bowls that look like plates but are really bowls…

…and math.

Every few years an absolutely hilarious fashion trend rotates back in: obscenely large jewelry, oversized clothing, and gigantic purses. Aside from the questionable artistic choice, the idea is that you can teensify yourself when you are swallowed by clothes and accessories made for a titan. The obvious disproportionality creates space for a very favorable comparison. It’s all an illusion – wow, she looks so little! Conversely, if you over-correct the proportions and reduce that comparative space, the illusion changes from one of scarcity to one of abundance: the ultra-tight, miniature muscle tee (or whatnot) is chosen to make your pecs (or whatnots) look bigger. Ratios can be devious like that.

To combat some of my occasional consumption challenges, I often resort to the art of illusion, which ironically is not art at all, but rather the splendidly clever manipulation of everyday math. Of course a more simple solution is to just manage the numbers – calories in/calories out, with room for debate over carbs, fat, and protein. I know it works, but it’s not fun. Another path is exercise, which again uses some very basic math to neutralize caloric excess. And I know it works, but I’m lazy. To make matters worse, I’m suspicious of wonder drugs and hate needles, so illusion it is. Enter: the bowl/plate.

Back in 2019 I made a few lifestyle tweaks as we entered the empty nest phase, and naturally my new nest required new curtains, new throw pillows, and most importantly new dinnerware. Only not exactly plates – I wanted those bowls that sort of look like plates but are really just pasta bowls. They were all the rage and HomeGoods and Marshalls must have spotted me coming a mile away. Why the bowl/plates?

First, there is the comfort element of having your dinner delivered as a single unit of goodness, often united with a luscious sauce or dressing that announces “this meal is happy, harmonious, and complete…just like you.” Second, I admit I needed a more favorable visual ratio. A cup of pasta is always a cup of pasta and the quantity will never change because of the shape or size of its vessel. But a lonely, twirl of spaghetti sitting in the middle of a flat, wide plate has me thinking about seconds before I even begin. However that same serving looks like a whole lot more food when cradled in a cozy bowl/plate. It’s the classic tiny shirt illusion and the noodles are the whatnots.

After a few unfortunate forays into the world of brightly colored melamine and institutionally-striped Corelle, I found some unassuming, honeycomb-patterned, white china bowl/plates. You’ve since seen them in nearly every photo in this blog. Then came the real challenge: managing my man-creatures of habit. Even though I introduced the pieces slowly, there were many nights when I was the only one with the bowl/plate. It took months for all the boys to get on board, but eventually I won. I wore them down (again) and we have dined nightly at our fashionable porcelain troughs ever since.

While I credit the silly giant clothes story, there really was math behind all this. However it was “Betsy Math,” which is not based on actual numbers, but a feeling backed by mysterious and unplottable data points. I have never been a math whiz – it’s not that I’m fundamentally incapable, or even mildly inept, but my eyes glaze over when the conversation turns to interest rates or capital gains…or taxes, balancing the bank account, budgeting, stocks, bonds or anything vaguely economic in nature. My brain is full of other fancies and frankly, excessive math-talk floods me with anxiety. But I do recognize a good sale.

I rarely entertain mathematical concepts as anything but support staff, like backup singers who don’t get enough credit but without whom I’d be lost. Strangely, if they sing a single note off-key, I’ll know. While I am acutely (read: excessively & obsessively) aware when something is mathematically incorrect, off-center, or misproportioned, it’s mostly instinctual. And strangely visual. The (mis)calculations on their own don’t trigger me, but they always validate that gut feeling that something ain’t right.

During my stint in education, I learned the term subitize, which is the ability to quickly and accurately perceive a quantity (typically up to 6) by merely glancing instead of counting the individual units. Think dice: you know instantly when you roll a 4, but how quickly would you recognize a dozen marbles? Sometimes I feel like that’s how I employ math; it’s always reconfigured as a spatial representation of numbers. I noticed it in photography and interior design equally. What I frame in the camera does have geometric significance (rule of thirds, Fibonacci spiral) and it does require serious arithmetic to focus properly (aperture, shutter speed, and ISO) but honestly, I’m eyeballing it all as a whole scene. I rarely measure a wall before I begin banging it full of nails to hang those photos and I will go ten rounds insisting that the sofa is 2” too far to the right…eyeballing, of course.

Armed with my dangerous non-math math and fancy new nail gun, the interior upgrades continue because we are way past throw pillows. Installing the rectangular panel moulding in my foyer was a snap, but this parallelogram took me 6 hours, At hour 4 there was no more eyeballing and I had to use pure geometry. It did not help matters that I had already thrown (and broken) my mitre box in disgust. The indignity of having to literally BUILD a new box from trim scraps and old 2x4s (hour 5) turned out to be another reluctant step toward maturity. I fumed and bitched to myself the entire time but eventually I won. Winning is so hard.

“Dull minds are never either intuitive or mathematical.”

Blaise Pascal

As for cooking, any intuitive eyeballing on my part is more like math muscle memory. While my learned and much-practiced hunches show up as gut feelings, they only exist because of experience. I can easily subitize a teaspoon, a cup, and just the right amount of stock to deglaze a pan. But I have also made revolting and wholly inedible mistakes with some of my more arrogant or haphazard hunches – no doubt, the purple fish night of 2001 will be brought up at my funeral. Still, as soon as I feel comfortable freebasing a measurement, technique, or formula I bolt out of Mathville and take my chances. Never a dull moment.

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Dressings and sauces to unify your bowl/plate meal and enrich your trough-dining experience

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