For some reason we are missing teaspoons. We have the exact same number of big forks, small forks, tablespoons, and knives, but the teaspoons have dwindled to less than five. I am not sure if we have three or four of them.
Being a domestic goddess, I decided to remedy this situation by buying spoons on Amazon. Just spoons, not flatware set. Plain black teaspoons, how hard could it be, right?
Small problem: most of the teaspoons on Amazon are of foreign make, and their idea of what constitutes a teaspoon isn’t the same as ours.
If at first you don’t succeed…
Third time is the charm, right?
And finally.
My husband has banned me from purchasing additional teaspoons. Instead we jointly bought a new set from Wayfair.
I’ll let you know if it has the proper teaspoons in it.
Think of all those Saturday recipes calling for a teaspoon of this or a teaspoon of that. I see a problem now.
I recommend used syores and antique shops or even garage sales. You can get actual silver for a decent price.
ditto, that is where I got mine for the office
We had the same problem our teaspoons just disappeared so we went out and bought some more and now the knives are doing the same thing!
There must be a cutlery gremlin!!
Quite possibly they have gone wherever the lost socks go…
Ours generally went to the kids’ secret hideouts in the crawlspaces under the roof. Now the kids are older, and missing cutlery can be found in their cars.
Ha ha ha
I found all my missing tableware in my son’s bedroom. He’s pretty good at getting the plates and bowls back to the kitchen, but for some reason, misses the silverware and glasses. When the kids were very little, my spoons made their way out to the dirt pile and kids’ sand box. I still occasionally find a dirt-encrusted yucky old spoon when I’m digging in the garden.
I found my 4year old throwing the spoons in the trash.
Ha ha! Omg, I would be ripping my hair out. The richest man in the world can’t get teaspoons right for sale. *snicker*
The teaspoon became the default spoon for eating and grew along with the dinner plates. Which is possibly part of the reason cooking developed a standardized set?
I think #4 on far right is for demitasse.
Enjoy your new set in good health for many years to come. Leave the remaing pieces of your original for outdoor use.
Also, the teaspoon and tablespoon called for in recipies is almost never the same as tablewear. When it matters, use calibrated spoons.
It said coffee/tea spoon. 🙁
Those look short to me. Like a sugar spoon, and then a table spoon or normal sized spoon. Our teaspoons can be used in tall glasses to stir the iced tea. 🙂
They’re long and slender.
Yes, but do they hold 5ml?
I have the long, slender teaspoons from a restaurant supply store (I bought them in Tulsa, Oklahoma about 5 years ago) and from my Lenox flatware set. Not sure if either one holds 5 ml. Would have to test it out.
Oops, the name shouldn’t say [redacted – no worries, I’ve got your back. – Ilona]. I’m at work so that was on my mind when I put that there. Yikes!
I always thought a tea spoon was long and slender too.
Ice tea spoons are the long slender ones (at least in my set)
Correct. Teaspoons for hot tea are short. I think Ilona’s concern is the volume. A standard tsp is 5ml. I get around this by having a dedicated set of measuring spoons, from 1/4 teaspoon to 1.5 tablespoon. The teaspoons we generally use at the table are standard, but what my mom always considered a tablespoon turns out to be about 7.5ml. That is half the volume of a standard tablespoon, which should be 15ml. I have just spent several minutes proving my suspicions on this matter correct. 😀
It’s worse than that. 1 tsp seems to generally be 5ml. But I’ve found that a tablespoon can be 15, 20 or 25 mls depending on whether the recipe is US, UK, Australian or New Zealand. And those long handled spoons are called parfait spoons here in NZ, and I just call the tiny ones ‘ cute ‘ 🙂
My problem is the definition of a soup spoon. I don’t know who designed them, but a lot of them are too wide. I’ve been told I have a big mouth, but most soup spoons are too wide for it. I guess my mouth must be vertically tall, which is the direct opposite of my body type. My feeling is that a spoon should not scrape the sides of my mouth as it goes in.
