You know the kind of local restaurant I’m talking about. Mom and Pop. Everybody knows your name. Not a cookie cutter, nor a cliché. A neighborhood one-of-a-kind. The orders are called out loud to the short order cooks, and the clatter of china is common.

A waitress carrying three, four, or more full meals balanced carefully up her arm darts between tables. Heavy china serves a wide array of comfort food, like steaming coffee, luscious stacks of pancakes, massive salads, substandial steaks and hand-formed burgers with grill-toasted buns.

The hardworking china they use is called restaurant ware. It has a smaller but passionate following of loyal collectors. Once it hooks you, you will see it a mile off in your garage sale and thrift store hunts.

This is the heavy dinnerware that says “1950s diner” as soon as you see it. It was made for food service in casual restaurants, as well as on airlines, trains and for institutions for many years. And this ware is still made by companies whose names you may know if you are familiar with china: Homer Laughlin, Syracuse and Buffalo to name only a few.

A lot of the pieces are plain white but some have color borders, and others have intricate transfer patterns in the rims. Some wares commissioned by colleges, rail lines and restaurant chains have logos and emblems to identify the ware as theirs, like the stuff I ate off of for four years in the 1970s, in college at Indiana University.

I worked in the dish room for a while, and got very familiar with this china.

Restaurant ware has to be durable to take the constant wear from heavy use it gets. It is fired at a high temperature, and early wares touted this by marking the pieces as “vitrified,” which means that the pieces are fired to make the glass glazing form a tight coating over the pottery underneath. Earlier wares were more porous, and sometimes water or other liquids could get under the glaze and darken the pieces.

To start collecting restaurant ware, coffee mugs can be an obvious choice. There are many of them, and you can find them pretty easily once you know what to look for. Besides the makers mentioned above, look for Sterling, Mayer, Shenango and Iroquois as well.

Clean restaurant ware the same way as you would any other collectible china that you have. It can take rougher handling, but to keep it free of chips or cracks, we recommend hand washing and drying.

If you love the vintage and retro look on your table, restaurant ware can be a new horizon of adventure in collecting china that you can use and enjoy.

This is an inexpensive glass knick-knack, a curio from about 100 years ago.

It is shaped like a smoking pipe in a general way. The bowl is hollow, but the stem is not. Perhaps it could be used to hold toothpicks, but otherwise it’s decorative. If you were to get the hand painted design wet, the paint would wash off.

These pipes are for sale on eBay any day of the week in the $5 to $15 range. But of course, there’s more to the story.

Leonidas is a small town in the southern tier of Michigan counties, a wide spot in the road. I’m sure the city fathers had higher aspirations when they named their town, because its namesake was Leonidas, heroic king of Sparta. He led a band of 300 Greek warriors at Thermopylae. They held off a massive Persian army, for a time. Their reward was death to the last man, but the battle is remembered even today.

Leonidas is no vacation spot like Niagara Falls. Yet why would the owner of small town general store order a novelty like this to sell to his customers?

My answer, for the same reason you could sell almost anything online, as recently as a few years ago. It’s the curiosity factor.

In the early 1900s, the Industrial Revolution was still building up steam. More people could afford to have manufactured goods, like a glass pipe to sit on a shelf and collect dust. The goods were nicer and cheaper than most of what they already owned.

It was something to talk about. Maybe the price figured in, but it was the story that sold it.

Of course, this tale has another chapter.

My grandfather was probably the original owner of the Leonidas pipe, but it could have been another relative. His father and family lived on a farm outside Leonidas, about 100 years ago, from about 1900 until his father passed in 1919.

That’s how this pipe went from cheap souvenir to precious family heirloom.

The pipe came into my grandfather’s household, he married my grandmother, and in 1927 he moved his family from Michigan to Oregon. A small item like this would have been easy to pack and take along.

Sentimental value doesn’t take up a lot of room.

For this same reason, it was easy to bring the pipe back to Michigan in 1929, after my grandfather died tragically. His widow returned with four children, and a little bit of history.

My father had the pipe for many years. After he passed, my mother gave it to me. I wanted it because I’d done the family research to rediscover that Leonidas had been a hometown in our family’s history.

