The season of eating outdoors is just now starting to unfold itself with all of its brightly coloured promises of relaxing meals peppered with laughter and good friends and set to an only slightly heard soundtrack of happy jazz (if that’s possible).
Oh, the food to be cooked over an open flame, smothered with sauces and condiments, and served alongside enormous bowls of the freshest salads and sides imaginable! Someone will be off-camera somewhere hand-churning the ice cream and the strawberries will be bursting with flavour as they wait for their turn in those darling bowls that came with the outdoor dinnerware set but that we had no idea of how we were ever going to use. We’ll fill up the little plastic salt and pepper shakers that are in the shape of a couple of Air Stream campers, and we’ll give a good rinse to the fancy-to-the-point-of-gaudy plastic wine goblets whose colour complements the plastic dishes that we now have a setting for 16 of.
The paper napkins have been bought and the unopened and now-redundant package from last year has also been found after the fact. Someone has bought some sweet little wine glass charms with different coloured surf boards on them – not that any of us surf or live close to where people do that sport – and we picked up 2 more strings of lights for the patio since we happened to be in the Outdoor Entertaining when they went on sale.
This year, it’s gonna be GOOD!! We’ll plan to have people over every weekend and maybe set aside, say, Wednesdays to get elaborate cuts of meat into complicated homemade marinades so that by the weekend, every time that rather expensive grill (that even has the lights that go on whenever the lid is opened) heats up it will be like Bobby Flay’s been over and has set up the entire thing. And all WE have to do is wear carefree flowy sundresses, accessorize with straw fedoras, refill people’s drinks, and soak up the applause.
Oh MAN we excel at this!!!
I think that summer is my most over-promised and under-delivered season out of the whole year. And that includes Christmas! Christmas is more about traditions and knowing that imperfection at all of the prescribed events, is actually where their charm and lore blossom out of. Summer, on the other hand, is always surrounded by believable hype and the possibility that unmitigated success is well and truly within our reach! Everything is reasonably doable. Each year we buy into it and this year has been no different. All of the store displays are screaming fun and festivity so with each new plastic-on-one-side-and-felt-on-the-other tablecloth that comes in the same riotous colours as pretty much everything else on the patio, including that new rug (Who needs a rug when we’re outside? Doesn’t that undermine the whole out-of-doors experience???), we feel ever closer to becoming the Hot Ticket Invitation that we’ve always wanted to be. Being the Hot Ticket Invitation means not only that all of your efforts to seem as if you just walked straight out of a magazine – you with your flimsy little ensemble complimenting your sun-streaked hair which will probably grow down to your waist by the end of the summer – are paying off , it also means that you will be able to see all of your friends and meet a plethora of new and exciting ones without ever having to leave your own house. Bonus! Sure, the dishes are yours to clean up, but they don’t really have to done until just before next Friday’s party, right?
We should have checked them when we bought them to make sure they could go into the dishwasher. Rats. Small price to pay for such a terrific pattern though – and fancy! In fact, much fancier than the dishes we have for day to day use inside. Like, WAY fancier! And this set all matches, unlike the regular dish set. We catch ourselves wondering if there was some way that we could USE this outdoor plastic dish set inside. It would be lovely to have all of this festivity throughout the whole year, wouldn’t it? But oh, no! Tsk, tsk on us to even ENTERTAIN such a thought! Plastic dishes INSIDE? What are we, 4 years old? No. No way. Never! Plastic is reserved for outside, thankyouverymuch.
And it’s at this point that it dawns on us. Why is it that we can’t use our…….regular dishes outside? Why can’t we brazenly step out of the patio door, walk the 4 steps down to the deck, and set the table with…normal dishware? Well, because if someone drops a plastic plate or a glass outside, it won’t smash all over the wooden deck. The wooden deck that is made from slats of wood with convenient spaces in between them?
But…how often does someone drop their plate or glass INSIDE the house during the normal transport from kitchen counter to table/livingroom couch/den/bedroom/family room? We aren’t a dropsy kind of family. And if we WERE a dropsy kind of family, why aren’t we using plastic ‘outdoor’ dishes in the house and therefore saving ourselves all kinds of time cleaning up shards of dishware?
Ever dropped a full salad bowl inside the house? How about out on the patio? For me it’s been once inside in all of these many, many years, and never out on the patio. Do you knock over your beverage in the house frequently? Nope, pretty careful about that. How about an enormous jug of lemonade? Ever find one of those sliding out of your hands in the house? How ‘bout a piece of pie on a dessert plate? A platter of crudites? A crudely slapped together sandwich on a lunch plate? No. We’re just not that all-over clumsy, are we?
And yet, here we are amassing an entire second collection of dishware and serving implements all in plastic – and if we’re lucky, dishwasher-safe – just so that we can fully embrace and perfect the art of Summer Entertaining On The Deck!
By buying into the myth of summer hosting/hostessing so passionately and with such an enthusiasm for pre-season planning and organizing, we are effectively condemning ourselves to a summer full of overcast and cool weekends, of ordering pizza if we happen to have the neighbours in for supper and using (of course!) our regular dishware because we’ve never known them to be anything but careful with their handling of our dishes whenever they’re here, and we’ll just use paper plates for when the husband’s ball team comes by after having played a game on a diamond close to our house – because there is no way they’re going to get a crack at those fabulous dishes we so lovingly bought and bestowed with our summer hopes and dreams! And they’ll drink the beers they brought right out of the can anyway. What a waste!
But that, that’s all yet to come. Right now, the summer is just a vision that is floating in on the tail end of a ravenous winter, and in our heart of hearts we know, and all agree, that the perfect set of plastic outdoor tableware is all it will take to make the upcoming season absolutely SPECTACULAR!
And, of course, perfectly safe.