Just Add Plaid

 

I bought some eggs the other day, and when I went to use one it was frozen solid; just an icy plop into my mixing bowl. It was weird, and apart from the odd sound that it made, I couldn't stop looking at it. There was something very disturbing about starting to bake a cake, only to have a solid mass fall out of my gently cracked shell. Sugar, Butter, Flour, Baking Powder, Plop. Not a happy start to my cake.

 

So, I called the supermarket, and they told me to bring them back. Seemed silly really, because they probably would thaw out during the car ride, and how could they check to see if the other eggs on their shelf were frozen? Not like you can open them up, and put them back together again, but perhaps they had a special supermarket egg thermometer that they kept in a secret vault especially for such occasions. Who knows.

 

Anyway, as I was returning them, the lady at Customer Service said she loved my bag. It's a red plaid, and she said she liked plaid, but it wasn't that easy to find. We chatted about whether or not you could get sick from eating frozen eggs, but in my mind I was really thinking about giving her my plaid bag as a gift. But I loved it too, and I didn't have another, so me and my bag went home again.

 

Always a trend in Scotland (maybe the lady was Scottish?) plaid occasionally has Interior Design moments, and is often teased for being the favorite clothing of lumberjacks and people who can start a camp fire with a piece of tin foil and a sunbeam. But, did you know that plaid is actually the perfect pick-me-up, because you cannot look at it, or say the word, without having at least one of these random, plaid thoughts........

 

• I wish I was curling up next to a fireplace, with a plaid blanket around my shoulders and a cup of hot chocolate.
• Are plaid and tartan distant relatives, or the same person?
• Does everyone who sits in a horse-drawn carriage, riding through Central Park, wrap a red plaid blanket around their knees, or did I just see that in a movie?
• Alexander McQueen wore a lot of plaid.
• How cold does a log cabin in Alaska really get? 
• Why does a Burberry scarf cost a lot more in England than it does in America?
• How did I miss the worldwide celebration of plaid on October 3, 2014?
• I wish I was picnicking in a field, sitting on a plaid blanket, with dandelions and a sandwich.
• Men in kilts.

By the way, do you know that there really is a difference between plaid and tartan? Apparently, all tartans are plaid, but, not all plaids are tartan; it is a geometry, vertical, horizontal thing, which is best explained by Designer, Scot Meacham Wood in this little Q and A from House Beautiful.

 

p.s. The photograph at the top is from my favorite plaid website, www.plaidurday.com