Pearls and Sunbeams and After-Dinner Cleanup

Daphne McMahon lives in western Nevada and she wrote to us to say that after a large family meal, when she was a kid she and the other kids who were helping with the cleanup were asked to go collect the pearls.

Do you know what that would be?

Oh interesting, is this to get the dishes out of the dishwater that had sunk to the bottom?

No.

Well, that makes sense in a different way, actually, because what her family meant was to gather any unused plates or utensils, you know, the ones that didn’t need to be washed. Those were the pearls.

And she wondered if anybody else said that.

And I couldn’t find that.

But I do know that in Australia, an unused plate on the table is called a sunbeam. A lot of people use that expression.

Oh, that’s nice. I like that one.

I like both of these because I am at that stage of life where if a dish can be reused, I will reuse it.

Like the famous knife that you just rinse between uses, you know.

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