During the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, which began in March 2020, shortages of goods and equipment due to “supply chain problems” seemed to become the norm. This usually meant that necessary things were available, but getting them to their intended destination was the problem.
One day a few weeks ago, I opened a kitchen cupboard door and realized Dennis and I had become victims of another type of supply chain issue. It wasn’t toilet paper or anti-bacterial soap or hand sanitizer we were lacking. What was missing was something that I viewed as being in oversupply. We were experiencing an unprecedented custard cup shortage.
Maybe you know the humble, yet versatile, custard cup by a different name. Around our house, we’ve always called them dessert dishes, which is surely a misnomer for such an all-purpose little item. These gems stand about 2 inches high with a diameter of not-quite 4 inches, and are made of translucent, heat-resistant glass. Most of mine are clear glass, though I have a few in brown and I’ve also seen some with a light blue tint.
By actual count, I have 17 of these custard cups. Fortunately, they stack quite nicely for storage purposes, but until recently, I thought that I had too many of them. The biggest demand for my custard cup collection has always been at holiday meals, when I put a stack of them at each end of the dining room table for those who don’t want to put the cranberry sauce onto their plates.
Our recent custard cup shortage was due to an increase in usage of them this time of year. One ongoing use has become as dessert dishes for our dogs, Lizzie and Tillie. Early on in their lives, Dennis had started buying them “doggy ice cream” from the freezer case in the grocery store. However, gradually the price of this treat increased considerably and also became more difficult to find in supermarkets. Rather than disappoint our pups by discontinuing their evening treat, I started spooning about one-third cup of plain or vanilla yogurt into custard cups and freezing them to replace their doggy ice cream. They love it just as much, and it’s easier on our budget.
With two of those dog treats in the freezer at all times, it would seem like the remaining custard cups would be more than adequate for a two-person household — and most of the year, they are. However, these days, Dennis and I run through them quickly. We often start out the day with little dishes of fresh cantaloupe chunks as part of our breakfasts. Custard cups hold just the perfect amount.
At lunch time, there’s something nice about a chilled, pickled red beet egg with a few slices of the pickled beets to go along with a sandwich. To avoid a soggy, beet juice-stained sandwich, we put our red beet eggs into custard cups.
When supper time rolls around, another summer favorite of ours is my ice-box vegetable salad. It’s sort of a short-cut chow chow that makes a great sweet-sour side dish that doesn’t require using the stove. Since it includes chopped green peppers, it’s also a worthwhile way to use peppers from our garden without a steady diet of stuffed peppers (which we love). Ice-box vegetable salad can get a bit messy if put directly onto a dinner plate, so I serve it in — you guessed it — custard cups.
And, because our dogs aren’t the only ones who enjoy a frozen dessert in the hot weather months, Dennis and I often enjoy some ice cream for humans as our dessert a little later on in the evening. Sometimes, we’ll serve it in a soup bowl with a summertime dessert like some of Dennis’ excellent peach crisp. Other times, I’ll just dish a scoop or two of ice cream into custard cups, which makes for a nice serving size.
As you can see, our faithful little custard cups get quite a workout during summertime. And if you’ve been keeping count, you can see that, during the typical day I just described, between Lizzie, Tillie, Dennis and me, we can average using 10 custard cups/dessert dishes over the course of a day. It’s this pattern that has led to some recent “supply chain issues,” when I find the cupboard bare of these multi-purpose little dishes, because our supply is awaiting a trip through the dishwasher.
It’s not a problem to hand wash something this small. But since some of them have been licked clean by the dogs — and we can’t always tell which ones those are — I prefer to sanitize all the custard cups by washing them in our dishwasher. Even though we have a smaller than standard-sized dishwasher for the two of us, we still don’t need to run it more often than every two or three days; thus, our custard cup supply chain gets interrupted this time of year. Which just goes to show, little things really do mean a lot.
