My inner Downton Abbey

Funny how I said there may not be many posts with photos and guess what…. yeah. Anyhoo….

So my parents are going to move soonish and wanted my sister and I to rummage through the family valuables and figure out what we wanted and what would be tossed or sold or whatever.

My sister didn’t take too much but when I was shown all the silver my inner anglophile went swooning. Of course all the classic stories and British tv shows I know and love came to mind with grand estates, maids, servants and the whole lot. I was a time warp of about 300 years in my head. All the old ideals of family fortunes and valuables invested in sterling silver, silver plate, jewels and gold of dead relatives and even the solid brass candlesticks were swimming before my eyes. Well, we had all but the solid brass candlesticks to go through in the basement on Saturday. Actually the brass was mostly little elf-like figurines I’d rescued over a decade ago when my Pop-pop died, but ended up giving part of it back to mom when she saw what I had.

Driving home that night I felt like some awkward modern version of an Edwardian burglar with a Tiffany lamp, silverplate tea service and several pounds of solid silverware in plastic bags on the car seats.

So what did I come away with? The above photo is the sugar and creamer of a full tea service I took. There is a tea pot, coffee pot, and large tray but I didn’t have much time this morning for photographing everything. The service was used by my grandparents on my mom’s side of the family and is silverplate. The service was made around 1923-1925 in Sheffield, England from the Harrison Bros and Howson Company, which I found out took over the previous Samson and Sons company, who were official cutlers to the King (Edward). The set isn’t in great condition because some of the silver is coming off the tray and tea pot. The inside of the coffee pot is a mess from all the acid of coffee over the years, but in time I may have it restored. The tray is silver plated copper and was made around the 1950s to be a compliment to the tea service set.

Next is the silverware set. This was also used by my mom’s parents regularly, but eventually got pushed off as being “special occasion” silverware only. The majority of it is solid sterling silver. The only stainless steel parts are the dinner and butter knife blades, the cake/pie server blade, and the master butter knife blade. The handles to all those items are hollow sterling silver. I have a 5 piece 12 count serving set plus butter knives, iced tea spoons and some hostess serving pieces made by Towle in the King Richard design, which was first issued in 1932. I am missing one salad fork, but with all the extras I’ve got 82 pieces.  The top photo shows the design, the second (left) shows a salad fork, dinner spoon, dinner fork, dinner knife, teaspoon, butter knife, and an olive/pickle fork. The third (right) photo shows the difference of the silverware vs my usual stainless steal flatware with the last being a difference of detail shot. It’s really amazing how there was a utensil for every. piece. of food. on the. plate.

I’m very tempted to keep this and use it regularly, but then I think that’s quite pretentious and ridiculous of me. It’s got an allure in that – I can use REAL silverware, but also, is it necessary? Yes, it’s grand and the set is gorgeous and shiny and pretty and has a wonderful weight in the hand, but why? To use it based solely on principle that I CAN use it and it was meant to be used even though I’ve got a perfectly good set of stainless steel flatware already? Mom and dad gave me this stuff knowing I might sell it (they are going to sell the rest that Kim and I didn’t take anyway) and after doing some online research, this silverware set is worth quite a bit of money. I spent yesterday polishing it and realized that the upkeep for such stuff is tremendous (that and I don’t think I would’ve been a very good maid in service).  I most likely will set the silverware, but I intend on keeping the tea service no matter what because it was regularly used (more so than the silverware) and has more sentimental value to the family.

Lastly, I took this Tiffany lamp. It’s not a real Tiffany lamp, but is in the tiffany style with a beautiful butterfly/flower motif on the shade. It’s a lot nicer than any of the other lamps I’ve got and I love the little pull strings. Zach was ready to kill me when he saw I brought another lamp home. I’ve got a bit of a problem with lamps.  I’ve got 8 lamps in our tiny apartment although I told him I’d get rid of one since I brought this one home.

Amuse me with stories of your family valuables and treasures! I eat this stuff up. Eat. It. Up!

Tea time

My family knows how much I love good tea. Over the years they’ve helped me amass quite a collection of teapots, tea cups, saucers, strainers, teas, and everything else in between. The last time my sister and her Scotch hubby hopped the pond to visit his family they came back with some tea gifts, and so for Christmas I was given a lovely new glass teapot, a box of lovely flowering teas, and some delicious heather honey made in a town on the northern border of the UK and Scotland.

I don’t have too much time to make and enjoy big pots of tea often these days, so the times I do break out the pretty flowering teas I received will be relished. The tea is green with jasmine and despite leaving the leaves and flowers in the pot, the flavor doesn’t get too strong. The honey is so incredibly smooth and wonderfully light in flavor.