I end up having to use a standard (table) spoon instead of a soup spoon. Which means if I’m at a restaurant that I usually find myself short a spoon by the end of the meal.
That is because soup spoons are to be sipped from the side, not put in the mouth. Soup spoon should be used to scoop soup away from the dinner, not towards them. Sorry, English pedantry with table manners!
Doesn’t matter, it will probably end up on my front anyway. My family usually marvels when I escape a restaurant without spilling.
“Any day I don’t spill food on my tits is a good day.” read this somewhere and it resonates. And what’s with putting a napkin on your lap? Food has to get past the tits AND belly to make it that far (sigh).
☝️
This right here.
( • )( • )
#TeamCeramicSpoons #AndBowlsYouSipFrom #AndChopsticks
(I mean, yes, I know, but, bleh.)
wow…thanks, I always wondered why the soup spoons were so big.
Yeah, I didn’t know you were supposed to use them sideways either. That actually does make more sense. Guess I’m just one of those heathen colonials who never learned proper table etiquette.
Ergh. I associate it with consomme served in a soup plate. (…and then with my father try to get me to learn under what circumstances I should change hands for cutting my meat, and which ones I shouldn’t.)
Can haz stew and bread, plz?
For some reason, people tend to drop teaspoons into their pockets; perhaps thinking they’ll use them again later and then forgetting. I have caught my brother in law doing this several times-once with my silver. And I agree with the person who said they have a harder time getting brought back by kids who’ve taken them into their bedrooms.
These are my OG teaspoons and they vanish like unattended cash. I think something in my house eats them.
Maybe they’re hanging out with that one sock that disappears when you do laundry.
Teaspoons are useless. You can’t even get a good scoop of soup out of them. And you can’t use them in cooking. Just good for stirring I guess.
True, but they have a great ability to enable self-justification when eating ice cream directly from the carton – it was just a couple of teaspoons!
Well, they are teaspoons, meant to be used to stir milk into one’s tea. A soup spoon is an enterily different animal.
Depends on the set. My teaspoons are… substantial. My soup spoons make decent serving spoons.
Teaspoons are excellent for feeding small children. (Bring on the W.C. Fields jokes, I know.) Other than that, they are best used for…tea.
Scooping out jam, mustard, honey- any and all small serving liquid and viscous substances. And stirring. And eating desserts, unless you are in a country that uses cake forks lol.
Maybe it was Beak. Your teaspoon looks like a demitasse. Last time I saw one was at a very upscale restaurant. Hadn’t seen one before that since my grandmothers silver tea set. Typical teaspoons hold between 3 and 7 ml because apparently standardized cutlery is so last year. Designers do like to mess with things. Good luck on the new set!
Is this you, Mud? I thought about Beak LOL {Robyn btw}
I really like the copper one.
Time to start frisking the kids before they leave the house…………..! ?
… and I hate sticking my hand down the disposal to check…
You made me curious! My teaspoons, from a very inexpensive set purchased many years ago who remembers where, actually do hold 5cc. I’m a veterinarian, so I have syringes to scientifically satisfy my curiosity.
Same problem in our house. Every category of flatware is equally represented except teaspoons. I’ve noticed this for a while. We had extras, but they still go off in vanished-teaspoon-land. Our flatware is at least twenty years old so I doubt I could match it. I’ve decided to go bohemian and not pay attention to pattern. I’m going to buy some random spoons to fill in. I can’t explain this, I suppose we use the spoons more than anything else, but that doesn’t explain the disappearing act.
Sorry, have to ask: I learned cutlery, never heard or read flatware before. Are cutlery and flatware different words for the same thing, or do the words have different meanings?
I believe they are different words for the same thing. As opposed to “silverware” which refers to flatware that is made of sterling silver.
Cutlery generally refers to bladed tools. Flatware is use for what used to be called silverware before silverware became more rare. I have seen cutlery used the same as flatware, just proving that English still is a living language.