The Leonidas pipe may be small. But it is also a memento of a quietly heroic story, about a man who moved his family across the country in search of a better life, though he died before he could achieve it.

The lesson is to enjoy those precious things. Their intrinsic value is often small. Their stories and their meaning: priceless.

Trinkets don’t have to be 100 years old to be treasures.

A friend of mine cherished a dark red plastic tsotchke, a large figurine ship with people on it. This piece was made to look like carved stone, but it was really resin. I called it a dragon boat, because the ship was dragon shaped and it was from China. I’m sure there is some legend, myth or significance to the piece, but otherwise it is made to sit on a shelf.

You can buy stuff like this for $10 or $20 lots of places. But again, this piece had a story. It had been a parting gift to her father from his Chinese graduate students in the 1980s. It meant far more to her than its street value.

The boat had been packed away for many years, but eventually it came to sit prominently in her bedroom. She got to enjoy it for the last 18 months of her life. Two weeks ago, she passed.

The lesson comes back around. If you have special items that have a touching story behind them, let them have a place of honor in your home, where you can see and enjoy them. Get them out and use them.

Perhaps it is a cereal bowl in the same pattern that you had when you went to grandma’s house. Or a teacup in your mother’s best china pattern.

Whatever the small precious things may be at your house, I encourage you to enjoy them. They will remind you of special people and special times. Their stories can go on, and warm your heart, regardless of what may happen next.

Every time I’ve seen aquamarine glassware, it has caught me eye. It’s a color from the late 1960s, early 1970s. Of course, what goes around comes around, and this sea green variation is back as the turquoise of 2010 fashion and style.

Global color authority Pantone declared 2010 as the year of turquoise, referencing its color no. 15-5519. This green shade of turquoise combines “the serene aspects of blue” with “the invigorating aspects of green,” according to the company.

This color is reminiscent of tropical lagoons and some mountain lakes. A blue version of turquoise was the selected color in 2005.

Dinnerware fashions come and go, and turquoise is no exception. Whether they are an exact match, or close complement, there are retro and vintage dinnerware and glassware patterns, as well as some new ones, with colors that fit into the green-blue turquoise or aqua category.

Some of these wares are solid turquoise or aqua green in color. Others have mixed color combinations. Some of our favorites include:

• Bryn Mawr from the Parisienne line by Royal Jackson
• Meredith by Lenox
• Sunshine Orchard by Mikasa
• Boulder Ridge by Noritake
• Tempo by Style House
• Aquamarine glassware in the Milano and Soreno patterns by Anchor Hocking
• Aqua glassware in the Eye Winker pattern by Mosser

There are many more patterns that include the color turquoise in dinnerware and glassware available in both the new and secondary marketplaces.

At our house, anything that goes with blue can mix in a table setting, and this color will be easy to use.

Make mixing and matching table settings up to the minute in 2010 style by including some turquoise, aqua or aquamarine in your color palette. Your vintage wares can sparkle with some up-to-the-minute style, and your table setting ideas will come to beautiful life, for events of all kind this year.

Bag two birds with one stone: eat at home more, and enjoy an easy to make, moist chocolate cake at the same time. How can you go wrong?

Baking at home can help you save money, eat healthier because you control the ingredients, and provide a chance to experiment and tweak recipes to suit your situation.

If cake is a family favorite, learning to bake a simple snack cake can be a good place to start.

Follow the link to the recipe for my favorite chocolate cake recipe, which also includes an easy cooked chocolate frosting. Make this in a 9×9 square pan. You can even mix up the cake in the pan, if you wish.

If you have another favorite, such as coconut or spice cake, there are plenty of online recipe sites and videos available to help you get comfortable before you ever go into the kitchen. Gain experience by starting with a simple recipe and those resources will help you become an accomplished home cook.

• Any cake that is made as one layer in a pan can be considered a snack cake.
• These are handy to make for after-school treats, sack lunches and for casual parties or dinners
• The techniques are simple, and the ingredients list is relatively short, using mostly standard pantry items.
• Snack cakes can usually be made ahead to help smooth out event planning.

By starting out with something that is easy, you can learn by cooking, and you get to eat the tasty results. Once you have baked a few recipes, you will be better able to evaluate each new recipe you are considering, and decide whether it is something you want to make.