My brother-in-law made mince pies for the holiday, which is a family tradition with him.

Jar of heather honey on top of my new Cook’s Illustrated cookbook.

The tea I had this time was Lily of the Valley.

Christmas

Oh goodness, where to begin. I feel as though the week leading up to Christmas was all manner of hectic as I ran about getting last minute things and working. Today is the only day I get off work. Boo. Poor Zach didn’t get any time off at all. Major Boo.

The living room still has wrapping paper and boxes spread all over the floor. The kitchen looks….. yeah… can’t even describe that one it’s so bad. I wish I had vacation time – just to clean. Ridiculous, I know.

But the holiday was very nice and we both had a great time. Zach got off work early on Christmas Eve. We drove to his parent’s house for the traditional dinner out at a chinese restaurant. His father’s side of the family is Jewish, but his dad is non-practicing. They just like to go for tradition’s sake, which I love.  Luckily the restaurant we always go to has a sushi bar, which is always delicious. We then opened presents with his family afterwards. Zach got some much wanted gun accessories for his collection and I received another cook book, which I’m very glad of since I was thinking the other day I’d like to have more to choose recipes from. A couple years ago they got me the Rodale Whole Foods Cookbook and this year I got the Cook’s Illustrated Cookbook. I know Cook’s Illustrated magazine has great recipes in it so I was quite in awe of getting the cookbook with all 20 years’ worth of recipes. They also got me an amazon kindle gift card so I have quite a bit now I can use towards downloading good versions of books I want.

After teasing Zach several times about opening our presents on Christmas Eve, we went to bed. (He’s such a goody-good type. He prefers opening them on Christmas Day). I took some last photos of the tree and Bijioux, laying in her bed under the tree, before we nodded off for the night.

I won’t go into detail of all we gave each other, but we were both happily surprised by what we received. I will mention I was shocked when I got a wrapped piece of paper, which was a  print out receipt for us to see My Neighbor Totoro at the IFC Center in NY on New Year’s Day! I LOVE Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli films with a passion. I’ve collected all the Miyazaki and I’m now eyeing up the rest of the Studio Ghibli catalog. We’ve watched almost all of them, but don’t have them on DVD at all. Recently all new transfers have been made to ALL Studio Ghibli films and over a week half they are being shown in NY. So on NYD we’ll be taking a bus (already scheduled/paid for as well) to NY and watch one of our favorites on the big screen. SQUEEE!  If any of my NY friends have recommendations for places to eat and maybe a couple things to do around the IFC, please let us know! We’re not overly familiar with NY so recs are highly appreciated!

After lounging about in our PJs and letting Bijoux sprawl out on all the wrapping paper on the floor (seriously, what’s with cats loving paper and crinkly things so much?) we got dressed and trekked it out to my parent’s house. Gifts were exchanged there between us, my parents and my sister & brother in law. Basically, it was another kitchen themed Christmas for us. But it’s all stuff we very much wanted/needed. We now have knives – that actually cut things! This is a new phenomenon for us.

My family confronted me on why I decided to start eating meat again, which seemed to them something truly spectacular. Unfortunately, my response was not anything that was going to wow them or anyone else. I honestly don’t have a reason for why I started eating meat again. Although my diet won’t entirely be meat meals now. I prefer to do a 50/50 with vegetarian meals I’ve been eating for the past 14 years. My dad laughed and said my response was like Forrest Gump when asked why he was running and he responded “I just felt like running.” Well, true enough, the same can be said for me. There’s no grandiose soul-reaching reason why I was vegetarian for so long, nor why I’m no longer one. I think part of me realized I was limiting myself and while I know many vegetarians would scoff at such a statement – meh, I’m ok with that.

The afternoon was spent eating my mom’s assortment of Christmas cookies, playing Wii games, playing with Mischa- my parent’s dog, and terrorizing Squirrel- my sister’s cat. A few games of Uno around the breakfast table after dinner concluded the night. At least our portion of it at my parent’s house. When we left, instead of taking the exit to our apartment back along the highway we zoomed on past and back out to the suburbs near Zach’s house to hang out with our friends.

Every Christmas day our friends Jess and Jule have friends over once family leaves their house. This can range from a small get together to a large noisy gathering, such as it was last night with roughly 25 people packed in  Jess’s room before spreading out into other areas of the house to chat. We got to see friends who we’ve not seen since last Christmas and catch up with those we see on and off. It’s always a nice gathering and a tradition I rather like. There tends to be a lot of those with Zach and his family/friends.

Several hours later we were back in the car and finally heading home. Now to figure out where the heck to put everything in our already bursting-at-the-seams apartment and somehow do mild cleaning without it feel like cleaning on my only day off this holiday season.