In my neck of the woods, i.e. Houston, “silverware” is a generic term for eating utensils of all compositions. My thought on the term is that it refers to the color of the implements rather than the metal composition. Stainless steel is the most common material these days and is (usually) silver colored.
Plasticware is an off-shoot for those who wish to be accurate. I know that other colors of metal are readily available and becoming more common, but so far the “main ingredient” is steel.
Real silver is less common. You will very seldom see it in use – because no one wants to hand wash it. I know I am too lazy to get out my grandmother’s silver and polish it, hand wash it, use it once, and hand wash it again…
Sterling silver very happily washes in the dishwasher, so long as it does not physically touch stainless steel (though the patina will disappear along with the dirt). That’s what I do with mine instead of polishing it by hand. Silverplate will eventually wear off if regularly washed in the dishwasher. Hand-painted china, or pattens with gold/silver/platinum trim should be handwashed, but all other china can be washed in the dishwasher.
“Silverware” is the American term for eating utensils; in British English it’s “cutlery”. “Cutlery” means kitchen knives, because English is a confusing language. 😉
Also British tablespoons are those large serving spoons, whereas American tablespoons are 15 ml soup spoons. I discovered this when an English friend made one of my recipes calling for “6 tablespoons of soy sauce.”
Anything I might add to this would be superfluous, so I won’t. I learned quite a bit actually with all the extra posts!
Those are coffee spoons (I’m Dutch so I’m translating this literally, it may be called different in English). There’s a difference in size. Coffee spoons are about twice the volume in liquid capacity compared to tea spoons. I don’t know if it works in the US, but I suggest buying second hand. Old sets have better size, and usually they are actually better quality as well. For some reason most new cuttlery sets have coffee spoons, either people stopped drinking tea, or people want everything to be bigger.
Yes. Styles change, and it becomes harder and harder to match things like this. In US the larger sizes are due to the increasing palate size. Also, cheaper sets seem to get smaller, so even that isn’t a for sure thing. But on the other hand, if you buy from a company selling patterns that sell open stock on proprietary patterns that they have been selling for decades, those don’t shift in size. That’s why my mom recommended to my sisters and I to get those types of patterns. Because while they are a bit pricey, and rather staid style wise, they can be added to at need.
Huh. In my house it’s forks.
+1
In my house it’s also the forks! When we get down to the last four, off to Salvation Army or Good Will or even the local Junior League.
I think teaspoons have an odd affinity for ether. As in, they just vanish into the ether when their time is come and float there, suspended in isolation never to be found again.
In reality they’re probably tucked away in odd spaces, down the back/sides of the couch or accidentally tossed in the garage
For two years I have had a fork gremlin working to empty all my dinner forks. Then, my salad forks, now it is getting my teaspoons. I thought I was the only one. Maybe all of the flatware has decided to join the alternate universe where socks have been disappearing.
I’m guessing all your missing teaspoons will reappear as Tupperware lids that don’t fit anything.
hahahahaha
LOL!
Ah, new meaning to measuring out your days with coffee (eh hem, TEA) spoons.
P.s. I don’t know why it has taken me so long to get around to the Innkeeper series (I’ve been a faithful reader for years), but I’ve devoured them this past week. Thank you again for sharing your wonderful worlds with us!
I curre. If have plenty of both sizes of spoons but only 3 forks total. Three. I have searched the house and they’ve completely disappeared. I have relented and am going to buy more on payday.
I hate autocorrect. That’s “I currently have…”
Look in the car. My husband cleaned out my daughter’s ancient thirdhand car, which finally kicked the bucket, after she had already gone through it. She missed the console, which was stuffed to the gills, including three dinner forks.
I thought the dishwasher ate teaspoons. But I haven’t used it for quite some time as I live alone, and the teaspoons somehow disappear. But I drink a lot of tea, in the patio and the kitchen.
