It Started With A Spoon

The year must have been 1997, it was Thanksgiving time. I had just started at Williams Sonoma (I am still employed there, but do not blog for them or endorse them for $, yada, yada, yada) and my sweet little family would come and see me at work. Even then the store always had samples. In the fall, one of the most popular items is Pumpkin Butter. One day we had made it into a pie and Christina, who would have been 4 years old, loved that pumpkin pie baked in a graham crust. That pie was all she talked about so I knew I would have to make one. After Thanksgiving dinner, we are relaxing at the table, wearing our crowns from the Poppers, and I start bringing in dessert. Christina jumps down from the table and disappears. When she comes back to the table, she jumps back up in her booster seat with the little white sample spoon from Williams Sonoma. She had saved that spoon and felt that was the only way to eat the pie. I later discovered a stash of those sample spoons that she would use for her sample and then take home. I convinced her they needed to be washed and assured her that I wouldn't throw them away. So began the obsession with little plastic utensils.

A few years later the entire family, and I mean 23 of us, went to Italy. As we went from ruin to ruin, city to city, Grandpa would get all the grandkids lined up for gelato every day, I usually snuck into that line, hazelnut for me, please. Little did we know that little Miss Christina had convinced some of her cousins to hand over the spoons. When we returned home from Italy I found the stash. And, admittedly, they are so colorful. When I returned to Spain and Italy in the past few years, I always save the colorful little spoons. The funny thing is she uses them! When we have a dessert, she will pull out a little gelato spoon. What an idea, I have adopted it myself. Little bites, slow eating, you really savor every bite!

I have added to the little collection with some colorful appetizer forks, and a pink multi use utensil from Eddie Bauer. It is a spoon on one end with a fork with a serrated edge on the other. She was pretty excited when she found it in her Christmas stocking, but it is closer to real size utensils, and she doesn't seem to use it near as much as the little gelato spoons. So as I cleaned out the utensil drawer, polished the serving pieces and purged what I didn't need, I came across an abundance of spoons. It is a great reminder to slow down a little, remember the great places I have visited on this planet of ours, and enjoy the simple pleasure of a scoop of frozen confection. I imagine many years from now when she gets married, I will have to pass off the collection, but I will always save a few to remind me of the special Thanksgiving Day and the little white spoon that started it all.

My sweeties, Christina was 4 and Nick was 7.