How to serve snack cake

• Use your vintage dessert plates, or salad plates. Any plate that is in the 7 to 9 inch range works well, depending on the size of your cake slices, and whether you will serve it with ice cream or not.
• Plan to add ice cream for birthday parties, showers and similar events. A coupe shape plate (smooth with slightly raised sides), or even a shallow soup bowl, works well to keep any melted ice cream on the dish.
• Dress up this cake for a more formal event by cutting the pieces smaller and serving on fine china bread plates in the 4.5 to 6 inch diameter range. An edible flower or small decoration in the frosting (perhaps one that picks up the colors or motif of the china) adds a special touch for a tea party or shower.

Snack cakes are easy to whip up anytime for a quick dessert. Learning to bake can be even more fun when you enjoy the delicious results along with family and friends.

Think of savory soups or stews, cooked long and slow at home. Then casseroles, big pots of baked beans, chili and cabbage rolls. These are often made on the stove top or in the oven. Then in 1971, the Crock Pot by Rival came onto the marketplace and expanded the possibilities in home cooking.

Today, the generic term slow cooker is used alongside the brand name Crock Pot. The various modern models are the busy home cook’s friend. Many classic comfort foods are also slow cooker classics, easy to make and easy to serve in bowls to warm family and friends snowy winter evenings.

The original Crock Pot was an innovation at that time. I remember when these came out, and they were as hot as any modern, small kitchen appliances you see advertised now.

These practical cooking tools have evolved into multi-tasking heavyweights. They have lots of bells and whistles that your mother and grandmother would have wanted. There is a broad range of sizes, from 1 quart to 7 quart, even 8 quart capacity. The newest models include programming features, multiple temperature settings, multiple and removable stoneware inserts, hinged lids, clamp-on lids, and the list goes on.

Slow cookers continue to be popular because they serve the needs of busy moms and home cooks to make easy, delicious meals for their families. You can create a meal, set it cooking, and have dinner underway while doing other tasks. Or, cook the meal overnight, refrigerate it while you are away from home, and reheat it at dinner time in your microwave.

The innovations found in today’s cookers are born directly from customer experience over the years. Stoneware inserts are removable for cleaning. Temperature controls allow for a broad range of cooking methods, and programmable features let you control the settings as your dish cooks. Some even include a probe which is inserted into the meal, to monitor the progress of recipes that require the food to reach a certain temperature.

Consider these things when you shop for the best slow cooker for your household:

• Choose a size that you will fill at least half but no more than two-thirds full, so that the food gets hot enough, but does not overflow while cooking. Large capacity models are in the 4 to 7 quart range, with small capacity in the 1 to 4 quart range.
• The locking lids, available on some models, are made to help you transport the unit with food in it. These are handy for carry-in dinners, potlucks and buffets.
• Models with oval-shape stoneware liners (vs. round) work better for roasts, whole chickens and similar foods. Choose yours based on size and shape of the foods you cook the most.
• Removable stoneware liners make clean up easier.

You won’t want to save your slow cooker for annual potluck dinners once you discover all the luscious recipes that you can make with your cooker. Everything from a hot breakfast to a hot toddy can be made in a slow cooker.

Many vintage china patterns are based on the perennial garden favorite flower, roses. No surprise, roses are romantic and feminine. Many of the dinnerware designs that use this motif have a soft, pastel color scheme.

Make roses your theme for mix and match table setting and the possibilities are enormous. Whether you are planning an intimate Valentine’s Day tea with a group of close friends, or a birthday party for special friends, a buffet for a wedding shower, or Sunday dinner on Mother’s Day, rose-motif dinnerware can serve your purpose well.

All the major china manufacturers have made patterns in the old-fashioned language of flowers, though some of those are now discontinued. The language of roses, based on their colors, can bring a subtle message to your table setting.

• Red is for passion and romantic love
• Pink is for sincere affection and sweet regard
• White is for purity and virtue
• Yellow is for friendship and devotion

The majority of vintage china patterns that feature roses are made in porcelain, fine china or bone china. Choose dishes in one of these high-quality materials for a Valentine’s Day ladies tea or luncheon, and plan to use your special china patterns.