Ilona I laughed so hard at this post! We have three daughters and use teaspoons frequently. We have also been wondering what was happening as our teaspoon supply has been dwindling dramatically until my husband caught our 2 year old throwing her spoon out with her yogurt container! So now we know why. ???♀️? i love the black utensils though i never knew such a thing existed!
I’m pretty sure that’s what happens at my house. Unfortunately I can’t blame it on the kids…just very spacy moments. I’ve also realized, and had to dig through the trash to find, that I closed up with the fork or spoon inside the takeout container!
Black
copper/rose gold
brass/yellow gold cutlery is in style at the moment.
In Australia at least 🙂
I just needed extra forks for parties and got a pack of just forks at Walmart. They had teaspoons too.
I just bought new sets on Saturday for the same reason. Where do the spoons go? I have 14 people to serve Thanksgiving at my housenext week, I only had 5 spoons. So I just bought two new sets. Now I have 16 spoons.
You will have 13 by the end of the weekend. If you’re lucky.
I remember a pharmacist friend getting me some cough medicine from his store and then showing me three ‘teaspoons’ and asking me which one was the correct size for the medicine. I think he was a bit put out when I actually got it right! It was the size I’d grown up with for teaspoons.
We have a discount shopping center nearby. It includes an Oneida store so its a great place to stock up on teaspoons or any other flatware piece you may be short on. If you like Oneida.
Oops called “Factory Outlet” store.
Big Lots also has a very large collection of Oneida tableware sets. They don’t have my pattern…but that’s 45 years old so I don’t think I’ll ever find that. When we took our family to visit FL (many years ago) we found that the cheap tableware was less expensive than the plastic disposables. Table knives, forks and teaspoons….still have that set…except now we’re down to only 2 spoons.
I love your placemat!
It’s my forks that have all run away to join the Circus, but I sympathise.
I also have been operating under the mistaken assumption that American teaspoons were the long ones used for ice tea and the ones you’re after are the ones we have here in Europe. But I had no idea all the other diversity existed!
There are sites for replacing pieces of sets – ebay can also be good for this kind of thing. I realize actually matching might be more than what you’re aiming for – but if you get real teaspoons from a real set, they’re probably something like the right size?
Once upon a time, in a fit of “…and fix it right!” I made sure I had matching everything for twenty. (And then immediately ended up seating twenty-four. Le sigh.) These days, I have flatware for four. And tableware for… um, well, four, in theory, but I have a bit of a handmade pottery problem the way some people have a drinking problem, so… It’s easier going than my previous fruit tree problem? I also have a small but vital collection of titanium spoons. (The zendo has their own flatware and table, though people raid mine all the time.)
Omg handmade pottery! I would ? to have my own tableware, it must feel so satisfying.
Although my major addiction is huge Italian salad bowls (like half a meter in diameter) so there would be just piles and piles of those.
At the moment I only have a few pieces I’ve made myself.* But everything is made by people I know, either from back home, local to me here, or a few gifts from friends. My set is from https://cascadiastoneware.com/ (with a few pieces from their predecessors, Mud In Your Eye) – but each setting is a different glaze pattern, so there’s room to expand? And then there are my tea bowls. And rice bowls. And mugs…
One of my friends from the farmers market made me a dark red salad bowl I think you’d approve of 🙂 (I’m trying to keep my magpie tendencies in check my limiting them to functional items, but…)
* Though! a) I recently discovered that my sister saved one of the cups from a porcelain tea set I made absolute ages ago. Each cup was a different animal – the one she has has a black cat curled around the bowl of the cup, supporting it. and b) it turns out there is a ceramic co-op nearby, which would cut down on the set up of doing ceramics. (And keep me from trying to use a kiln as an annealing oven so I can blow borosilicate tea bowls. I learned some glass blowing a few years back, but it turns out for my purposes I really want boro…)
I’m another one that likes pottery. My usual flatware is handmade stainless steel that I bought in England but I have another set for relatives who don’t like its heavy weight. And yes the “teaspoon” is large but I don’t remember if they called it a teaspoon.
