texas Cooking with Style
Bright, colorful Fiestaware
by Lucas Everidge
After years of eating on ordinary, dreary plates, bland, colorless bowls, and other junky dishes,
I decided to change my life and liven up my at-home food experience. When looking to make a major,
positive impact on your own life, look no farther than the kitchen. This is the place where meals
are made.
It all began last Christmas when I received several 5-piece place settings of Fiestaware. Each
place setting was a different color - cobalt blue, sea mist, persimmon and sunflower yellow. After
unboxing them and arranging them on the shelf, I could see that they certainly looked pretty.
The key moment arrived when I chose to start using them for day-to-day use. From then on, my other
dishes virtually
disappeared before my very eyes. Fiestaware was such a noticable improvement. The bright colors and classic shapes made even my modest culinary
efforts look good and, therefore, taste better. Maybe it was psychological, but who cares when
dinner is tastier.
My new dishes were so versatile and much more useful than my old stuff.
I was eating beef dinners off the plates, spooning cereal out of the bowls, and drinking coffee from
the cups and mugs. This was no delicate china fit only for gathering dust in a cabinet.
Suddenly I had some dishes that made me enthusiastic about cooking and eating, and that
I was proud to show others. I found myself adding more dishes in more colors. Fiestaware is
surprisingly inexpensive - place settings are under $25.
Fiestaware is made in the USA by the Homer Laughlin China Co. They began production on this
modern-styled line in 1936 and, over the years, have produced different colors and serving
pieces. There are Fiestaware lovers all over the world collecting "vintage" pieces, snapping
up retired colors, and buying and maintaining the collection that they eat from every day.
Fiestaware really is china -- vitreous china -- that can be used every day. Today Homer
Laughlin produces Fiestaware in cobalt blue, turquoise, periwinkle blue,
sea mist green, cinnabar, sunflower yellow, plum, shamrock green and tangerine. There is also white
and black, and in 2004 the company unveiled a deep red color officially
dubbed scarlet.
Oval Platters
This allows anyone to serve their food literally in a rainbow of colors. The pieces mix and
match beautifully. Soon I quickly learned how useful all the separate Fiestaware pieces were.
For example, the large-rimmed soup bowls were not only fine for soup, but I used them to serve
fusili pasta and ravioli. I got a set of black large-rimmed soup bowls as a freebie when I ordered
a 20-piece place setting in black from Amazon. The white pasta and red sauce looked great in the bowls.
I have discovered many great uses for the dishes. Like to serve zesty Tex-Mex meals? The best way to
dish out enchiladas, rice and beans are on the Fiestware oval platters, like in the shamrock green
and persimmon (pictured right). My tangerine medium pie bakers make wonderful oversized
dessert bowls. I serve heaping helpings of banana pudding, as well as
ice cream in them.
On Texas Cooking, we talk about chili all the time.
Serve it right! The 18-ounce chili bowls are perfect
serving pieces for a hot, steaming bowl of Texas red. I'm also partial to sunflower yellow and
shamrock green. Then there are the little fruit bowls and the much larger presentation bowl. No
one makes more useful and interesting serving bowls than Fiestaware.
Serve any of the hundreds of recipes presented on Texas Cooking on this colorful china.
You and your friends will enjoy the food in high style.
To browse Fiestaware by color, just click here.
Homer Laughlin also produces a line of beautiful vases in the Fiestaware colors.
Pictured are the 6-inch sea-mist bud vase, sunflower yellow royalty vase,
cobalt blue monarch vase, the periwinkle small vase and the persimmon medium vase.
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The Fiestaware utensil crock measures 4 1/4" by 6 3/4". It holds lots of kitchen tools
right on top of the counter.
People also use this piece to hold pencils, and also as a covered jar using the trivet as the lid.
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