Extra or missing pieces of china are widely available in shops and online. Take some photos of your existing pieces to help you shop. This will make it easier to compare those pieces you need to complete the color scheme and theme, as well as those needed to serve particular food and beverages for the number of guests you will have.

If you are just starting your rose china collection, here are some lovely china patterns with roses in the design:

• Romance by Diamond China
• Adela by Mikasa
• Spring Vista by Lenox
• Bellemead by Noritake
• Promise, Bavarian china
• Sweetheart by Arlen
• Ice Rose by Wedgwood
• Snow Rose by Amcrest
• American Rose by Camelot
• Tudor Rose by Style House

Most of these are vintage patterns. They represent only a tiny percentage of the beautiful fine china patterns that you can experiment with to enhance your romantic table setting.

Just mix and match your china and enjoy painting with dishes as a creative outlet. And above all, have a wonderful, beautiful time hosting a special event with family and friends.

Photo: Roses have inspired many dinnerware patterns
Top row: Roses from my garden. Adela by Mikasa sauce boat, detail of Romance by Diamond
Large photo: Tudor Rose by Style House
Center right: Vintage Rose by Waverly
Lower right: Moss Rose by Diamond

Friends and family gather on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day to celebrate and enjoy each other’s company. Special gatherings sometimes supplemented by television programs - the ball drop in Times Square, the Tournament of Roses parade, or football games galore - also provide entertainment and a reason to party.

Of course you will want to feed this crowd, and make it easy on yourself at the same time. Year end is a time to wind down from Christmas, Hanukkah and the mad rush of holiday shopping. Plan for a New Year buffet to make entertaining easy.

• Select your menu. Make-ahead dishes like egg-based breakfast casseroles or baked appetizers help keep it flexible, so you can bake or reheat as needed as guests come and go.
• Choose the décor. Start with a color scheme or theme, and plan around it. Casual works well for daytime, and a bit more festive or elegant for the evening, but certainly not a hard-and-fast rule. If using team colors, for example, will make tonight’s event more lively, then plan for fun. For elegance, go with combinations of white, silver and gold.
• Use your dishes. Stacks of white plates work all the time. If you have salad, appetizer or luncheon sizes, those are especially handy. Mix and match your dinnerware sets for creative expression and experimentation, and add extra pieces as needed from after-holiday clearance sales and thrift store hunting.
• Keep an eye on the temperature. Chafing dishes, hot plates and slow cookers help keep hot foods hot over time, and the same with ice buckets, nested trays and tubs for those foods that need to stay cold (not to mention the possibility of champagne). Set them up in stations to help your guests circulate, as well as having electrical outlets or sinks handy as needed.
• Put your crew to work. Guests can help you keep the food and drink flowing, as well as the conversation. Let them assist and have a good time as well. The more the merrier.

Year end is a great time to enjoy old friends (people, dinnerware and recipes). A relaxing buffet can make it easy, both to celebrate the outgoing and welcome the incoming, wonderful new year.

Dinnerware sets include various plate sizes for various uses, taking their names from the foods they are commonly used to serve. Bread, salad or dinner plates are just some of the possibilities.

Names for different sizes vary between manufacturers, or even within the product lines of a single manufacturer over time. Diameter alone will not tell for sure what name a particular manufacturer is using for a specific piece in a particular pattern or product line.

Bread plates are usually the smallest size. These are used for dinner rolls or pieces of bread at the place setting. Diners can put butter on it as well, as the butter dish passes.

They are often made in the 4.5 inch to 6 inch range, but there can be exceptions. This china is also practical to use for serving small desserts like tiramisu or petits fours.

Some vintage china patterns include even smaller pieces called butter pats, intended to place individual butter slices or fancy piped butter shapes at individual place settings.

Salad plates generally are in the 6 to 8.5 inch range, but again, there are plenty of exceptions. Some patterns have more than one plate size referred to as a salad plate. This can be due to a change made to the product over time. These plates are versatile, and great for green salads, slices of fruit, or anything served cold on a bed of lettuce, such as chicken or tuna salad. And like their smaller cousins, they can also be used to serve average or large desserts.