…you don’t have pictures of your flatware, do you? I’m in early contemplation of figuring out a set more purposefully, and that sounds cool. (I suspect I’m going to collect a few pieces of antique silver to supplement what I got from a great-great grand aunt, but… not really my general look, considering they didn’t put demons on everything.)
Mine is a present from my mother. Right after I left my ex, and moved to the housebarge, I was looking for some that would work with my emerging set of dishes. My mom found these large-ish, stainless steel pieces with handles finished to look like wrought iron… probably not what I would have chosen, but they work well enough? They’re plain, and I like the weight, anyway, even if the faux wrought iron thing isn’t quite my style. (Apparently she wasn’t sure, so she stopped a man about my age she liked the look of, and asked whether he thought I’d like them, and they had a whole discussion about me, her takeaway being that he was interested in her description of me. Oh, yeah, and he thought I’d like them. ?? I don’t know if knowing my mother makes this make more sense or not. *twitch*)
Here’s the link to the place setting that I bought. Hmm, I forgot about the smallest spoons. https://www.culinaryconcepts.co.uk/dining/cutlery/by-place-setting/leaf-7-piece-place-setting
Oh, I love them! And that site…!
(Actually, the unpolished twist neck set if very like what I have now, but without the twist.)
I love borosilicate! (aka “lab glass” – Alas, Pyrex no longer uses it.)
It makes fabulous millefiori style glass jewelry, too…
I used to have a picture from one of the handmade glass jewelry artists. It was his workbench, with $10K worth of borosilicate rods sorted into tubes of various colors stored underneath. It looked almost like honeycomb.
Pyrex doesn’t use it in their kitchen products – if you don’t mind lab products, there’s still boro available 🙂 (I keep meaning to get actual measuring spoons, but until then, well, there is the designated kitchen graduated pipette…)
The studio where I learned artglass glass blowing (as opposed to lab glass glassblowing) is all soda glass – which makes perfect sense, but I got to loving the look of it, and really wanted to do some boro chawan. And it’s all doable, but it’s a *lot* of project, so I pretty much decided to table it. (Though now that I’m going to be with the robot lab… Fabineer and I were just talking about different forge designs, and there’s a lot of overlap. Not that I don’t have plenty of things to put in my life, if I do get a life.)
Speaking of blown lab glass, are you familiar with Acme Klein Bottles (http://kleinbottle.com)?
Not those in particular, no 🙂
It can drive you nuts. About a dozen years ago I tried to finish out a set of silver from my Grandmother. Ordered the same pattern, we thought from the same maker and they were all about an inch to an inch and 1/2 shorter over all. So disappointing. Decided it was not worth searching them out.
For what ever reason, some of the old patterns have a Luncheon size and a Dinner size. I deliberately picked my Mom’s sterling pattern when I got married, and then found out that what I got was the dinner and she had the luncheon! So crazy. Oh well, each of the kids now has a set, and they live in different states.
It sounds a lot like the dryer sock thief. Two socks go in and one comes out.
Glad you feel better. Peace light and love ?K
The first time we replaced our dryer motor, we found $50+ in change, a few dollar bills and many, many socks. No spoons. Go figure.
I think I know why you had to replace your dryer motor.
LOL
+1
Hahahaha I do feel your pain!! I am down to 3. I don’t understand it. Everything else is there!!
Hahaha! I literally just got my new set (of 12 at Costco) put up in my silverware drawer this week. I was down to 5 teaspoons and down a few salad forks too. I have gotten to where, now, I won’t let anyone else clean plates into the trash so that if they go missing again – at least I’ll know who the culprit is and can be frustrated at myself and not the cosmos. Enjoy it while it lasts. 🙂
I would have just looked on ebay.
