For the Love of Pyrex

READSTOWN, WI

My love affair with Pyrex all started with a tiny blue glass container that I later learned was a refrigerator dish, a remnant of the fifties. I stumbled upon the tiny rectangular dish in a thrift store, along with its slightly larger partner. I loved the robin’s egg blue glaze, and the perfectly fitted glass lids. While I must admit I was oddly charmed by these simple little pieces, and their $1 price tag, I ultimately loved them most for their practicality. The smaller of the two dishes turned out to be exactly the right size for a single serving of just about anything.

The purchase of these Pyrex dishes was followed by a few more refrigerator dishes, including two red ones that I flew half-way across the country. Then there was a tiny yellow casserole dish that was hard to justify buying, but harder still to walk past. The best find yet has perhaps been the trio of mixing bowls that I found at a thrift store for $5. The largest of the original set was missing, and I half-heartedly searched antique stores and flea markets for a replacement. I came across the bowl in a few places but never for less than $40, so I settled for three. Years later, my godmother completed the set for me, and though I have not had a kitchen to call my own since I acquired the sunshine yellow bowl, I grin a little each time I spy it in my storage closet, and imagine someday using it for large batches of bread dough. Beyond the pleasure and practicality of a set of nesting mixing bowls is that satisfaction I get each time I see the set on sale in a flea market, usually with a price tag in the neighborhood of $60.

Last weekend, my farm-owning friend and I went into town and wandered into what might be one of the most fantastic flea markets I’ve found in quite some time. Housed in an old tobacco warehouse, it’s the sort of flea market with heaps of dusty treasures, some more gently used than others. It was here that I found a lovely pink Pyrex pie plate. I’m not particularly fond of pink, but when it comes to Pyrex, I’m willing to make some exceptions. I’d never seen pink Pyrex before, at least nothing that started out as pink. Somehow on a pie plate, it seems perfect. On the way home, I may have been caught actually hugging the pie plate.

Tonight, rhubarb pie fills the dish, and aside from the anxiety that my lovely little treasure will meet the concrete floor in a fatal altercation, I can’t help but grin.