Luncheon plates are also available, usually in vintage china patterns, in roughly the 9 inch diameter range. These are handy to use for buffet dinners, as they take up less space in the serving space, and allow the diners to be more relaxed using them when they may not be eating at a table.

Dinner plates are generally in the 10 to 12 inch range. Their size makes them ideal for sit-down dinners with a number of dishes, or foods that take up larger space on the plate, such as steaks or chops.

Just to add to the possibilities, there are patterns that have pie plates. Some of these are patterns which have a limited number of pieces (perhaps just mugs and plates) because the intent was to use the dinnerware to serve only coffee and dessert, and the manufacturer did not produce any other matching pieces.

As food styles change, so do the pieces in place settings. In general, casual dinnerware patterns have fewer pieces, and formal wares have more components available for each place setting.

To see what current makers of fine china are doing, it can be fun to take a field trip to a high-end department store once in a while, to get an idea of the place setting panorama.

Of course, no matter what the plates may be called, use them as you wish. Select your menu, and let the dinnerware work for you, choosing the best pieces to set a beautiful and practical table.

A wonderful set of new glassware is now yours, perfect to add sparkle and shine to your table settings.

Whether the pieces are goblets, tumblers, sherbets, coolers or any of the other glassware shapes, you will want to use them often. Here’s how you can take the best care of them:

Glass is softer than it looks. We often see clear glassware that has developed “dishwasher haze,” a milky white film that disappears when the glass is wet, only to reappear when the glass is dry.

This is microscopic etching of the glass by dishwashing over the years. Colored glassware is also affected by this etching process, which fades the color permanently.

In order to keep your glassware in perfect condition for many years, it will retain its beauty best if you care for it as follows:

• Wash by hand. While many glassware items can go into the dishwasher, over time the soap (even liquid products) can etch the surface, caused by microscopic particles in the dishwashing detergent. Hand washing prevents this.
• Avoid using products that contain lemon, for similar reasons as washing in the dishwasher. Over time, the acid in the lemon can affect the glass surface, and especially those patterns that have gold rims or transfers applied to the glass.
• Store glassware in your cabinets or boxes in individual rows, or place thin foam or cardboard sheets between the layers if you must stack the glass when it is in storage. Take special care with thin glass. Careful storage will prevent nicks and chips that could occur when glasses move around in handling.

Creative use of glassware is one of the best ways to help mix and match your table settings. The colors and motifs can help you pull together your theme, to make an enjoyable meal even more beautiful.

Careful care of your glassware will help it last for years, and become a treasured friend, ready to help you serve in style whenever family and friends gather around your dinner table.

About the glassware in the photo:

• Top row left to right: Bangles tumblers in Misty Blue by Libbey; Cobalt blue tumblers 16 oz. reindeer motif by Libbey; Arlington 10 oz water goblets in Hunter Green by Mosser.
• Bottom row left to right: Cherry Thumbprint 8 oz. tumblers in Ruby Red by Mosser; Cherry Thumbprint, clear 10 oz goblet by Mosser; Poppies on Blue 10 oz goblets by Lenox.
• Bottom right corner: Madeira tumblers, 10 oz in Plum by Franciscan; Milano vintage 12 oz. tumblers in Aqua.

Setting your holiday table can be a snap when you choose red and green as your color scheme. So many of us grew up with bright red and green as the holiday decor at home, in shops and at school. These colors will bring back happy Christmas memories from times gone past.

Start with the red and green dinnerware you already own, and evaluate which pieces you need to add, based on your menu and the number of guests.

• Choose a true red, cherry red or candy apple red
• Select a green that is in the middle on the green scale (not too yellow, not too blue) like Kelly green or pine green
• Set these colors off with white, if not in the pattern itself, then in other china, glassware, serving pieces, or your table linens

For something a little different choose a burgundy red and a spruce green, then set your table off with winter white linens.

• Pull a motif out of your centerpiece and harmonize the colors with that, such as red roses and green holly
• Add to the red and green color scheme and let a holiday theme predominate, such as snowmen, Santa, snowflakes, evergreen boughs, wreaths or ribbons

Traditional red and green dinnerware makes a festive holiday table. Adding some new treasures as accents in harmony with the same color scheme will help your family enjoy their holiday dinners, buffets and gatherings even more.