It is well known that teaspoons are the larval form of the metal coat hangers which multiply within wardrobes as the tea spoons disappear.
This always used to happen at work where it was frequently necessary to purchase more.
This makes *so much* sense!
Thanks for laugh (although I feel your pain) – it was needed today.
Illona there is that great shopping area across the hiway 35, San marcos, that has several shops that sell silverware in pieces or sets. I think that one of them is a Lennox shop but could be wrong.
ROFLOL Thank you, thank you. I am so glad that I’m not the only one who has problems with on-line ordering. Truly sorry for your particularly frustrating issue but it made for a humorous read and I really needed a good laugh today. (Car troubles) Also impressed with your persistence as well as knowing when to go to Plan B. Again, thank you for sharing.
No…those are the teaspoons we have in England. Good lord, how small are yours? Like how many teaspoons of sugar do you have to put in before you’ve got the equivalent of a cube?
First a lack of kettles, now abnormally small teaspoons. What happened, America?
On the loss of spoons though, today at work I was given a secret teaspoon to hoarde by someone who knows I have a secret stash of tea. Both are gold dust in the office kitchen. As are forks. Far too many people are making cuppas with knives.
We have lost forks. We are OVERRUN with spoons. Mostly enormous tablespoons that we use less often. But our fork shortage is becoming an issue. :-/
Good spoon thoughts to you and yours!
Oh dear… And I do realize that you have already made decisions, but I was reminded that I used to solve various kitchen problems in restaurant supply stores. (Department of “Fix it but good” once again. Hey, I used to have three ovens, and my family had the habit of showing up at my house and expecting to be able to start stuffing their faces. Okay, yeah, I totally miss that part.)
I figured there would be a web equivalent, and lo –
https://www.webstaurantstore.com/51001/spoons.html
(Note that in most cases size is explicitly listed. Though I didn’t check if they only do wholesale. Hey, you all have a business license, right?)
Cool site! I love supply stores. 🙂
I was alright until the picture with the smallest spoon at the end and then I couldn’t stop laughing. Sorry. In my house it’s teaspoons too. Currently I have two. I’m putting off buying more because it’s not that long ago that I last replaced them all. Where. Do. They. Go??? I mean they’re not edible. Do the knives and forks get together and wage war on them and then hide the bodies? They don’t go to Sockri-la because the portal to that is through the tumble dryer and I have said (sadly more times than I wish to admit) that cutlery does not go in the tumble dryer.
A neighbor, who had just moved from a foreign country, asked my mom what a teaspoon was. My mom, who was raised in a formal household, went on for some length about the different kinds of flatware used in formal dining, including teaspoons, ice-tea spoons, desert spoons, soup spoons, and sugar spoons. Eventually the neighbor asked, “So, in this recipe, when it says ‘tablespoon,’ do I use the soup spoon?”
[In the US, “teaspoon” could be either a small spoon for stirring a cup of tea or a 5 ml measuring utensil for cooking. They are not the same thing. A “tablespoon” is a 15 ml measuring utensil.]
Not a solution, but I read this article recently in which researchers did a study on missing teaspoons in the workplace. Found it quite interesting and amusing.
https://theconversation.com/the-curious-case-of-the-missing-workplace-teaspoons-103989
That was very nicely done, right up until the last line. That’s how spoons end up in the dryer.
That was very nicely done, right up until the last line. That’s how spoons end up in the dryer.
Too funny. One of my co-workers teaches nursing research, so I sent the link on to her!
That’s hilarious bc it didn’t happen to me. If it did my head would probably explode. Lol maybe measure w a ruler to try to get the length rightish??
The discussion spawned by the missing teaspoon post is fabulous. Ilona, I hope you use the flavor of these replies to create a situation in one of the Innkeeper books…. wouldn’t the mystery of the missing spoons be interesting?
Now you have enough soup spoons for any future emergency! Zombie apocalypse and all we have is cans of food type of situation.
Be SURE you have a can opener!