Paleo Mermaid: TOOLS: Dishes

Several years ago we decided to replace our mismatched dishes. There's a Costco nearby and one day while browsing the aisles I noticed some dishes marked "Emeril Porcelain by Wedgewood". They were white. Plain. Perfect. Or so I thought. We took two sets of 6 home with us, unpacked them, washed them, and tried to stack them in our cabinets. Guess what? The dinner plate was too big ... The cabinet door wouldn't close all the way! I quickly discovered that they fit nicely on the center shelf, so that's where they'd stay. The set came with dinner plates, salad plates, soup bowls, dessert bowls, and large mugs. In hindsight, we realized they were all made for giants because all were quite large and would hold FAR more food than any one human should consume in a day, much less in one meal.
A few weeks later we were at Ikea. They had white dishes that looked for all the world like our Emeril porcelain dishes, so we decided to get 12 of their dinner plates to use as an intermediate size ... One that we'd use more often. The Emeril dinner plates would be reserved for when we have guests and dine in the formal dining room. So, that worked for a while. The Ikea dinner plates are nice, but still a wee tad large, so we actually ended up using the Emeril salad plates as our everyday dinner plates and there's still room left on the plate once our meals are plated!
So, the large mugs were an issue. I am not a coffee drinker, but Conrad is. The tiny coffee cups from the 1970s are simply too small, but these new Emeril mugs hold the entire contents of a can of Progresso soup with room left over! I found that World Market has white dishes that blend perfectly with our Emeril fine porcelain and our Ikea specials ... AND they had coffee cups that were just right!
A new problem cropped up. If we used our smallest plates as our dinner plates, what could we use as dessert plates? Again, Ikea was the answer! They had bread and butter plates that would work perfectly. So, a dozen of them came home with us.
What about a snack plate? Well, we didn't want to risk messing up (or breaking one of) a complete mismatched (yet perfectly matched) service for 12. so something else had to be found. During our next visit to Ikea we found some small, squarish plates that would be perfect for snacks or sandwiches or just about anything. They only had 6, so we bought them. At some point might go get 6 more, but for now, I think we have PLENTY of dishes to go around.
And then there's the bowls. The soup bowls look more like pasta bowls ... You know, the one you'd serve pasta in? Well, we have 12 of them! I found bowls that look exactly like these at World Market. However, they are 1" in diameter smaller and hold a reasonable amount of food. We use them almost nightly with a spinach salad.
People tend to fill their plates with food, then feel bad if they don't clean their plate. With dishes as large as these there's no wonder obesity is such an issue! Below are photos of the plates. See for yourself how darned large they are! I used a wooden ruler to show the diameter of each piece ...

The plates in order - smallest to largest:
7" diameter - Ikea
8.5" diameter - Ikea
9.25" diameter - Emeril by Wedgewood
10.5" diameter - Ikea
11.75" diameter - Emeril by Wedgewood